The Seattle based e-commerce retailing giant, Amazon.com, is seeking office space of around 500,000 square feet in New York City. The deal would be a big jump for the company as it already owns 100,000 square feet of office space in Manhattan.
Two sources with knowledge of the matter said that the company was looking to start with at least 250,000 square feet space, which would allow the company to expand the property in the next seven years, reports Bloomberg.
Amazon has sent out requests to landlords and owners in Manhattan and parts of East River and Brooklyn for proposals of any available office space. The company is also considering space in the upcoming "One World Trade Center building," which is slated to be completed by 2014, reports Seattle Times.
Amazon is the largest office space owner in Seattle. In December 2012, the company purchased the largest chunk of downtown land for $1.6 billion, making it the largest office purchase deal of the country. The building measures around 1.8 million square feet and was purchased by Vulcan Real Estate, a prominent realty firm in Seattle.
Currently, the office occupancy rate in Manhattan has remained flat for the last one and a half years. Financial services firms, that were major boosters of office space demand in the region, are cutting down on their office spaces.
Recently, Sony Inc. sold its Madison Avenue headquarters for around $1.1 billion while Time Warner is contemplating its Columbia Circle headquarters sale. Hines, the real estate magnate, has also listed two of its midtown Manhattan towers on the open market.
However, technology based companies have been expanding aggressively in the neighborhoods of Meatpacking district, Chelsea and Union Square. Some big tech giants are using New York office space to set up software development units. In 2010, Google Inc, purchased office space worth $1.9 billion in New York. More tech companies will follow suit, reports Wall Street Journal.
In a recent rating by Fortune Magazine, Amazon.com, Google and Apple were rated the "most admired" companies of the world. In its 2012 rating, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, was named "Businessperson of the year".
