Bloomberg LP Adds 400,000 SF

NEW YORK CITY-Another week, another large-scale Manhattan office lease. Although a Wells Fargo spokeswoman told me earlier this week that her company hasn’t yet decided on whether to relocate into 300,000 square feet at the largely vacant 120 Park Ave., Bloomberg LP may have beaten them to it. I learned that the financial information powerhouse late Wednesday afternoon it had reached an agreement to lease more than 400,000 square feet there, while maintaining its headquarters space of about 900,000 square feet at 731 Lexington Ave.

In a release, Bloomberg chairman Peter Grauer says the new location is “ideal as we build upon our record-setting year in 2010 and position ourselves for future growth.” The company has added 1,805 New York City-based staff since 2008, with about 500 joining its bulked-up legal research division in 2010. Slightly more than half Bloomberg’s 12,900 employees worldwide are based in Manhattan.

“We continue to hire in New York and we expect that to continue as we expand our businesses and move into new markets worldwide,” Daniel Doctoroff, president of Bloomberg LP, says in a statement. Bloomberg expects to begin occupying the new offices in late 2011 after renovations to the space. At the end of last year, the company announced plans to build a new European headquarters in the City of London that will include over 500,000 square feet of office space.

It’s not clear what the move will mean for Wells Fargo’s reported plans to consolidate from four Midtown locations into the 26-story, 643,000-square-foot 120 Park. The deal reportedly included expansion rights that could allow Wells to occupy as much as 400,000 square feet at 120 Park, which Global Holdings bought from Altria for $525 million in late 2007. Altria later relocated its Philip Morris headquarters, which occupied much of the property, to Virginia.

Paul Glickman, a vice chairman at Jones Lang LaSalle and the leasing agent for 120 Park, did not return my calls for comment late Wednesday afternoon. The Bloomberg deal represents at least the third leasing transaction for more than 300,000 square feet of Midtown office space in less than two months. The New York Post first reported just before Christmas that accounting firm Deloitte was leaving Downtown and moving into 430,000 square feet at 30 Rockefeller Center, and I reported last month that global trading firm Li & Fung had committed to 490,000 square feet at the Empire State Building.

The large-scale leases are further evidence of momentum in leasing activity across Manhattan. CB Richard Ellis reported Wednesday afternoon that Manhattan's January overall leasing activity climbed to 2.4 million square feet, up from December’s 2.15 million square feet and also 24% ahead of the 1.93 million square feet leased in January '10. In Midtown, leasing velocity for last month was 48% ahead of the five-year monthly average of 1.23 million square feet.

However, CBRE also said Manhattan average asking rents declined a penny to $48.31 per square foot in January, while absorption declined to negative 830,000 square feet from January 2010's negative 540,000 square feet.