PayPal Expands in West Village, Manhattan

By Keith Loria, Contributing Editor 

95 Morton St., Manhattan

PayPal has signed a lease for a 95,000-square-foot office property at 95 Morton St. in Manhattan’s West Village with Brickman and will relocate its New York headquarters there this summer.

CBRE’s Frederick Fackelmayer, Sacha Zarba, Jeff Black, Ben Friedland and Michael Hirsch represented the digital payments company in the 12-year lease.

“The opportunity to bring a great tenant like PayPal to the building was exactly what we had envisioned when we elected to create a unique large block of space,” Paul Kotcher, Brickman’s director of leasing, said in a company release. “Essentially we were able to offer PayPal a building within a building.”

The eight-story building was originally built in 1911 and converted from a traditional manufacturing building. It currently consists of 200,000 square feet but will be undergoing a building-wide capital improvement program that will include new passenger elevators and a private lobby for PayPal, complete with private elevators opening directly onto PayPal’s floors. Additionally, PayPal will have its own private entrance with dedicated signage.

The new space is more than double what PayPal currently occupies at 625 Avenue of the Americas in Chelsea, a property that CBRE also helped eBay/PayPal secure. The two companies separated into independent publicly traded companies last year.

According to Colliers’ 2015 1Q Manhattan Office Report, higher average asking rents occurred citywide, with the availability rate coming in at 10.7 percent, up from 10 percent in the previous quarter. This was the highest quarterly jump in availability since 1Q 2009.

Additionally, downtown office space registered an all-time high average asking rent, ending the quarter at $55 per square foot.