Convene Inks 93K-SF Deal at One Liberty Plaza for Largest Location Yet
By Liam La Guerre May 21, 2018 2:11 pm
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On-demand meeting and office space provider Convene has signed a 10-year, 93,096-square-foot lease at Brookfield Property Partners and Blackstone Group’s One Liberty Plaza to open its largest location, according to a Brookfield press release today.
The new Convene location, which will include a kitchen, café, office and event spaces, will opened in the first quarter next year, and will be the company’s 15th outpost in the Big Apple. (Convene has 19 active locations around the country and eight underdevelopment.)
“Not only will Convene now be positioned near robust mass transit and a flourishing Lower Manhattan business community, the space allows us to incorporate all of the elements that are central to Convene’s success,” Ryan Simonetti, a co-founder and the CEO of Convene, said in a prepared statement.
Convene will operate a 4,798-square-foot café on the ground floor of the 54-story Lower Manhattan building, which covers a full block from Trinity Place to Broadway between Liberty Place and Cortlandt Street. And there will be a kitchen in 2,500 square feet on the concourse level.
The tenant will also have 12,339 square feet and 28,708 square feet on the entire mezzanine and part of the second floor, respectively, for meeting and event spaces. And Convene will occupy the entire 44,751-square-foot third floor, where it will house flexible office suites. The Wall Street Journal first reported news of the lease.
Brookfield and Convene aren’t new to each other; Convene has three existing locations in Brookfield properties and the developer co-led a series C funding round in Convene of $68 million last year. (Convene has raised at least $113.5 million to date, as per Crunchbase.)
“Adding Convene will provide a valuable amenity to all of our building tenants and the surrounding Lower Manhattan business community,” Mikael Nahmias, a senior vice president at Brookfield, said in prepared remarks. “We are thrilled to help support and grow this transformational workplace platform.”
Brookfield and Convene declined to disclose the asking rent in the new deal. Last year when Business Insider signed a 88,000-square-foot deal at the tower the asking rent was $53 per square foot in that transaction, as Commercial Observer previously reported.
Brookfield sold a 49 percent stake in One Liberty Plaza to Blackstone last year, as The New York Post previously reported. The 2.3-million-square-foot building is home to existing tenants such as law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, New Avon and transatlantic reinsurance company.
