As seen in
NEW YORK BUSINESS
June
5, 2000
Getty Photo archive lands picture-perfect
location
Big lease at Hudson Sq. sets
stage for NY growth; coup for landlord
by LORE CROGHAN
The world’s largest photo and film archive is building
a quarter-million sq. ft. operation in Hudson Square, a downtown
industrial neighborhood turned office district.
Getty Images Inc. is creating a
single home for about 500 employees now scattered in seven Manhattan
offices totaling 175,000 sq. ft. in size. The new location includes
room for growth because the Seattle-based company expects to
double its New York City head count to 1,000 in the next few
years through aggressive acquisitions.
The company will start moving in August to 1 Hudson Square,
a former printers’ building—once known as 75 Varick
St.—that landlord Trinity Real Estate is transforming into
a modern office property.
Persuasive
landlord
In order to free up the three-floor
block of space for Getty, Trinity convinced more than a dozen
tenants to relocate to other buildings in its 5.5 million
sq. ft. holdings or find themselves space in other neighborhoods.
Getty waited nine months for these negotiations to wrap up
and its 15-year lease to be signed. Trinity rewarded Getty’s
patience by sticking with the rent the two sides tentatively
agreed upon last fall. The company’s rent is in the low
$30s a square foot, though Trinity is now writing leases in
the building at more than $50 a square foot.
“No other owner would have done the deal at the price
originally promised,” says James S. Meiskin, the President
of Plymouth Partners Ltd., Getty’s tenant representative.
Getty has also taken space directly
across Canal Street at 200 Hudson St. and connecting 12-16
Vestry St. for a fulfillment center, which handles the shipment
of photos to customers. Because this center will generate
a constant flow of messengers and delivery people, the landlord
preferred to locate the operation in these properties—which
are occupied mostly by industrial businesses—rather than
in its high-end office building.
Heavenly tenant
Securing a creditworthy tenant of Getty’s
stature is a coup for Trinity, which has worked for years
to gentrify the neighborhood bounded by the Hudson River,
Sixth Avenue, and Canal and Morton streets. The publicly traded
company, which was founded by the powerful Getty family, generates
quarterly sales of more than $100 million and consistently
achieves solid operating profits.
Hudson Square was not the company’s first choice. It
originally lined up a deal in Chelsea at Taconic Investment
Partners’ 111 Eighth Ave. but turned to Trinity when
that space was unexpectedly rented to another tenant.
“They were left at the altar,” says Stuart A. Christie,
Trinity’s assistant director of commercial real estate
leasing, who crafted Trinity’s deal with Getty.
But the company expects the Hudson Square neighborhood to
serve it well. “With the homogenization of Manhattan,
there are no bad neighborhoods anymore,” says Steve Tarter
of Tarter/Stats Realty, an expert in downtown markets.
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