Office-sharing company Cowork.rs signed a lease for 42,000 square feet in a newly rehabilitated Gowanus industrial building.
A group of investors purchased the abandoned building for nearly $20 million in 2013 and converted it to office space. Online annotation company Genius Media took 43,000 square feet in the building last year, and with this latest lease, the property is now set to be fully occupied when tenants move in within the next six weeks.
“It’s an amazing scenario,” Aaron Lemma, one of the developers, told the New York Daily News. “We took this building in a predominantly residential neighborhood with no commercial market whatsoever and it leased up very quickly. It’s proof that office projects can be really successful in non-traditional neighborhoods.”
Lemma’s company, LIVWRK, will now attempt to use the same business model on a nearby site at 160 Van Brunt Street.
“These people want to go on the subway two or three stops at most,” Lemma said, of the Brooklyn inhabitants who will likely work in the building. “They want to walk; they want to take their bikes. The idea of commuting is becoming less attractive.”
Rents were not disclosed, but Lemma said that asking rates were over $40 per foot. [NYDN] — Tess Hofmann