Mashable has struck a deal to move its headquarters to L&L Holding’s 114 Fifth Avenue, The Real Deal has learned. The rapidly growing digital media news and technology website had been on the prowl for a new space since at least November, and will take the entire 14th and 15th floors at the 20-story Midtown South building.
Mashable will pay rents starting in the mid-$70s per square foot for the 38,580-square-foot space in the 10-year deal, according to CompStak data. The company had been in talks to take up to 60,000 square feet at the recently-renovated 340,000 square-foot property, according to previous reports.
CBRE’s Scott Bogetti and Sacha Zarba represented Mashable, while L&L was represented in-house by David Berkey and Andrew Wiener. All the brokers declined to comment on the deal, saying only that it had not been finalized, but a Mashable insider confirmed the new destination.
L&L paid $165 million for the building in a joint venture with private equity firm Lubert-Adler in January 2013. Mashable’s new digs will be more than twice the size of their current 17,444-square-foot space at 304 Park Avenue South On East 23rd Street, where it pays rents in the mid-$30s per square foot in a lease that expires in September.
Strong demand for space from technology companies has seen rents in Midtown South leap 44 percent over the past two years, according to a September 2013 CBRE report. Recent deals include Facebook, which took 100,000 square feet at 770 Broadway and Tumblr, which expanded to 50,000 square feet at 35 East 21st Street.