“Big Four” accounting firm EY is in late-stage talks to lease 600,000 square feet at Brookfield Property Partners’ 1 Manhattan West office tower, sources told The Real Deal.
The company, formerly known as Ernst & Young, was said to be deciding between the 1.8 million-square-foot Brookfield tower and the Rockefeller Group’s 1271 Sixth Avenue, as TRD reported in May.
Sources said the company is now focused on the Midtown West building and is nearing a deal. A spokesperson for Brookfield declined to comment. Moshe Sukenik and Neil Goldmacher at Newmark Knight Frank are representing EY.
EY is in the midst of relocating its headquarters from RXR Realty’s 5 Times Square, where the company has a lease covering 1 million square feet that runs through 2022. It’s also moving some employees to a 168,000-square-foot space at SJP Properties’ Waterfront Corporate Center II in Hoboken. Sources said that a team of brokers at CBRE is leading a search on behalf of EY for additional space in Lower Manhattan, but that assignment is on hold until the deal at Manhattan West is finalized.
It’s been a major month for Brookfield at the Manhattan West redevelopment. Last week, the developer announced that Amazon had finalized a deal to take 360,000 square feet at Five Manhattan West. Earlier in the year, the law firm McKool Smith signed a lease for 64,000 square feet at One Manhattan West, and in August business and technology consultant Accenture inked a lease in August for 250,000 square feet the tower.
Competition for top tenants is still strong among major developers on the Far West Side. Asset manger BlackRock is taking 847,000 square feet at the Related Companies, Oxford Property Group and Mitsui Fudosan America’s 50 Hudson Yards. And Tishman Speyer can now begin building its Spiral office tower at 509 West 34th Street after pharmaceutical giant Pfizer agreeing to take 800,000 square feet in the building.