Time Warner, the giant media conglomerate, has hired real estate firm Eastdil Secured LLC to give market estimations for its headquarters, the Time Warner Center Building in Manhattan, New York. The move comes two months after news of the company contemplating to sell the building surfaced.
According to Reuters, Eastdil will be estimating the worth of the famous building. It has not yet been decided if the company will be selling or leasing the structure. The company hopes to finalize a plan before the end of the third quarter.
Apparently, Eastdil Secured also assisted Sony Corp with the sale of its Madison Avenue Headquarters in January 2013. The building sold for $1.1 billion to a large real estate firm, Chetrit Group. The sale was the largest price paid for a single office building in the U.S. since 2011.
The 1.1 million square feet building was built after Time Warner declared its merger with America Online in 2000. The building was originally called "The AOL Time Warner Center" but came to be known just as "The Time Warner center" by the time it opened in 2004. The company's headquarters are in the south tower while the other tower houses the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and residential condos.
If the company decides to sell its headquarters, the sale will be one of the biggest real estate deals of the year, reports Wall Street Journal.
Apart from the Time Warner center, the company occupies 15 other buildings in the New York Metro area, with around 10 offices in Manhattan alone.
Time Warner, the parent company of HBO, CNN, Time Inc and the Warner Brothers Studio, has been contemplating the sale and other alternatives for more than a year now. The value of the company stands at around $47 billion.
The company is rapidly changing its strategies to adapt to the market. Recently, Time Inc. cut around 500 jobs and the CNN channel is being overhauled for its poor viewer ratings as well. The company is also hoping to spin off TIME Inc., reports Bloomberg.
