Clockwise from left to right: 50 Hudson Yards, Farley Post Office redevelopment, 1 Madison Avenue, and Apple CEO Tim Cook (Credit: Hudson Yards, Skanska, Google Maps, and Getty Images)
Apple has joined tech giants like Facebook and Amazon in the competition to lock up prime blocks of large Manhattan office space.
The Cupertino, California-based tech company is looking around Manhattan for somewhere between 200,000 and 500,000 square feet for a new office, sources told The Real Deal. One source said the tech firm could take as much as 750,000 square feet.
Apple’s checked out the usual suspects of properties on the short list for most companies with assignments of that size, including the Related Companies and Oxford Properties Group’s 50 Hudson Yards, Related and Vornado Realty Trust’s Farley Post Office redevelopment and SL Green Realty’s One Madison Avenue, sources said.
Representatives for Apple did not respond to requests for comment.
A JLL team led by Martin “Mack” Horner and Peter Riguardi has the assignment to lead the search, according to a source. The brokers did not respond to requests for comment.
Apple is the last of the big FAANG tech companies (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google) to scale up to a significant size in New York City. But to the city’s office landlords and leasing brokers, the move seemed inevitable: As the availability of office space and workforce talent in grows ever-tighter in Silicon Valley, these companies would naturally look to expand to tech hubs like New York.
Facebook, Google and Amazon each already have a significant presence in the city with offices that take up several hundred thousand square feet each. And they’re all competing with one another for the choicest properties – sometimes bumping their rivals.
Facebook is reportedly in talks to lease as much as 1.5 million square feet at 50 Hudson Yards, and Google last month finalized a 1.8 million square foot lease with Oxford Properties at its redevelopment of the St. John’s Terminal in Hudson Square.
Amazon is reportedly in discussions to lease 400,000 square feet in the Hudson Yards neighborhood at SL Green’s 460 West 34th Street.
Netflix, meanwhile, recently leased 100,000 square feet in the Flatiron District for offices at Normandy Real Estate Partners’ 888 Broadway and 161,000 square feet at 333 Johnson Avenue in Bushwick for sound stages.
Apple currently leases about 45,000 square feet in the Flatiron District at Clarion Partners’ 100-104 Fifth Avenue – where it opened its office in 2011.
Sources said Apple’s current search is to accommodate new hires the company plans to make.