Barrows Relocates to Taconic’s Midtown South Building
By Chava Gourarie January 27, 2020 11:38 am
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Retail advertising firm Barrows is relocating their New York headquarters to Taconic Partners’ newly landmarked 817 Broadway, located just south of Union Square, Commercial Observer has learned.
Barrows, part of the WPP family of advertising companies, signed a lease for 10,000 square feet at the restored nineteenth century skyscraper, at the corner of West 12th Street, according to information from Taconic.
Barrows will move into a corner space on the third floor of the 140,000-square-foot building later this month, per Taconic. The prebuilt floor allowed for a flexible term, which is what the tenant was looking for, said Matthew Weir, a Taconic executive, who declined to provide the length of the term. Asking rent on the lower floors are in the high $90s, and a three-floor penthouse, which is currently available, is asking more than $100 per square foot, Weir said.
David Falk, Jason Greenstein and Daniel Levine from Newmark Knight Frank, who are the exclusive office leasing agents for the building, represented Taconic, while Brandon Charnas, Adam Henick and Matt Newman from Current Real Estate Advisors represented the tenant.
Taconic purchased the 14-story building together with Nuveen and Squire Investment in 2016, and has invested $30 million in repositioning it. “It’s really a brand new building in a historic facade,” Weir said. The rehab included new fundamentals, such as new systems and and an upgraded lobby, as well as a restored exterior, a common roof deck, new windows, and a retail curtain wall on the ground floors.
In 2019, Taconic completed the majority of the redevelopment work and moved into the lease-up phase.
Several floors, such as the third floor that Barrows will occupy, were reserved for a prebuilt program to meet the demands of tenants looking for more flexible terms and faster move-in times. “Flexible terms is something that’s becoming more in demand, part of the weworkification of the market,” Weir said.
The Midtown South building was landmarked this past June, as Commercial Observer reported at the time.
