The Hartford, a Connecticut based insurance company, is leasing about 90,000 s/f at 277 Park Avenue for its Manhattan headquarters.
The company, whose current lease for its main Manhattan office at 2 Park Avenue expires in September, had been negotiating to move to 120 Park Avenue earlier this year. The company was unable to complete that deal when Bloomberg LP, the large media and financial data company, leased 400,000 s/f there, absorbing nearly all of 120 Park’s available space.
Under pressure because its existing lease is set to expire so soon, The Hartford has since been scrambling around midtown to find another location in which to relocate.
It can’t remain in place. Much of its space at 2 Park Avenue is already spoken for. As Real Estate Weekly first reported, the online discount designer clothing retailer Gilt Groupe is in talks to take most of The Hartford’s floors in that building.
The Hartford will take the space at 277 Park Avenue in a sublease from JP Morgan Chase, the mega-bank that occupies most of 277 Park’s 1.8 million s/f. JP Morgan Chase has subleased hundreds of thousands of s/f at the property, most of it during the downturn when the bank moved to trim its real estate footprint in the wake of the financial crisis. The Hartford will sublease two floors from JP Morgan Chase, 15, and 16, which expire in 2020. Sources say that the insurance firm will pay rents around $60 per s/f.
A team from the real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield led John Cefaly, one of the company’s most successful brokers, has handled the disposition of space at 277 Park Avenue for JP Morgan Chase. Cefaly couldn’t be reached for comment.
Calls and emails to a spokeswoman for The Hartford were not returned by press time.
