A media giant is offering some sizable slices of the Midtown office market.
Paramount Global is looking to sublease 355,000 square feet across two properties in Midtown Manhattan, two people familiar with the matter told the New York Business Journal. The office downsizing comes as the media company reduces its staff by 3.5 percent and continues to entertain a merger with Skydance Media pending regulatory approval.
The bigger space Paramount Global is looking to sublease is a 253,000-square-foot office at 1633 Broadway, owned by Albert Behler’s Paramount Group (no relation). That space has quietly been available for more than a year.
The 48-story, 2.5 million-square-foot tower is the longest-owned asset in Paramount Group’s office portfolio. As of June 2020, Showtime Networks — a subsidiary of what was then ViacomCBS — paid a base rent of $55.28 per square foot, responsible for more than 10 percent of the building’s occupancy and nearly 9 percent of its rent. The lease was set to expire in 2026.
Paramount Global is also marketing 103,000 square feet at SL Green’s 1515 Broadway. Paramount Global’s lease there runs through 2031, according to a renewal announcement released in 2012, and the media conglomerate was expected to take control of all 1.6 million square feet of office space within the property by 2020.
Whether that unfolded as intended is unclear, but a change could be coming down the pike for the building’s office space as SL Green positions 1515 Broadway for a shot at one of the downstate gaming licenses up for grabs in New York.
Should SL Green and its partners, Caesars Entertainment and Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, prove victorious in the contest, the plan is to convert the office space into a hotel and gaming space. It’s unclear how that may affect sublease negotiations, though more should be known soon as applications for a gaming license are due by month’s end.
— Holden Walter-Warner
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