UPDATED, Nov. 13, 9:54 a.m.: Vox Media is closing in on a New York office in the Financial District, according to sources. The online publisher is in advanced discussions to sign a lease for more than 70,000 square feet at 85 Broad Street.
Vox, which is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and operates websites such as Curbed, SB Nation and Vox.com, is valued at $1 billion following a $200 million investment from NBCUniversal in August. In New York, it currently occupies more than 21,000 square feet at Princeton International’s 104 West 40th Street.
By the end of November, it is expected to commit to two full floors at 85 Broad, a 30-story, 1.1 million-square-foot building that was Goldman Sachs’ headquarters for three decades. Vox would be the latest media company, after Time Inc. and Condé Nast, to move Downtown.
CBRE’s Jeff Fischer and JLL’s Steven Rotter are representing Vox, while a JLL team led by Frank Doyle and Jonathan Schifrin are representing the building, which is owned by MetLife and Beacon Capital Partners. The brokers either declined to comment or could not be reached.
The lease would bring the building closer to full occupancy. Asking rents in the building are in the $50s and $60s per square foot.
The floors the tenants would occupy are unknown. According to CoStar data, floors seven, eight, 14, 15 and 27 are fully available. Goldman decamped in 2009, leaving the building with more than 605,000 vacant square feet as recently as a year ago.
Last year, Beacon bought a 50 percent interest from majority owner MetLife in a deal that valued the property at $350 million, according to Real Capital Analytics.
Vox would join other large tenants such as investment bank Oppenheimer Holdings, media company Nielsen and shared-office space giant WeWork, which signed a lease earlier this year for 240,000 square feet. The property, brokers said, is in direct competition with 180 Maiden Lane, which Murray Hill Properties and Clarion Partners bought from SL Green Realty and the Moinian Group in January for $470 million.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified a second prospective tenant in talks at the building.