499 Washington Blvd. in Jersey City — Courtesy: LeFrak
By Joshua Burd
State incentives have brought another prominent company across the Hudson River.
In Jersey City, fashion designer Tory Burch has leased 93,000 square feet over two floors at 499 Washington Blvd., an office tower in LeFrak’s master-planned Newport community. The state Economic Development Authority last fall awarded the company a nearly $10.8 million tax credit to relocate part of its corporate offices to New Jersey from Manhattan.
Tory Burch has also said it would locate a customer call center in Jersey City, according to an EDA board memo from November. The 13-year-old lifestyle brand was considering Brooklyn as an alternate location, following the expiration of its 37,000-square-foot lease in Manhattan.
RELATED: Tory Burch eyes move to Jersey City from N.Y.
The deal, reported earlier this month by the New York Post, was confirmed this week by representatives for LeFrak. Cushman & Wakefield and an in-house team at Newport represented LeFrak, while Savills Studley represented Tory Burch.
The move is expected to bring 102 positions to Jersey City instead of Brooklyn and would create 37 new positions.
The company’s new home, 499 Washington Blvd., is the same building that now houses Forbes Media after the EDA dangled a 10-year, $27 million incentive to lure the media giant from Manhattan in 2014. Recent research by JLL found that direct asking rents in the Hudson waterfront submarket averaged about $40 per square foot, which is more than $30 below rates for many sections of Midtown Manhattan.
For LeFrak, the Tory Burch deal comes alongside a lease with L’Oreal USA, which signed 60,000 square feet for its IT Cosmetics unit at 111 Town Square Place in Jersey City. The L’Oreal deal was handled in-house by Marylou Berk and Ray Kawas.
