Forbes ditches longtime Village HQ for Jersey City

Forbes Media is departing its longtime home in Greenwich Village, at 60 Fifth Avenue, and relocating its 350 employees to Jersey City.

The LeFrak Organization arranged the deal for the 93,000-square-foot space at 499 Washington Boulevard in Jersey City, according to the New York Post. The 14-story, 550,000-square-foot building opened in March 2000. Current tenants include Swiss Bank UBS, Bank of America, CIGNA and the Royal Bank of Scotland.

“The New Jersey venue will give us the opportunity to create a state-of-the-art media center,” CEO Mike Perlis said in a memo to staffers cited by the Post.

The media company is also looking for a new Manhattan outpost, Perlis told the Post, citing the need for a “strategically located office space in Manhattan to serve as a New York office.”

The Forbes family sold the company’s current Fifth Avenue home, where it has been located for 97 years, to New York University in 2010 for $65 million. Forbes then inked a five-year lease that will expire on December 31 of this year, according to the Post.

The move to New Jersey comes with $27.1 million in tax incentives from the state of New Jersey, the Bergen County Record reported. [NYP] and [The Record] — Julie Strickland