Spotify to Sublet Part of 4 World Trade Center Offices
By Celia Young May 15, 2023 12:01 pm
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Music streaming giant Spotify plans to shrink its footprint by subletting five floors at 4 World Trade Center, as the company continues to re-evaluate its real estate needs, Bloomberg reported.
Spotify occupies roughly 564,000 square feet at Silverstein Properties‘ 72-story tower and will reportedly try to offload at least the 85,666 square feet it leased from the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey in 2018, according to Bloomberg.
Spokespeople for Spotify, Silverstein and the Port Authority did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Stockholm-based Spotify has let its employees work from anywhere since 2021 and decided to shrink its office space as a result, the company wrote in its first-quarter earnings report in April.
“Our focus has shifted more towards optimizing our current portfolio and reviewing our real estate needs around the world as opposed to significant expansion of our presence,” the filing read. “This will result in a reduction of our real estate footprint in certain locations and consolidation or subleasing some of our leased office space in future periods.”
Spotify became the anchor tenant at the 3 million-square-foot building in 2017, thanks in part to a deal with New York for an $11 million rent reduction on its space, Commercial Observer reported at the time. But plenty of tech firms have looked to cut costs through offloading real estate as the industry has hit trouble in recent months with mass layoffs, hiring freezes and drops in revenues.
Twitter, Google’s parent company Alphabet, Facebook parent Meta and Amazon have all cut or sublet their offices nationally, with Facebook spending billions to do so. At the same time, Manhattan’s available sublet space hit a new high at 22.1 million square feet in the first quarter of 2023.
Celia Young can be reached at cyoung@commercialobserver.com.
