Shared office provider Jay Suites has signed its sixth Manhattan location, a nearly 28,000-square-foot space at 31 West 34th Street, Juda Srour, president of the firm, told The Real Deal.
One of the reasons “we chose this location is because it’s right across the street from the Empire State Building,” Srour said of the 300,000-square-foot, 11-story building located between Fifth and Sixth avenues. The landlord is El Fassi Realty, which is controlled by investors Charles Ishay and the Oved Group.
The 15-year deal, which closed on Tuesday, was struck directly with El Fassi, and Jay Suites will pay rents in the low-$50s per square foot, Srour said. The space takes up the entire seventh floor and includes a 2,000-square-foot patio that can be rented out for private corporate events, Srour added.
Representatives for the landlord could not be reached by press time.
The deal brings Jay Suites’ total Manhattan footprint to north of 150,000 square feet. Other locations include 1441 Broadway, 369 Lexington Avenue, 30 Broad Street, 2 West 46th Street and 1370 Broadway. Jay Suites is in talks to acquire further spaces of between 20,000 and 30,000 square feet in the Columbus Circle and Union Square markets, Srour added, and is also mulling developing its own shared-office-space building on Downtown Brooklyn’s Willoughby Street.
Jay Suites’ strategy for choosing its office location was straightforward, Srour said – poaching clients from the Luxembourg-based shared office space titan, Regus.
“We really look at where Regus is located, and we try to open next door,” he said.
Shared office space providers such as Regus and Adam Neumann’s WeWork have rapidly expanded their dominion in the market over the past year. WeWork is currently in talks to take two large spaces – a 500,000-square-foot spot at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the entire 300,000-square-foot space at Bill Rudin’s 110 Wall Street.