Jack Dorsey’s financial-transaction company no longer fits in its “Square” offices.
Soho spies say the company had been targeting the glam offices previously occupied by MAC cosmetics at 130 Prince St. on the southwest corner of Wooster Street. But it wouldn’t have given them enough expansion space.
This entirely redeveloped building is just a block and a half north of its current nest at 375 West Broadway near Broome Street.
Industry sources say CBRE San Francisco Vice Chairman Jenny Haeg had represented Square but the assignment is now with JLL, while 130 Prince St. has a Newmark Knight Frank team led by Vice Chairman Brian Waterman and including Scott Klau, Erik Harris and Staci Goodman. Instead of Square, which passed, a lease is now out with a major advertising company, sources said.
CoStar shows marketing materials depicting beautiful open offices on five floors, plus a small penthouse. As described by TechOfficeSpaces.com, MAC’s former 70,000 square feet of space at 130 Prince “features naming rights, multiple terraces, skylights, extra-high ceilings, minimal columns and great light throughout.”
Invesco bought the building in 2012 for $140.5 million and spent millions more updating it with Landmark’s approval. Legal retail spaces are also available.
Square has been at 375 W. Broadway since 2014, and it added 14,600 square feet last year to occupy almost 60,000 square feet on a lease that goes to September 2025. But this is a long and lean through-block loft building with windows on just the West Broadway and Wooster Street ends. It is now seeking much larger space, industry sources said.
Newmark, JLL and CBRE declined to comment, and Square did not return an email prior to deadline.
The giant health care administrative group Centene, which bought Fidelis Care last year, may bring first aid to the 1.4-million-square-foot One Court Square.
As first reported by Crain’s, sources tell me that Centene has a lease out for up to 500,000 square feet in the 50-story Citigroup tower. It is being represented by Steve Riker of Cushman & Wakefield.
What you don’t know is that Centene had been focused on that tower last year but was bumped by Amazon — which was expected to take 500,000 feet and expand to 1 million square feet as the first steps of its HQ2 project.
Dusting itself off, the health care company turned to Manhattan, where it was on the verge of subleasing much of Condé Nast’s excess space at One World Trade Center, being offered through JLL, when Amazon fled the asphalt jungle, putting the Queens tower back in Centene’s court.
Savanna, the owner of One Court Square, is telling brokers the Amazon fiasco has put the building back on the map and made tenants more aware of Long Island City. Other leases are also in the pipeline. There is no commercial rent tax, plus the as-of-right benefits that doomed Amazon are also available.
Centene’s Fidelis bought its current Rego Park building at 95-25 Queens Blvd. from the LeFrak Organization in 2017 for almost $140 million. But it is not the only tenant in the 358,000-square-foot building, and Centene, which serves Medicaid and other low-income health plans, is rapidly expanding in the tristate area.
Cushman & Wakefield and Savanna declined to comment early last week.