Lucian Alixandrescu 
The Real Deal recently announced that Apple had signed a sublease for an additional 116,000 square feet of office space in Manhattan at 11 Penn Plaza, a property owned by Vornado Realty Trust. The space is distributed across two floors, which the tech company will sublease for six years from Macy’s, and brings Apple’s total lease in the building to 336,000 square feet.
Apple already occupies 220,000 square feet of office space on two floors in the property, which it leased in February this year. The most recent lease had been rumored since August, although the company was only considering a 60,000-square-foot lease at the time. Now, Apple will occupy the ninth through 14th floors of 11 Penn Plaza.
Peter Riguardi and Martin Horner of JLL represented the tenant, while a CBRE team of Scott Gottlieb, Liz Lash and Ross Zimbalist represented Macy’s. Vornado was represented by an in-house team.
The property at 11 Penn Plaza is an art deco building totaling 1.1 million square feet of rentable office space. It’s situated on Seventh Ave. between West 31st and 32nd St., across from Madison Square Garden. Macy’s has the lease on the fourth through 14th floors until 2035 and is reportedly looking to sublease the fourth through seventh floors, which are still vacant.
The previous 220,000-square-foot lease is the largest Manhattan lease for the Cupertino, Calif.-based company. Even so, Apple’s office footprint in Manhattan is relatively small compared to other tech companies, featuring a 52,000-square-foot space at 100-104 Fifth Ave., which hosts the company’s marketing and commercial software divisions.
Vornado Realty Trust is a New York City-based real estate investment trust with an extensive Manhattan portfolio and other properties in Chicago and San Francisco. The REIT recently signed another high-tier tenant operating in tech when Facebook signed a lease for 740,000 square feet of office space in the Farley Post building — outbidding Apple for the lease, according to The Real Deal. Besides its headquarters in Menlo Park and its newest NYC property, Facebook has operations in a variety of locations including a four-story Chicago office space.
