NEW YORK CITY-Having already made headlines with word that it would buy Tumblr for $1.1 billion, Yahoo said Monday afternoon that it would consolidate its Manhattan offices into four floors at the former New York Times building near Times Square. The announcement was made by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Mayor Michael Bloomberg at a Times Square news conference Monday.
“We're going to gather all of our 500 employees in New York into one consolidated office,” Mayer said Monday. The lease of approximately 176,000 square feet at the Blackstone Group-owned 229 W. 43rd St. provides expansion room for an additional 200 employees, she said.
Most of the job growth will occur on the engineering side, according to a blog posting by Jackie Reses, the company's chief development officer. Reses' blog also cited a move-in by year's end and the possibility of putting Yahoo signage atop 229 W. 43rd.
At present, Sunnyvale, CA-based Yahoo's New York employees work at 1065 Broadway, 1540 Broadway and 11 W. 19th St. Tumblr's 175 employees will remain in their current offices at 35 E. 21st St., according to the New York Times. Tumblr itself is a “home-grown” New York company, Bloomberg pointed out at Monday's press event.
Bloomberg commented that Yahoo's commitment to a New York City office helped illustrate “what a big player New York has become in the tech industry, something we've worked very hard at.” Further, he said the Internet giant's choice of location was a sign of the times. The iconic 15-story property housed “one kind of media for generations,” and now “the next generation is taking the same space and will do exactly the same thing.”
Twenty years ago, Bloomberg quipped, “If you looked out the window, there were plenty of yahoos in Times Square. But now the Yahoos here will make an honest living.”
A spokeswoman for Newmark Grubb Knight Frank confirms that an NKGF team including Brian Waterman, Lance Korman, Jonathan Tootell and Brent Ozarowski represented Blackstone, which paid $160 million for the property's top 11 floors in 2011. Martin Horner of Jones Lang LaSalle spoke for Yahoo in lease negotiations, according to a source familiar with the transaction.
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