NBC Looks To Be Walking Away From a New 30 Rock Lease
By Greg Cornfield and Max Gross June 1, 2022 10:10 pm
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It looks like NBC is pulling the plug on a new lease it was about to sign at 30 Rockefeller Center.
NBC CEO Jeff Shell pumped the brakes on a deal Wednesday to add another 90,000 square feet to the network’s existing footprint from Tishman Speyer at its storied Rockefeller Center address in Midtown, according to multiple sources close to the deal.
This doesn’t mean that NBC is leaving 30 Rock, of which it already owns a significant portion via a commercial condo arrangement; the deal in question was for vacated “growth space.”
While one source said “the deal is not dead,” other sources said that NBC is walking away from the deal. This came, one source speculated, after Shell questioned whether the space would be usable in the current work-from-home climate.
“NBC is saying what a lot of CEOs are saying,” said one source, “that is: demonstrate to me that people are coming back to the office before I sign on the dotted line.”
Tishman Speyer did not immediately comment. NBC could not be reached by press time.
Indeed, this is a big question that many companies face today; earlier on Wednesday it was revealed that Elon Musk had told Tesla employees that he expected them to log 40 hours per week in the office or find another job. But the fact that NBC would walk away from a deal at 30 Rock, an address that the network is so closely associated with that it became the title of Tina Fey’s sitcom, is surprising.
