Facebook is ditching one of its earlier Manhattan office spaces. Big Tech’s appetite for real estate is not as all-consuming as it was a few years ago. The company, now known as Meta, terminated its lease at 225 Park Avenue South, where it occupied more than 200,000 square feet, a spokesperson confirmed to The Real Deal.
After leasing more than 2 million square feet at Hudson Yards and the Farley Post Office redevelopment. Facebook no longer needed the Midtown South office. “Two twenty-five Park Avenue South has served as a great bridge space to get us to our new offices at Hudson Yards and Farley,” the spokesperson said. “We are working to ensure we’re making focused, balanced investments to support our most strategic long-term priorities. We remain firmly committed to New York and further anchoring our local footprint.”
Representatives for the landlord, Orda Management, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Facebook first leased space at the property in 2016. Terms of the deal were not available, but if it was a standard 10-year lease the decision to exit would mean Facebook scrapped the agreement with about four years left.
While Facebook has exponentially grown its real estate footprint in the past several years, it’s recently been pulling back. This summer, it backed out of a 300,000-square-foot expansion at Vornado Realty Trust’s 770 Broadway. They also paused plans to build out its Hudson Yards space. The company’s stock is down nearly 60 percent this year.
Amazon also reportedly walked away from an expansion it was working on at Brookfield’s 5 Manhattan West. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in May 2020. The company was transitioning to a distributed workforce, a decision that rippled across the office market.
“Over time, location will hopefully be less of a factor in how many people work,” he said in a note on Facebook at the time. “And we’ll have the technology to feel truly present no matter where we are.” [Source: TRD]
