New York Times Building Gets the Go Ahead

NEW YORK CITY-”It’s now time to begin,” Mary Ann Tighe, CEO, NewYork Metro Region, told the crowd at RealShare New York, when she announced that she had just received word that morning from the New York State that the condemnation was complete for the Eighth Avenue site proposed to be the new home of the New York Times.Tighe was speaking about deals that were meaningful to her and mentioned that the process for this endeavor began in 1995. “I like transformation deals–deals that change the landscape,” she said.Mary Ann Tighe and Gregory Tosko of Insignia/ESG with Timothy Dempsey won the Real Estate Board’s Henry Hart Rice Most Ingenious Deal of the Year Award for the development of The New York Times’ proposed 52-story headquarters on Eighth Avenue between 40th and 41st streets. Ms. Tighe and Mr. Tosko previously won the Rice prize for the Conde Nast lease at Four Times Square. When the New York Times moved its presses to Queens in the mid-1990′s, the company’s leaders began to consider transferring the newspaper’s editorial and administrative offices from its current 89-year-old headquarters on 43rd Street to a new facility that would require less maintenance and offer a more efficient workplace. The Rice award winners designed a transaction that will produce a distinctive building which satisfies the Times’ four objectives: remaining in its current neighborhood, securing floor layouts acceptable to its staff, holding its occupancy costs constant and incurring no rent or mortgage obligations that could compromise its journalistic independence. Other challenges mastered by the winning brokers included guiding the Times through a site search and helping the client meet the applicable state/city design guidelines for the area. The brokers also structured a partnership with the developer Forest City Ratner that will give the Times opportunities to expand within its new, partially speculative building.