Mizuho eying as much as 350K sf at Rockefeller’s 1271 AoA

Mizuho Americas, the stateside arm of one of Japan’s investment banking giants, is looking to consolidate several Midtown offices into a new space next to Its Headquarters On Sixth Avenue.

Mizuho is near a deal to lease 150,000 square feet on the second and third floors at the Rockefeller Group’s 1271 Avenue of the Americas, Crain’s reported. The company is also in talks to take another 200,000 square feet on a group of floors higher up in the property, formerly known as the Time-Life Building.

If it takes the spaces, Mizuho – which is owned by Mizuho Financial Group – would relocate employees from offices at 320 Park Avenue, 1440 Broadway and 125 West 50th Street. Mizuho plans to maintain the roughly 250,000 square feet it leases next door at 1251 Avenue of the Americas.

Asking rents in Rockefeller’s 2-million-square-foot tower range from the high $70s per square foot in the lower floors to $80 per square foot in the mid-rise floors of the 48-story building.

Savills Studley is negotiating on behalf of Mizuho, while a CBRE team of Mary Ann Tighe, Howard Fiddle, John Maher and Sarah Pontius is representing Rockefeller, which is owned by Japanese holding company Mitsubishi Estate.

Rockefeller has pumped more than $600 million into the 1960s-era building in order to make it competitive as the landlord looks to fill a huge vacancy left by Time Inc., which left Midtown for Brookfield Place in Lower Manhattan in 2015.

The New York Times in February sublet roughly 160,000 square feet in the building from Time as it reconfigures its headquarters on Eighth Avenue.

Late last year, Major League Baseball inked a deal to Relocate Its Park Avenue headquarters to 400,000 square feet in the building. [Crain’s] – Rich Bockmann