Adtech company leaving 33 Whitehall for 42K sf at Brookfield Place

Fluent, Inc. signed a sublease with Virtu Financial

300 Vesey Street, Virtu Financial CEO Vincent Viola, and Fluent CEO Ryan Schulke (Credit: Brookfield Properties and Getty Images)
300 Vesey Street, Virtu Financial CEO Vincent Viola, and Fluent CEO Ryan Schulke (Credit: Brookfield Properties and Getty Images)

Digital marketing company Fluent, Inc., fresh off a spin-off from its parent company, is growing into a new office in the Financial District.

The eight-year-old company signed a sublease for just shy of 42,000 square feet with high-frequency trading firm Virtu Financial at 300 Vesey Street at Brookfield Place, representatives from Fluent told The Real Deal.

The spinoff in March gave Fluent access to cash it didn’t have before to help fuel its growth. Since then, the company has expanded in its current offices at 33 Whitehall Street, according to Jordyn Tarazi, head of Fluent’s investor relations.

“Since then we’ve hired roughly 50 people,” she said. “We have the 15th floor here at 33 Whitehall and we took off half to the 11th floor and are still overflowing at this point. The new space is definitely needed for current growth and for future growth as well.”

Fluent will move near the end of the first quarter of next year into the ninth floor at 300 Vesey, where the company signed a seven-year sublease with Virtu. Asking rent for the space was $55 per square foot.

The company will be expanding from the roughly 25,000 square feet it now occupies.

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Fluent’s broker, Eric Cagner at Newmark Knight Frank, pointed out that the company recently ranked No. 6 on Crain’s list of the best places to work in New York City, and that the new space had to reflect the company’s culture.

“Obviously, there was a factor of economics and trying to be mindful of [capital expenditures],” he said, adding that Fluent was able to save in the deal because Virtu had already built out the space for one of its subsidiaries. “They put a great deal of investment into the space.”

Cagner negotiated the sublease alongside his colleagues Greg Wang and Todd Hershman. A team at JLL of Cynthia Wasserberger, Frank Doyle, Andrew Coe and Kyle Young represented Virtu in conjunction with Michael Lenchner of Sage Realty.

At 300 Vesey, German bank Commerzbank AG earlier this year sublet 43,000 square feet to IT consulting firm the Virtusa Corporation.

Brookfield Property Partners, which owns the 500,000-square-foot building, signed the nonprofit MDRC and data-analytics company IQVIA in April to more than 100,000 square feet.