The National Football League (NFL) officially announced Tuesday that it is relocating its headquarters to 345 Park Ave. in Manhattan. But although the nation's most popular sports league inked one of the New York's largest office leases this year, it also cut back on a significant amount of space.
The Rudin Family signed the NFL to a 20-year, 175,000-square-foot deal, slated to commence in third quarter next year. That is about 15% less space than the league's current 205,000-square-foot headquarters lease at nearby 280 Park Ave.
Occupying a smaller space makes sense for the NFL, which has been attempting to cut costs since the start of the financial crisis. In late 2008, the league laid off about 150 employees in an effort to cut expenses by $50 billion.
Eric Grubman, executive vice president of NFL ventures and business operations, said the new space "will enable us to be more efficient."
345 Park Ave. is a 44-story, 1.8 million-square-foot skyscraper built in 1969 in the Plaza District. Additional tenants include KMPG LLP, The Blackstone Group, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Deutsche Bank.
The NFL intends to fully occupy floors five, six and seven (about 150,000 square feet), as well as about 30,000 square feet of below-grade space to be used for operational and administrative departments.
Franklin Speyer and Lou D'Avanzo with Cushman & Wakefield, along with Peter Hennessy and Daoud Awad with Jones Lang LaSalle handled negotiations for the NFL. Tom Keating represented Rudin Management, in-house.