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A homecoming for the Village Voice: Publication moving back to Cooper Square
NY media staple taking fraction of old space at the Noho building it occupied for 20-plus years
The Village Voice is coming back to Noho, after a four-year hiatus.
The legendary alternative weekly, which was founded by Norman Mailer in 1955 and ceased its print publication this past September, signed a lease at its longtime former home at 36 Cooper Square, the company told The Real Deal.
The seven-story, 50,000-square-foot property is owned by Leonard Stern’s Hartz Mountain Industries. The publication occupied the building from 1991 to 2013, with a space ultimately spanning four floors.
As the staff shrunk and it stuttered financially, the Voice decamped for the Financial District, where it took 12,000 square feet at Normandy Real Estate Partners’ 80 Maiden Lane.
Grace Church School has since taken much of the Voice’s old space on Cooper Square, but the media company is grabbing 5,860 square feet across part of two floors, a shadow of its former self.
Village Voice publisher and CEO Peter Barbey said he has been looking for a new office in Greenwich Village and Noho for a while, and settling on the company’s old home “seemed fortuitous.”
“Greenwich Village is our spiritual home,” said Barbey. “We’re back where we belong.”
The 25-person team will move into the new digs this spring, Barbey said.
Barbey, a media and clothing mogul who bought the Voice in 2015, paid $26 million for a condominium unit at the Greenwich Lane in 2016. Cushman & Wakefield’s Robert Yaffa and Wayne Van Aken Jr. brokered the deal.
The asking rent was not immediately clear, though rents on Cooper Square range from $50 to $70 per square foot.
In other recent media moves, the New York Times subletted 140,000 square feet to LiquidNet at its Midtown headquarters and Gannett moved its media-sales office to 1633 Broadway.