Yogurt brand Chobani has signed a lease to occupy all of the new, 121,000-square-foot boutique office building at 360 Bowery, The Real Deal has learned.
The 22-story building on the southwest corner of West Fourth Street was developed by a partnership known as CBSK Ironstate. It includes Charles Blaichman, SK Development’s father-and-son team Abe and Scott Shnay, and the Ironstate Properties brothers Michael and David Barry, as well as institutional investors and developers Aecom Canyon Partners.
It was designed by Morris Adjmi Architects.
Centrally located in Noho near the East Village Standard Hotel and other hot spots, it is the only new office building in an area where tech and crypto executives have been leasing office space to be close to their founders’ Lower East Side apartments and nightlife haunts.
According to real estate sources, the project’s brokers, David Kleiner and Carlee Palmer of JLL, negotiated with several tenants for floors with asking rents that ranged from $120 per foot to $200 per foot for the 5,812-square-foot penthouse — a duplex that includes a private, 800-square-foot terrace.
The brokers called off those talks early this summer when Chobani stepped in to take the entire building, represented by another JLL team, led by Peter Michailidis and including Dan Posy.
The new project also offers amenities that include a 360 club with a 2,900-square-foot terrace on the seventh floor and a 4,010-square-foot 11th floor with a 1,500-square-foot terrace.
Chobani is nearing the end of its three-floor lease at 200 Lafayette Street which began at two floors in 2015. Represented then by Sinvin, the company expanded to the fifth floor in 2018, occupying 16,780 square feet in all. The three floors house its test kitchens, executive offices and staff.
At one point, Chobani decided it had too much space there and made the fifth floor available for sublease. But at the end of last year, Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya completed a $900 million acquisition of La Columbe coffee roasters, and announced in May that he was adding the shuttered San Francisco-based Anchor Brewing Company to his portfolio.
That led to Chobani’s search with JLL to more than double its office space.
Ulukaya, a Turkish immigrant, founded Chobani after buying an upstate yogurt plant in 2005 and introduced his Greek yogurt to stores in 2007. Chobani Cafe in Soho, at 152 Prince Street, is used as a test kitchen and innovation hub; another could now open at 360 Bowery.
The new tower includes a 5,278 square-foot retail space with 18-foot ceilings that wraps the corner of East Fourth Street with 134 feet of frontage. The space was designed so it could be divided into as many as three shops or even incorporate the second floor, giving Chobani the option to open an outlet or restaurant serving the privately held company’s goods.
The companies involved in the lease either declined to comment or did not return requests for comment.