WarnerMedia to anchor Vornado’s West Chelsea spec office

WarnerMedia signed a lease to anchor Vornado Realty Trust’s speculative office development on the High Line in West Chelsea.

The media giant took roughly 20,000 square feet for its Innovation Lab at Vornado’s 11-story 512 West 22nd Street office building, a spokesperson for WarnerMedia confirmed to The Real Deal.

Terms of the deal were not immediately clear. But on Vornado’s most recent earnings call in July, company president Michael Franco said the building had its first leases out — including one with a leading media company — at “triple-digit rents.”

A representative for Vornado declined to comment.

WarnerMedia, which is headquartered about 10 blocks north in 1.5 million square feet at the Related Companies and Oxford Properties Group’s 30 Hudson Yards, will use the West Chelsea office as a technology incubator with a space to showcase products to consumers.

Vornado recently finished construction and delivered its 172,000-square-foot building in West Chelsea — an area that’s seen office rents climb to levels once only seen in prime areas of Midtown thanks to an infusion of tech and finance tenants in the area like Google and Starwood Capital.

Elsewhere in the area, the Steve Roth-helmed real estate investment trust co-developed the roughly 150,000-square-foot 61 Ninth Avenue with Aurora Capital Associates, which they leased to insurance giant Aetna. (Aetna decided not to move into the space and subleased it to online brand management company Yext.)

Vornado has assembled another development site nearby on 11th Avenue between 26th and 27th streets, where it has approximately 327,000 square feet of development rights.