The We Company may not actually occupy its own global headquarters after all.
The co-working firm has discussed leasing the entire 11-story building at 424 Fifth Avenue to Amazon, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The talks were part of a wider search Amazon is conducting to find office space in New York, the Journal reported. Amazon has also considered leasing portions of the building, though the current state of talks couldn’t be determined. One person familiar with talks told the Journal that Amazon had considered paying more than $110 a square foot for the space.
After a series of delays, the We Company closed on the historic Lord & Taylor building in February for $850 million. It quickly tapped its chief architect Bjarke Ingels to preserve and renovate the roughly 600,000-square-foot landmarked building. According to the design he submitted, the lower floors were to remain retail spaces while the upper floors would be occupied by the We Company.
The Journal report comes just months after the technology giant famously abandoned a plan to spend $2.5 billion on a new headquarters in Long Island City. Amazon has said it will continue to expand in New York City, where it has 5,000 employees. In June, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos spent $80 million on three units at 212 Fifth Avenue.
In addition to the Fifth Avenue building, Amazon has reportedly considered other office sites across the city, including the Farley Post Office. [WSJ] — Sylvia Varnham O’Regan