TPG Architecture heads to the Garment District

132 West 31st Street, Jim Phillips
132 West 31st Street, Jim Phillips

TPG Architecture, feeling priced out of Midtown South, is setting up shop on the entire fourth floor – 42,000 square feet – of Savanna’s 132 West 31st Street, between Sixth and Seventh avenues, Crain’s reported.

Asking rent was in the $40s per square foot, a good $10 per square foot less than the cost of renewing TPG’s current lease at 360 Park Avenue South.

“Candidly, Midtown South Neighborhoods Like Park Avenue South, lower Fifth Avenue and Flatiron have gotten too pricey so we set out to do something that we believe is smart, ” Jim Phillips, the founder and CEO of TPG, told Crain’s.

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Amid a flurry of new construction in the Garment District area, Phillips told Crain’s he sees opportunity for his 215-person firm, which specializes in interior architecture for commercial office and retail spaces.

“We went to Midtown South 10 years ago and we flourished there,” Phillips said. “This deal was about finding the next hotspot.”

The deal, brokered by CBRE Group’s Mark Ravesloot and Michael Monahan, is the biggest at 132 West 31st Street since Savanna acquired the property in 2011. [Crain’s]Julie Strickland