Snapchat Parent Company Adds 26K SF to Offices at Old NYT Building

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Snap Inc., the parent company of disappearing messaging app Snapchat, has signed a 26,000-square-foot lease at 229 West 43rd Street to expand its footprint in the building to 121,000 square feet, according to landlord Columbia Property Trust’s first-quarter earnings report released before today’s conference call.   

The new lease at the old The New York Times Building will expire in June 2027 and was completed in February according to the information provided in the report. The asking rent in the deal was not disclosed in the first quarter earnings report. 

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“Basically what happened there is they came to us and wanted some additional space and said they would make a really long-term commitment and make this their home if we could provide it,” said James Fleming, Columbia Property Trust’s chief financial officer, on the first-quarter conference call. “And we were able to move out a couple of smaller tenants to make room for [Snap] and that really enabled them to make this commitment to the building.”

Snap leased 33,360 square feet on the fourth and seventh floors of the building last year, according to information from CoStar Group. The asking rent was $70 per square foot in that deal. Snap also has the 15th and the 16th floors, which it inked deals for in 2014.

Paul Amrich and Neil King of CBRE represented Columbia Property Trust in the current transaction, and Jim Wenk and Kirill Azovtsev of JLL brokered the deal on behalf of Snap. 

Columbia Property Trust purchased the 481,000-square-foot, 12-story office condo at the top of the building in 2015 from Blackstone Group for $516 million, as CO reported at the time. Kushner Companies owns the 250,000-square-foot, four-floor retail portion of the building, which it bought in May 2015 for $296 million. 

Snap signed a 5,000-square-foot space for a pop-up retail space at 5 East 59th Street in December last year, as CO previously reported. 

Snap became a public company last month and will report its first-quarter earnings on May 10. The company did not immediately return a request for comment.