Taubin of Studley reps the 10gen in 20,432 s/f lease expansion at 229 West 43rd Street

10gen, the MongoDB company, is further expanding its presence in Midtown by leasing an additional 20,432 s/f on the 5th floor at 229 West 43rd Street, a.k.a., the former New York Times Building. The deal brings its total occupancy in the 16-story, 480,000 s/f tower to nearly 50,000 s/f. The expansion deal comes only seven months after the rapidly growing technology firm signed a six-year, 29,391s/f lease with contiguous expansion options in the building in December 2012. As part of this new transaction, 10gen will preserve a further option to lease an additional 13,889 s/f encompassing the balance of the floor. Studley executive managing director Greg Taubin represented the technology firm in the transaction, while Brian Waterman of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank represented the owner, Blackstone Group LP. Asking rents were $75.00 per s/f. "As 10gen was quickly growing in size, we structured the 2012 lease to accommodate their expansion plans," Taubin said, noting that the firm planned for 162 employees since relocating from a 14,000-square-foot space at 578 Broadway to Midtown. "However, the company is growing so quickly that we had to mobilize and lease what was going to be one of their expansion option spaces earlier than previously planned." The recent resurgence in the Times Square office market was also a key factor in the transaction. According to Taubin, 10gen's lease was followed by Yahoo's recent announcement to consolidate its Manhattan offices into 176,000 s/f at 229 West 43rd Street, shortly after the search engine giant acquired microblogging website, Tumblr, for $1.1 billion. He added, "Because technology companies are like-minded, we're seeing a new 'clustering' effect west of the Great White Way." 10gen's additional locations include Palo Alto, California (shared dual headquarters with New York) and Reston, Virginia as well as international offices in Barcelona, Dublin, London and Sydney. The company has more than 600 commercial customers, including Cisco, Disney, LexisNexis and many others.