BY TAYLOR TIAMOYO HARRIS | A Silicon Valley-based law firm is the latest tenant to choose Hudson Yards.
Cooley LLP announced in a July 31 press release that their new location at 55 Hudson Yards (btw. W. 33rd & 34th Sts.) will take up 130,000 square feet, and will spread across five floors.
“We’re excited to serve our clients out of this cutting-edge space,” said Jonathan Bach, partner in charge of the firm’s New York office, in a statement on the law firm’s website. “This move is in line with our commitment to East Coast growth and speaks to the vibrancy of New York across the corporate, finance and tech sectors and more.”
The litigation powerhouse employs nearly 2,000 internationally, and has clients that include Twitter, Facebook, and Google. It will move to Hudson Yards from current location, across the street from Bryant Park.
The 55 Hudson Yards building is adjacent to the No. 7 subway line, and occupies a total of 1.3 million square feet, hovering 780 feet into the sky.
It is scheduled to open in 2018.
The glass-framed building is about a five-minute walk south to the bank of the Hudson River, and less than a 10-minute walk north to Penn Station.
“We are thrilled to welcome Cooley to the neighborhood,” said Jay Cross, President of Related Hudson Yards, the company behind the Hudson real estate project, which began construction in 2012. “Both Cooley and its clients are well-regarded as forward-thinking and innovative, and their new park-front New York City headquarters, in this amenity-rich neighborhood, is an ideal fit for their customers and their culture, employees and future talent.”
New York Real Estate News reported on talks of the agreement between Cooley and Related in February, and disclosed asking rents for the building ranging from $105 to $140 per square foot.
Notably, Cooley was the law firm behind social media giant Snapchat’s initial public offering (IPO) earlier this year.
In 2015, the firm also opened their first European location in London.
However, it’s their move less than two miles away to the emerging Hudson Yards neighborhood that the company sees playing a major role in their expansion agenda, according to Joe Conroy, Cooley’s chief executive officer.
“Becoming part of this visionary new development further reinforces our commitment to investment and growth in New York,” Conroy said in the press release. “We will be working alongside many of our clients and look forward to joining them in a stunning new environment that will be among the world’s most sophisticated law firm office spaces.”
Law firms Boies Schiller & Flexner LLP and Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP will also relocate from elsewhere in NYC to occupy the building as tenants.
Point72 Asset Management, a family office managing the assets of Steven A. Cohen, and MarketAxess, operator of a leading electronic trading platform for fixed-income securities, are also signed on as tenants.
The total space for the $25 billion mixed office and residential neighborhood is 18 million square feet, according to hudsonyardsnewyork.com. It will also feature more than 100 shops and restaurants, a new 750-seat public school, and a 200-room hotel. Once complete, Hudson Yards is projected to contribute 19 billion annually to New York’s GDP, according to a report from Related Companies and Oxford Properties Group.
