Spotify To Move U.S. HQ To 4 World Trade Center

After months of rumors and leaks, music-streaming giant Spotify has committed to take 378k SF in 4 World Trade Center, making the skyscraper fully leased.

The lease is a huge milestone for Silverstein Properties, which owns the completed 4 WTC, 7 World Trade Center, the under-construction 3 World Trade Center and the planned 2 World Trade Center.

Spotify agreed to move its 832 existing New York City employees to the building and create 1,000 new jobs, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Silverstein executives announced today. It will vacate its current HQ at 620 Ave. of the Americas in Chelsea, owned by RXR Realty.

"Lower Manhattan is more vibrant, diverse and connected than ever before," Cuomo said in prepared remarks, "and Spotify’s expansion is the latest example of this community’s incredible potential for growth."

Spotify will be able to use $11M in rent credits through the World Trade Center Rent Reduction Program, and plans to occupy floors 62 through 72, with expansion options for floors 59 to 61. With the option, the 2.3M SF is fully booked, Silverstein said. It's the first building on the 16-acre historic World Trade Center site to fill up, beating out One WTC.

CBRE's leasing team led by Tri-State CEO Mary Ann Tighe has repped the World Trade Center from the beginning, locking in deals with Zurich, MediaMath, Morningstar, SNY and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Spotify was represented by JLL's Peter Riguardi, Alex Chudnoff, Ken Siegel and Jim Wenk.

The Spotify deal, discussion of which leaked back in December, is the pièce de résistance: the biggest private sector lease signed in the building was also its final.

If Spotify opts into taking floors 59 to 61, its footprint will be about 463k SF. The tech giant plans to move in 2019 to start its 15-year lease. Asking rents in the deal were in the $80s per SF.

"We are proud to have completed the leasing of 4 World Trade Center — our second, fully tenanted building at the complex, following the lease-up of the 1.6M SF 7 World Trade Center,” Tighe said in a release. “Now it’s onward to 3 World Trade Center, where GroupM’s 700k SF is already anchoring the tower. 3 WTC will be ready for tenant work in 2018, and we already have significant activity.”

7 WTC, which is not on the 16-acre master-planned WTC site, opened in 2006 and signed its final lease to become fully occupied in 2012. At 4 WTC, leasing up the building's offices took half the time. 3 WTC still has 1.8M SF available to lease.

Tighe led a team of David Caperna, Steve Eynon, Adam Foster, Evan Haskell, Rob Hill, Ken Meyerson and Stephen Siegel, joining Silverstein director of World Trade Center leasing Jeremy Moss. 

"The World Trade Center has been just a succession of incredible milestones related to construction and the re-leasing and the revitalization of lower Manhattan," Moss said. "This is just another part of it."