Tech Tenants ‘Like’ Midtown South Submarket

Technology and media are benefitting Broadway in a big way, as Facebook expands its office space in Manhattan’s Midtown South neighborhood—exercising a lease option that will give it 60 percent more room to spread out.

The social networking firm initially leased 100,000 square feet of space at 770 Broadway for its offices and will add 60,000 square feet after exercising an expansion option in its lease that it wasn’t expected to for two years. CRE experts have speculated that the tech and media boom in the Midtown South submarket pushed the company to act sooner.

Commercial real estate in the area has been intensely driven recently in part by tech tenants, some of whom have set up shop across the street from 770 Broadway in a new building that boasts 400,000 square feet of office space, and that Facebook was initially interested in before choosing its current home. Ultimately, that property—51 Astor Place—scored a lease with IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence group. Experts anticipate that demand for space by lucrative tenants will continue through 2014.

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