NYC Asset Management Firm to Relocate to Greenwich

The firm signed a 10-year lease with building owner Greenwich Plaza, Inc., in a deal brokers involved in the transaction value at more than $13 million. The company will be relocating and expanding its operations that are currently housed in approximately 9,500 sf of space on the 17th floor of 900 Third Ave. in Manhattan. AQR Capital Management expects to take occupancy of its new headquarters offices in Greenwich by the spring of 2004 and will put its leased New York City offices on the sublease market.

Colliers ABR Inc.'s executive managing director David L. Hoffman, Jr. and managing directors Jonathan D. Schindler and Michael Norris represented AQR Capital Management in the transaction. Greenwich Plaza, Inc. was represented by Edward Tonnessen, executive vice president of Albert B. Ashforth Inc. of Stamford, CT.

"This transaction reestablishes Greenwich, Connecticut as a preferred business and residential address for hedge funds and money management firms," says Hoffman. "Two Greenwich Plaza offered not only superlative Class A product for our customer, but the long-term lease provides for AQR's expected growth during the term."

Hoffman says that AQR began its office search in January of this year and initially had limited its search to Manhattan properties. However, by February the company decided to look further north at the Greenwich market and by March, the company was focused almost exclusively on finding space in the downtown Greenwich area to move to.

The Greenwich Plaza office complex consists of two, four-story office buildings totaling about 290,000 sf of rentable office space and 31,000 sf of retail space on Railroad Ave. Tenants at the complex include American International Group, the headquarters for Partner Reinsurance and FactSet Research Systems, Cummings & Lockwood, and hedge funds JD Capital and Lone Pine Capital.

AQR Capital Management, founded in January of 1998 by former Goldman Sachs executives, currently has more than 250 institutional clients and manages approximately $6 billion in assets.