Amazon.com is looking for a massive space expansion — anywhere between 300,000 and 500,000 square feet — in Manhattan, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The Seattle-based online retailing czar currently occupies just under 100,000 square feet at the SL Green-owned 1350 Sixth Avenue. The company has been in Talks With One World Trade Center And Brookfield Place, sources familiar with Amazon’s search process told the Journal, and has also looked at multiple buildings in Midtown.
An Amazon spokesman declined to comment to the Journal.
The expansion plans come as a shot in the arm for the Manhattan office market, which has been sluggish recently, as financial and law firms scale back their space requirements. Average rents in February were $53.7 a square foot, as compared to $54.7 in November 2012, according to Newmark Grubb Knight Frank.
The silver lining for the market has been technology companies, which have nabbed large swaths of space in trendy neighborhoods such as Chelsea, the Meatpacking District and Union Square. Large technology companies want “to have a really strong presence here and be part of the city,” New York City Deputy Mayor Robert Steel told the Journal. Brokers have been scrambling to secure tech tenants, but there is a concern that the tech boom is being overhyped, as The Real Deal previously reported. [WSJ] —Hiten Samtani