Morgan Stanley is weighing a move to Hudson Yards, the latest major bank to consider planting a flag on the Far West Side of Manhattan.
The bank is exploring the purchase of 2 million square feet at 50 Hudson Yards, the 2.9 million-square-foot tower where BlackRock is planning to move its headquarters.
Talks are still in the early stages, and Morgan Stanley is also considering other sites in Hudson Yards.
“We routinely review potential options for upgrading our workspaces,” a spokesperson for Morgan Stanley told the Wall Street Journal. “As we consider plans to continue to upgrade our current office space, we are also in the very early stages of evaluating potential alternatives.”
The Hudson Yards space would be larger than Morgan Stanley’s current footprint, combined. The bank is currently based out of 1585 Broadway, a 1.3 million-square-foot tower in Times Square that it bought for $180 million in 1993. The building, which has been undergoing a floor-by-floor renovation, could fetch $1 billion, sources told the Journal. Morgan Stanley also owns roughly 570,000 square feet at 522 Fifth Avenue and a campus in Purchase, New York.
One by one, major financial firms have inked deals to move to Hudson Yards, Related Companies and Oxford Property Group’s vast mixed-use complex. 50 Hudson Yards is expected to be the most expensive office building ever constructed in the city, at a cost of $4 billion. BlackRock agreed to lease 850,000 square feet across 15 floors of 50 Hudson Yards in a deal that gives the money manager $25 million in state tax credits over a decade.
And at 30 Hudson Yards, KKR bought 10 floors for an undisclosed sum while Wells Fargo bought a 500,000-square-foot space for about $650 million. [WSJ] — E.B. Solomont