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Big pharma firm eyes 55 Hudson Yards spread
Intercept Pharmaceuticals in advanced talks for as much as 150K sf: sources
Intercept Pharmaceuticals, a drug maker racing to find a cure for a little-understood liver disease, is in advanced discussions to take space at 55 Hudson Yards, sources close to the negotiations told The Real Deal.
The firm, which went public in 2012, is looking to lease somewhere between 90,000 and 150,000 square feet at the 51-story property, a joint venture between Related Companies, Oxford Properties and Mitsui Fudosan, sources said.
Intercept’s space would be sandwiched between the offices of two law firms: Boies, Schiller & Flexner, and Millbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. Asking rents for the mid-rise floors are around $100 per square foot, sources said.
Related declined to comment. Newmark Grubb Knight Frank’s Paul Ippolito, who is representing the tenant, couldn’t be reached.
Intercept, founded in 2002 by Mark Pruzanski, is currently headquartered at Jamestown’s Milk Building at 450 West 15th Street in the Meatpacking District, where it occupies more than 20,000 square feet, according to CoStar.
The company is one of a dozen pharmaceutical firms trying to develop a treatment for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, a liver condition that affects millions of Americans.
The disease has been called a “silent epidemic” because doctors have little understanding of it and there are no approved treatments, according to Bloomberg, which reported the untapped market for NASH drugs could be worth $5 billion to $10 billion annually.
In August, Related announced it had leased 83,000 square feet to electronic-trading firm MarketAxess at the 1.5 million-square-foot tower, the third office building at the $25 billion megaproject.
The building is scheduled for completion in 2019.
Related and Oxford have locked up a total of roughly $14 billion in debt and equity for the 17 million square-foot Hudson Yards project, as TRD reported last month.
Norway’s largest bank, DNB ASA, just inked a full tower floor at 30 Hudson Yards, which will be the second-tallest building in the city when it tops out in 2019.