Patrick McGregor 
Tech companies are seemingly everywhere gobbling up major chunks of office space, especially in NYC’s most densely populated borough, Manhattan. Some of the companies making the largest impact are Amazon, Google, Facebook, Adobe, and LinkedIn.
Amazon
In February, Amazon walked away from plans to build its second corporate headquarters in Long Island City, Queens. The e-commerce behemoth faced backlash from those who claimed the company did not deserve the nearly $3 billion in government incentives it would have received had it followed through.
But Amazon is back with a new lease on the West Side of Manhattan. Reported to open in 2021, Amazon will open a new 335,408-square-foot office in SL Green’s 410 Tenth Avenue, which will house more than 1,500 employees from Amazon’s consumer and advertising teams.
“We plan to continue to hire and grow organically across our 18 tech hubs, including New York City,” an Amazon spokesperson stated in The New York Times.
Amazon has already leased 360,000 square feet of space across the street from this new site at 5 Manhattan West.
The tech giant announced it will occupy 1.7 million square feet across three locations in Hudson Square to create “Google Hudson Square”. The $1 billion expansion includes two buildings located at 315 and 345 Hudson Street with more office space next to 550 Washington Street.
“When we came to New York City almost two decades ago, it was our first office outside of California. It’s now home to more than 7,000 employees, speaking 50 languages, working on a broad range of teams including Search, Ads, Maps, YouTube, Cloud, Technical Infrastructure, Sales, Partnerships and Research,” Ruth Porat, SVP and CFO at Google.
In 2018, Google also announced a $2.4 billion purchase of the Manhattan Chelsea Market and also shared plans to lease additional space at Pier 57.
Hudson Yards certainly is a popular spot for the world’s tech elite. Social media titan Facebook recently leased 1.5 million square feet across three buildings. This includes roughly 1.2 million square feet at 50 Hudson Yards, 265,000 square feet at 30 Hudson Yards and 57,000 square feet at 55 Hudson Yards.
According to reports from Bloomberg: “The lease is one of the biggest-ever real estate transactions for Facebook, which opened its first New York offices in 2007, the company said in a statement. Employees will start moving to Hudson Yards in 2020, but it hasn’t been determined what teams will work in the new offices.”
Adobe
Software firm Adobe has renewed its lease at the 1540 Broadway office tower, quadrupling its space to 109,296 square feet. Adobe already leases the 17th floor and will expand across the 18th, 19th and 20th floors of the skyscraper.
The deal is reportedly for 10 years and rents were not disclosed for this EDGE Fund Advisors-owned building.
LinkedIn took an additional three and a half floors at one of Manhattan’s most iconic buildings, the Empire State Building. The business social networking site is improving its NYC headquarters and will reportedly take more than 500,000 square feet across 11 floors at the office tower.
