A tech startup that’s been described as Uber for the $676 billion trucking industry is doubling the size of its Garment District offices.
Transfix, which has raised $78.5 million from investors since its founding in 2013, signed a lease for 60,000 square feet at George Comfort & Sons’ 498 Seventh Avenue, the landlord confirmed to The Real Deal.
The five-year-old company currently occupies a full, 30,000-square-foot floor in the 25-story building at the corner of West 37th Street under a “sub-sublease” it inked a year ago with digital media company Defy Media.
Defy Media occupied the floor under a sublease its parent company, Alloy Digital, had signed back in 2013 with trading network Liquidnet Holdings, which is relocating to sublet space in the New York Times’ headquarters at 620 Eighth Avenue.
With the Liquidnet lease expiring next year, Transfix signed a direct deal with George Comfort for the floor it currently occupies and expanded onto another floor that was leased to Liquidnet.
The asking rent in the deal was in the low-$70s per square foot. An in-house team at George Comfort led by Matt Coudert negotiated the deal for the landlord.
Greg Taubin at Savills Studley, who represented Transfix in negotiations, declined to comment. A representative for Transfix could not be immediately reached.
George Comfort last year leased nearly 580,000 square feet in the building to health care union 1199SEIU Healthcare Workers East and its benefit funds.
The landlord is backfilling a large block of space that will be available when advertising firm GroupM decamps Downtown to Silverstein Properties’ 3 World Trade Center, where it’s leased 690,000 square feet.
George Comfort is building a new lobby for the 960,000-square-foot building on West 37th Street. Last year, the building’s ownership, which includes JPMorgan Asset Management and Loeb Partners Realty, sold a $150 million stake to MetLife in a deal valuing the property at roughly $700 million.