Pair of Big Block Midtown Deals Announced in the Final Days of October
After months of indecision, it appears that some tenants are finally signing on the bottom line of larger leases. Over the past week networking platform LinkedIn signed a 10-year lease for 143,778 square feet at the Empire State Building located at 350 Fifth Avenue. As part of the deal, the Microsoft-owned company relocated 118,646 square feet of existing space from the tower floors to base floors within the building and added another 25,132 square feet. A tenant at the iconic tower since 2011, expansions across multiple floors over the years has brought LinkedIn’s footprint to 526,541 square feet. Asking rents at the tower range from $69 to $87 per square foot. The second lease took place in the Plaza District at 575 Lexington Avenue. The 30-year deal secured by Weill Cornell Medicine represented a renewal and expansion that brings the research and educational institution’s footprint within the 745,000-square-foot tower at East 51st Street to 300,000 square feet spread across eight full floors and a portion of the ground level, of which 200,000 square feet was a renewal of Weill Cornell’s existing administrative space, and the 100,000-square-foot expansion to serve as patient-care facilities. The deal “reflects a growing trend of landlords’ flexibility to accommodate non-traditional tenants in office buildings.”