Shared office space provider Virgo Business Centers has taken 40,791 square feet at Fisher Brothers’ 1345 Avenue of the Americas, Virgo CEO Sarah Klein told The Real Deal. The sublease at the 50-story, 2.19 million-square-foot tower gives Virgo its sixth Manhattan location.
Virgo will pay rents in the low-$40s per square foot for the second floor over a 10-year term, according to data from CompStak. The sublessor is investment manager AllianceBernstein, which currently has more than 800,000 square feet in the building, according to CoStar Group.
Virgo’s Manhattan locations include a 20,000-square-foot space in the Empire State Building and a 40,000-square-foot space at 575 Lexington Avenue, but the company was on the prowl for a West Side location, Klein said.
“Sixth Avenue is a very corporate environment, and we’ve been getting a lot of calls from people asking about something there,” Klein said. “And 1345 is a beautiful building.”
The deal brings Virgo’s total Manhattan footprint to about 180,000 square feet, she added.
CBRE Group’s Brad Needleman, Michael Affronti and Alexander Michael Golod represented AllianceBernstein, while their colleagues Anthony Dattoma and Scott Bogetti represented Virgo.
Dattoma confirmed the deal via email, but couldn’t be reached for further comment by press time. None of the other brokers could be reached for comment. Representatives for Fisher Brothers — which in July sold a half-stake in 1345 Avenue of the Americas and 605 Third Avenue to Rockpoint Group for $550 million — couldn’t be reached for comment, nor could representatives for AllianceBernstein.
Shared office space providers are among the fastest-growing tenants in New York City, with giants like WeWork looking to take large chunks of space across Manhattan and Brooklyn, including the latter’s reported negotiations to take all 300,000 square feet of Rudin Management’s 110 Wall Street and 500,000 square feet at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
“The growth has obviously been big,” Klein said of the shared-office sector. “Otherwise we would not have been expanding.”