SL Green Tower Lands Large Sublease

711 Third Ave. Image courtesy of Cushman & Wakefield

Phaidon International, a global specialist recruitment agency, will be taking a long-term, 71,239-square-foot sublease at 711 Third Ave. in Manhattan. Cushman & Wakefield arranged the transaction.

Phaidon will be relocating from 622 Third Ave. and will occupy the entire third floor and part of the second. The sublessor is global marketing and communications firm Stagwell, and the building’s owner is SL Green Realty.

READ ALSO: Manhattan Office Vacancy Continues to Climb

711 Third Ave. is a 592,772-square-foot Class A building completed in 1956. Renovated in 2010, it has new elevator cabs and a three-level parking garage. The property’s location a block from Grand Central Terminal, offers easy accessibility to the surrounding New York City and New Jersey neighborhoods.

Cushman & Wakefield’s David Mainthow represented the new tenant in the transaction.

In a prepared statement, Phaidon CEO Harry Youtan highlighted the company’s rapid growth in the U.S., and specifically in New York City, over the past several years. The new headquarters will allow the company to hire and develop 200 additional staff in the coming years, taking its New York City business to a total of 500 people, he added.

Mainthow emphasized the advantages of a sublease for Phaidon, since the space was delivered in move-in ready condition, resulting in little upfront capital investment and construction time.

Subleases surging

A first-quarter report from Newmark tallies a sizable recent sublease deal in Midtown South and two large blocks of sublease space recently put on the market.

The former, which also included directly leased space was for 76,663 square feet at 95 Morton St. in the Hudson Square/Meatpacking submarket. The tenant is Fanatics.

The latter are a block of space at 225 Liberty St., offered by Meredith, and a block at 25 Broadway, listed by Teach for America.

Manhattan’s sublease market has been unusually active since the pandemic started taking hold. A Commercial Property Executive examination of the New York office landscape one year ago (based on JLL data) found that sublease vacancy had soared since a year earlier, with 11.6 million square feet of such space having come onto the market.

It was in that time frame that Gannett Co. took a 24,195-square-foot sublease for a full floor at 1675 Broadway.