style="border: 1px solid black; alt="alternate text">From left: Whitney Museum of American Art and 300 Park Avenue South (source: Propertyshark)
The Whitney Museum of American Art has signed a lease for the top two floors of a 15-story building at 300 Park Avenue South, at the corner of 22nd Street, in the Madison Square Park area, planning to relocate their administrative headquarters from the Upper East Side, the Wall Street Journal reported. The move is part of a larger $680 million plan to finance a new six-story museum that the Whitney is building in the Meatpacking District. To raise money for the project, the museum recently sold eight properties on the Upper East Side for $95 million. “We’re moving simply because we sold our offices uptown and we need a place for our staff,” said Stephen Soba, a spokesperson for the museum. The new museum, designed by Renzo Piano, is on Gansevoort Street, between West Street and the High Line, and is slated to open in 2015. The new administrative offices will have 27,000 square feet in the Park Avenue building, where the landlord is Rockrose Development. The museum is planning to move into the offices at the beginning of next year. [WSJ]
