Big League Amazon Lease Is Official (And Not About Retail)
Amazon's much-discussed lease at 7 West 34th Street in Manhattan is now official with landlord Vornado's announcement yesterday that the company had inked a deal for all 470K SF of office space in the building. But the e-commerce powerhouse (sort of) quashed stubborn rumors that the space would become its first permanent bricks and mortar retail outpost. Spokeswoman Kelly Cheeseman told Bloomberg that the tenant had "leased this building primarily as corporate office space and we intend to sublease to other tenants the ground-floor retail space." The Wall Street Journal was the first to report that Amazon would use the 34th Street real estate as a space for customers to pick up orders placed online and, eventually, as a showcase for its latest gadgets.
