Advance Publications, the company behind Conde Nast, has a case of buyers’ remorse on its one million square feet headquarters lease at One World Trade Center.
Six years after signing a $2 billion deal with the Durst Organization for 21 floors of the skyscraper’s office space in Lower Manhattan, the company said it is “in discussions about bringing the lease at One World Trade Center into line with current market conditions and its ongoing needs at this location”
A spokesman told REW it is “considering alternative solutions to address these requirements.”
Durst has declined to comment on the “discussions” but it is no secret that the publishing empire has struggled to fully occupy the prime space since it first moved 3,400 workers there in 2014.
Facing massive cuts to its income amid a drop in advertising revenues across titles that include Vogue, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, Advance hired a JLL team led by president Peter Riguardi to sublease 300,000 s/f.
The coronavirus dealt the company another blow and it has laid off 100 workers, according to published reports, and furloughed another 100 unable to work remotely.
The 3M s/f 1 WTC took eight years and $4 billion to build. Durst has successfully leased 93 percent of the office space with a mixture of tech, media and finance tenants.
Most recently, MDC Partners signed an 11-year lease for 199,277 s/f on the 65th through 69th floors and partial 64th floor of One World Trade Center.
The deal made MDC the third largest tenant and anchor of the upper portion of the building.
