A private university will soon be the new kid in Times Square, thanks to a massive lease.
The Rudin family’s 3 Times Square will be the future home of Touro College and University System, the New York Post reported. The university signed a long-term lease for 243,305 square feet at the 30-story office building, which includes its own entrance at the corner of Seventh Avenue and West 43rd Street.
Seven of its schools will move to the third through ninth floors of the 885,000-square-foot building, as well as parts of the ground and second floors. The school will build a library, classrooms, laboratories and event spaces to fill those floors, in addition to lounges, cafes and other amenities.
The floors will be connected by new internal staircases intended to develop a greater sense of community than the existing fire stairs, Touro senior vice president of operations Jeffrey Rosengarten told the Post.
The schools that are moving to Times Square were previously scattered around town. Touro’s graduate schools of business, education, Jewish studies, social work and technology, college of pharmacy and New York School of Career and Applied Studies will be moving to the main campus from their locations on West 31st, West 40th and West 125th streets.
When it comes to bringing a university into a space dominated by bankers and lawyers, Rudin Management Company CEO William Rudin called it “definitely out of the box, but in this world we live in, we’re all calling audibles.”
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The office building was built in 2001 as the North American headquarters of Reuters Group. The Real Deal previously reported that in anticipation of losing tenants, Rudin Management was planning a $25 million makeover at the site and tapped Cushman and Wakefield to market the building to tenants.
The school said in a release the move will bring more than 2,000 staff and students to the neighborhood.
Even with the university moving in, some 500,000 square feet remain available at Three Times Square.
Rosengarten and a Cushman & Wakefield team led by Richard Bernstein represented Touro in the deal. Rudin was represented by Tom Keating in-house and a Cushman team led by John Cefaly, the publication reported.
[NYP] — Cordilia James