Conde Nast Moves Downtown… Way Downtown

by Justin Fenner | 5:23 pm, August 3rd, 2010

Since the 90s, Conde Nast‘s home base has been half of a cozy, 1.6 million square foot sky scraper at 4 Times Square, but today The New York Times reports that the company, which publishes some of the magazine industry’s best known fashion glossies, has signed a deal to move to the World Trade Center site.

Specifically, Si Newhouse and company are in “active negotiations” to move into 1 World Trade Center, or so said a memo sent to Conde Nast employees this morning. The new $3.2 billion building will be the tallest skyscraper in New York City when it’s completed in 2013.

Conde Nast had for years been known for a culture of lush excess — Anna Wintour‘s daily towncar tides and rumored lavish clothing allowance being the prime examples — but the move might actually cut costs for the publisher. A May article from The New York Observer suggested that rents in downtown Manhattan would be considerably cheaper than what the company is paying in the thick of Midtown.

As a new New Yorker, I can tell you that the Financial District is kind of stodgy and, well, not nearly as fun as Times Square — and thanks to a lack of tourists, it’s also not nearly as annoying. But Conde Nast aided Time Square’s renaissance when it moved into that neighborhood, and it’s hoped that they’d be able to do the same thing for downtown.

“Just as it did for Times Square, a Conde Nast move would provide instant credibility to the World Trade Center site and, indeed, to the entire downtown market,” said Carl Weisbrod, who had been active in rejuvenating both Times Square in the 1980s and, more recently, Lower Manhattan.

“Moreover, it would provide sorely needed diversity to Lower Manhattan’s economy and would be the vanguard of a broader shift of creative companies from Midtown to the south.”

Anonymous sources told the Times that Conde Nast would take up to one million square feet at its new pad, but it only takes up 800,000 at its current location. Speculation will abound on why they need 200,000 more square feet than they had before (Is W moving there with them? Are they finally going to reopen Gourmet? Are the storied Conde Nast archives moving in house?) until the building opens in 2014.

[Refinery29 via NYTimes.com]