UPDATED, 9:35 a.m., August 27: Edward Minskoff will soon welcome another technology tenant to his 101 Sixth Avenue. Cloud-computing firm DigitalOcean is taking 23,500 square feet at the Hudson Square property, The Real Deal has learned. The deal brings the property to over 95 percent leased, with only the second floor remaining.
DigitalOcean will take the entire 11th floor as well as a portion of the 10th floor at the 23-story, 425,000-square-foot building, paying rents starting in the $70s per square foot over a 10-year term, according to CompStak data.
JLL’s Paul Glickman, Mitchell Konsker and Jonathan Fanuzzi represented Minskoff in the transaction, while DigitalOcean was represented by Michael Kaufman of the Kaufman Organization and Yancy Foster of SITE+SPECIFIC. Glickman declined to comment on the financial terms of the deal, but said that “based on the quality of the asset, the strength of ownership and the recent completion of a major capital renovation,” it was no surprise that the building was one of Midtown South’s “most coveted” properties.
Minskoff developed the building in 1990 for a single tenant, the property service workers union 32BJ SEIU. When the union vacated the building in 2011, Minskoff bought out the property’s majority owner Andalex Group and took full control.
“We made the decision that we were going to gut everything except the four outer walls,” he told TRD today. He said that he spent between $30 and $40 million on the overhaul and put his signature touches on the property, including artwork by Takashi Murakami and Jeff Koons from his personal collection that now hangs in the building’s lobby.
Recent deals at the property include hedge fund manager Two Sigma Investments’ expansion to more than 100,000 square feet. Other large tenants in the building include the New York Genome Center, which occupies about 175,000 square feet, and shared office space provider Regus, which holds about 32,000 square feet.
In March, DigitalOcean raised $37.2 million in a Series A funding round led by Silicon Valley venture-capital giant Andreessen Horowitz that valued the firm at $153 million. Its clients include Beyoncé, who uses it to host her website.