Engineering firm inks 60K sf deal in the Garment District

Engineering and consulting firm Tetra Tech is moving its offices from the Penn Station area to 60,000 square feet in the Garment District.

The California-based company, which has a market cap of $3.5 billion, signed a lease for a portion of the 14th and the full 15th floor at George Comfort & Sons’ 498 Seventh Avenue, the landlord told The Real Deal.

Asking rents for the space were in the low $70s per square foot.

Tetra Tech’s Cosentini Associates will relocate its offices from Vornado Realty Trust’s 2 Penn Plaza to George Comfort & Sons’ 960,000-square-foot building, which recently underwent a renovation that includes a new façade and lobby.

CBRE’s Justin Aronson, Michael Liss, Christopher Mansfield and Adele Huang represented Tetra Tech in the deal, while George Comfort’s Andrew Conrad and Matt Coudert represented the landlord in-house.

George Comfort’s 15-story building signed the health workers union 1199SEIU and its affiliated benefit-and-pension fund to a combined 580,000 square feet in 2017.

Venture capital research firm CB Insights and trucking startup Transfix also signed leases in the building last year.

George Comfort and its partners on the building – JPMorgan Asset Management and Loeb Partners Realty – sold a $150 million stake in the property to MetLife in 2017 in a deal valuing the building at $700 million.