As Match Group breaks up with its majority stakeholder, the dating service is moving into new digs in the Meatpacking District.
Match — which owns dating websites Match.com, PlentyOfFish, Tinder and Hinge — has agreed to lease space at Aurora Capital Associates and William Gottlieb Real Estate’s 60-74 Gansevoort Street, according to filings with the city’s Department of Finance. The company is taking roughly 45,000 square feet on the fourth, fifth and sixth floors, sources familiar with the deal terms told The Real Deal. The average asking price was $120 per square foot.
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JLL’s Steven Rotter represented Match, and Howard Hersch and Brett Harvey, also of JLL, represented the landlords. The brokers didn’t immediately return calls seeking additional information. A representative for the landlords declined to comment.
The company is in the process of splitting from Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActive Corp., which owns a more than 80 percent stake in Match. The two reached a separation agreement late last year, in which Match agreed to pay shareholders and IAC $3 per share, or roughly $850 million total. At the time, Diller noted that Match’s separation would be IAC’s seventh spinoff, a continuation of the media giant’s practice of breaking from its businesses “as they’ve grown in scale and maturity.” The deal is slated to be completed June 30.
If all goes as planned, Match will move out of IAC’s headquarters in Chelsea, a glacier-like building at 555 West 18th Street designed by Frank Gehry.
Match declined to comment on the office deal ahead of the IAC separation.
The Landmarks Preservation Commission approved Aurora and Gottlieb’s 100,000-plus-square-foot commercial project at 46-74 Gansevoort Street in June 2016. The project faced years’ worth of litigation over claims that the proposed buildings were too tall for the neighborhood. The lower and appellate courts ruled against the neighborhood group, Save Gansevoort, and the state’s highest court declined to hear the case. Last year, the landlords filed an application with the City Planning Commission to lift restrictions on 46-74 Gansevoort Street, which barred office use. The City Council approved the change earlier this year.
Match is the latest tech company to move forward with taking new office space in the city despite uncertainty in the market caused by the coronavirus crisis. Though Twitter and others have announced that they will give employees the option to work from home on a permanent basis, there have been a few signs that demand remains strong in prime submarkets. Facebook has continued to pursue space on Manhattan’s Far West Side, and TikTok inked a massive lease at the Durst Organization’s One Five One, formerly known as Four Times Square.
Write to Kathryn Brenzel at kathryn@therealdeal.com