Viacom Nabs Studio Space at 1515 Broadway
No, you’re not having flashbacks from the 1990s of Carson Daily and Damien Fahey doing Total Request Live in Times Square—but there’s a definite sense of déjà vu, thanks to the new lease that Viacom just signed for the studio at TRL’s old space at 1515 Broadway.
The media titan is taking 8,700 square feet on the second floor of the SL Green Realty Corp.-owned building between West 45th and West 46th Streets that was recently home to apparel retailer Aeropostale until it went bankrupt last year.
The lease will be for 10 years and nine months, and Viacom (which already has a large foothold in the building) should be occupying the space sometime in the next two months.
“We [brought Viacom in with] the idea of keeping these open windows just like they had them in the old days at Total Request Live, where people would congregate, and you’d have tourists stare up at these windows and celebrities would wave down,” said Brett Herschenfeld, a managing director and head of retail at SL Green who represented the landlord along with colleagues Harrison Sitomer and Emily Musilli. “It was basically, ‘Bring back the old-school Viacom.’ ”
Viacom isn’t the only media giant that has taken a piece of the space Aeropostale vacated; in addition to the 8,700 square feet of second-floor space, Aeropostale’s total footprint consisted of another 5,500 square feet on the first floor of the property, 4,629 of which was grabbed earlier this year by the South Korean tech firm Line Corp., which operates messaging apps.
Aeropostale was paying $9.7 million per annum Herschenfeld told Commercial Observer. “The combo is $10.5 million—$1 million more than [Aeropostale] was paying, and we still have [more vacant grade space],” Herschenfeld said. “We expect a minimum of $2 million for that, so we’re looking at $12.5 million. That’s a cha-ching deal.”
Michael R. Laginestra, Andrew Sussman and Charles Laginestra of CBRE represented Viacom. Laginestra declined to comment via a spokeswoman.
