Nearly 200 years after first opening for business in Lower Manhattan, HarperCollins Publishing Inc. is returning to its downtown roots.
The publishing giant has just signed a long-term lease for over 180,000 s/f of office space comprising 4½ floors at L&L Holding Company’s 195 Broadway for its new headquarters.
It expects to begin relocating from its current midtown offices at 10 East 53rd Street in the Spring of 2014.
“We’re delighted to welcome HarperCollins back to Lower Manhattan, where for over a hundred years it grew both its business and reputation,” said David Levinson, CEO of L&L Holding Company, LLC.
“Coming as it does on the heels of the recent Conde Nast signing at 1 World Trade Center, this becomes a very significant and transformative leasing transaction that bodes well for the continued resurgence of the downtown marketplace.”
Mary Ann Tighe, Ken Rapp and Christopher Mansfield of CBRE represented the publishing house in the 15-year leasing transaction while the landlord was represented in-house by L&L’s David Berkey and Andrew Wiener. Asking rent at the landmarked building is $47 a square foot. Levinson and Berkey brokered HarperCollins’ lease at 10 East 53rd Street 15 years ago.
“We are pleased to have assisted one of New York’s oldest and greatest publishing houses, HarperCollins, in its return to Downtown,” said Rapp. “The 40,000-square-foot floor plates of 195 Broadway provide exactly the open, collaborative, bright and exciting space that HarperCollins wanted as a dynamic 21st Century publishing business.”
The million square foot building at 195 Broadway, which once served as the New York headquarters of AT&T, is owned by L&L Holding Company, LLC in partnership with Beacon Capital Partners.
The William Welles Bosworth designed building sits between Lower Manhattan’s two major public transportation hubs — the Fulton Street Transportation Center and the Calatrava Path station at the World Trade Center.
According to Levinson, a lease is out on the final 17, 036 s/f of available space at 195 Broadway, whose other tenants include Omnicom, one of the world’s largest advertising agencies, and media companies Thomson Reuters Markets and The Knot Inc.
Soon to begin its third century of publishing great writers and books, HarperCollins was founded in 1817 when James and John Harper opened the doors of their printing firm, J&J Harper, at the corner of Front and Dover Streets in Lower Manhattan.
The firm went on to occupy several different downtown buildings until moving uptown in the 1920’s.