Office Landlord Offers Huge Discounts To Lure Manhattan Tenants To Brooklyn
USA – Rubenstein Partners, a property developer based in New York City, is offering a rental discount of about 50 percent and more flexible terms compared to a traditional office lease in a bid to encourage major corporate tenants to open an office at its property in Brooklyn, reported the Business Insider on Thursday evening (20 October, SGT).
In July 2019, the office landlord opened an 8-storey office block measuring 511,000 sq ft at 25 Kent Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Tenants that already committed office space there include software startup Altana AI, coworking operator Mindspace, cult streetwear brand Kith and Amazon Music.
Given that around 65 percent of the office building is yet to be leased, Rubenstein told the news outlet that they intend to offer three office units on level 3 spanning between 8,000 sq ft and 10,000 sq ft for just US$30 psf.
That’s a huge discount, considering that tenants that have already signed a lease there agreed to pay a rate from high US$60s to mid-US$70s. In addition, Rubinstein will allow the new tenants a 3-year lease rather than locking them into a traditional 10-year lease.
But there’s a catch – the monthly office rent will rise depending on how many staff utilise the workspace. Rubenstein Partners revealed that it will monitor office attendance based on employees’ ID card swipes. If the physical occupancy reaches 60 percent, then a tenant would have to pay an office rent based on market rates.
The office landlord’s target tenants include Amazon, Facebook, Google, and firms with more than 500,000 sq ft of office space in Manhattan.
Rubenstein Partners hopes to lure “high-credit, quality companies” with the office rental deal, which would benefit the landlord, its tenants, and the occupant’s staff, said Whitten Morris, a Managing Director at property consultancy Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) who handles the leasing for the office property.
“We’re super confident in it, and if it works, it’s really a win-win for all three parties,” he added.
