Compass Points to Growth With New Offices for Midtown Brokers
By Terence Cullen September 6, 2016 4:20 pm
reprints
Compass is moving its Midtown digs west in a deal that will see it nearly double the size of its neighborhood offices.
The technology-heavy residential brokerage has signed a 17,000-square-foot lease at 10 East 53rd Street between Madison and Fifth Avenues, Commercial Observer has learned. That gives the three-year-old company the 16th and 17th floors of the 388,864-square-foot, SL Green Realty Corp.-owned building, according to a Compass press release.
“The move to a bigger Midtown office exemplifies an exciting year of growth for the company,” David Snider, the chief operating officer of Compass, said in prepared remarks. “We look forward to continuing to provide unmatched support, technology resources and marketing capabilities to our agents and their clients.”
The lease is for 10 years, according to a Compass spokeswoman. Asking rent in the deal was $80 per square foot, an SL Green (SLG) spokesman said.
Compass will move from RFR Realty’s Lever House at 390 Park Avenue where it has been a tenant for nearly two years, according to CoStar Group. Currently, the company leases 10,726 square feet at the property between East 53rd and East 54th Streets.
The Compass spokeswoman said the firm will move into its new offices at 10 East 53rd Street in early 2017.
Ethan Silverstein of Cushman & Wakefield represented Compass, while Paul Glickman, Diana Biasotti, Alex Chudnoff, Ben Bass and Cynthia Wasserberger of JLL represented the landlord. A JLL spokesman did not immediately return a request for comment.
Although the company is expanding its Midtown presence, the firm’s headquarters is at 90 Fifth Avenue at West 14th Street, also an RFR building, where it leases five floors. That office includes an entire floor for its engineers that work on the web-based brokerage’s app, as CO reported in January.
The expansion comes as the company closed on a robust fundraising round, which ended on Aug. 31 and raked in $75 million, according to venture capital tracker CrunchBase. Going into the fundraising round, Compass was valued at $1 billion. Compass has brought in $210 million from investors—which include Thrive Capital, founded by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Commercial Observer’s publisher, Jared Kushner—since launching, according to today’s press release.
