NYC’s 55 Hudson Yards Attracts 130 KSF Tenant

By Barbra Murray

55 Hudson Yards Podium

Names continue to pile up on the 55 Hudson Yards tenant roster, a state-of-the-art Manhattan office tower taking shape at the $20 billion Hudson Yards mixed-use project under development by Related Cos. and Oxford Properties Group. Law firm Cooley LLP will relocate its New York headquarters to the 1.3 million-square-foot office building on Midtown’s Far West Side, having just signed a pre-lease for 130,000 square feet of space with Related, Oxford and Mitsui Fudosan America, majority owner of 55 Hudson.

“Both Cooley and its clients are well-regarded as forward-thinking and innovative, and their new park-front New York City headquarters, in this amenity-rich neighborhood, is an ideal fit for their customers and their culture, employees and future talent,” Jay Cross, president of Related Hudson Yards, said in a prepared statement.

Commercial real estate services firm Newmark Knight Frank represented Cooley in the lease transaction, while CBRE Group and Related’s internal leasing department stood in for the ownership.

Cooley’s new home will be one of a handful of trophy high-rises that will comprise the 10 million-square-foot office segment of Hudson Yards, which will ultimately encompass a total of 18 million square feet of office, retail, residential, hotel and other offerings.

Serving as the southwestern anchor of the new Hudson Park, 55 Hudson will hold the distinction of being one of the only office buildings in New York City with a lobby opening directly onto a park. Kohn Pedersen Fox designed the structure, which will also boast roughly 13,300 square feet of ground-level retail space and, if all goes as planned, LEED Gold certification. Cooley will occupy five floors of the 51-story building upon relocation from its current home at 1114 Ave. of the Americas. 

Good neighbors

Pre-leasing activity remains active at the 28-acre Hudson Yards, the largest private real estate development in U.S. history. “The unprecedented commercial leasing effort (…) has attracted over 6.4 million square feet of occupancy by some of the world’s leading businesses,” Cross said. The 55 Hudson high-rise is no exception. Per a report by commercial real estate services firm JLL, lease commitments at 55 Hudson accounted for nearly 44 percent of the building’s office space by the end of the second quarter of 2017.

55 Hudson Yards rendering

Cooley will be in good company, as 55 Hudson has attracted such names as law firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner, which signed a lease for 83,000 square feet in June 2015, becoming the very first business to grab space in the premier skyscraper. Others who have since staked a claim to space in the building include Point72 Asset Management, the family office managing the assets of hedge fund icon Steven Cohen, which will occupy 175,000 square feet. And law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP took a big bite out of 55 Hudson with the pre-lease of 250,000 square feet across nine floors.

Development of 55 Hudson, which is being built with the assistance of a $238 million construction loan from U.S. Bank, commenced in 2015 and is scheduled to reach completion in 2018.

Images courtesy of Related, Oxford and Mitsui Fudosan