Women-focused co-working firm the Wing is moving its corporate headquarters to 137 Second Avenue in the East Village, sources told The Real Deal.
The Wing will lease the entire 22,000-square-foot building from a partnership between WeWork investor Joel Schreiber and Jenny Jangana Haim of Continental Equities.
Milsmith Real Estate represented the owners in the deal. Matthew Mummert of Milsmith confirmed the lease and said the rent paid was in the high $60s per square foot. The Wing’s co-founder and CEO, Audrey Gelman, was not immediately available to comment.
The co-working company, which raised $75 million in a Series C round in December, plans to move from its current office in Soho to the new location sometime this spring. The building’s owners, meanwhile, who bought and gut renovated the property in 2008, are now looking to sell the building, Mummert said.
The Wing’s formerly women-only policy came under investigation by the City of New York early last year, which was evaluating whether the Wing was violating the city’s Human Rights Law. The city is yet to release any conclusions, but earlier this month the Wing announced new guidelines. Its co-working spaces accept members with nonconforming gender identities and those who are transgender.
Some have interpreted the full policy to also mean that men could possibly join. In August, the Wing, whose members are referred to as “witches” belonging to a “coven,” was sued by a Washington man who alleged he had been illegally discriminated against when his application for membership was rejected. A spokesperson for the Wing denied the allegation and called the man, who has filed a number of other federal lawsuits, including one against the United States Army, a “serial litigant.”
The Wing, with 6,000 members, operates three locations in New York City. One of its new landlords at 137 Second Avenue, Joel Schreiber, was an early investor in co-working giant WeWork (recently rebranded to “the We Company”), which is in turn a known investor in the Wing. The company raised $32 million in a Series B venture round led by We Work in late 2017.