Amazon, which already owns one midtown office building, bought another one at 522 Fifth last week.
Photo: Google Maps
Last week, Amazon bought 522 Fifth from Aby Rosen’s RFR — a 600,000-square-foot office building that Rosen purchased from Morgan Stanley in March 2020, but which couldn’t find another full-building tenant for after the investment company’s departure. It’s just five blocks north of Amazon’s main headquarters in the old Lord & Taylor building, which it opened in 2023. The new building is also right around the corner from its latest office lease, which it signed just last month for 330,000 square feet across nine floors at 10 Bryant Park (according to CoStar, that’s one of the biggest Manhattan office leases this year). While many companies have ordered their employees back to the office since the pandemic, they have also cut back on office space — stranding employees without enough desks. But Amazon seems committed to avoiding that problem, at least in Manhattan, where it’s been on a real-estate spree in the last six months. Since November, the company has signed leases on nearly one million square feet of office space, including another one just a few blocks away on Park Avenue.
The Lord & Taylor building, Amazon’s N.Y. headquarters, opened in 2023.
Photo: Google Maps
Most of the office space (with the exception of a lease at 5 Manhattan West) is in Midtown East, along the Bryant Park/Grand Central corridor, Manhattan’s most historically popular office district. All together, the neighboring offices constitute a kind of de facto Amazon campus. If we’re looking at the company’s choice of location, it’s a smart one (and probably a lot better than Long Island City, Queens). While the area fell somewhat out of favor as companies moved downtown during the aughts, it’s experienced a resurgence since the pandemic, as have other areas by major transit hubs. ( And explains why class A Brooklyn office developments like Two Trees’ Domino building haven’t really taken off , since they’re only convenient to workers who live by the Williamsburg/Greenpoint waterfront.)
All this office expansion also lines up with the company’s ever-adapting RTO policy. This month, Amazon mandated that New York employees return to the office five days a week, making it one of the first tech companies to take a hard stance on a full return to office (employees at the Seattle headquarters had to return full-time in January) — part of its ethos to run the company like “the world’s largest startup,” in the words of CEO Andy Jassy. While the company’s New York headquarters at the historic Lord & Taylor building has, among other perks, a dog run and a fair amount of outdoor space, including a sunken rooftop terrace, it’s not clear what the amenities will be like at 522 Fifth, which was built in 1896 and was last renovated in 2016. Some companies have tried to lure employees back with increasingly elaborate perks — golf simulators, on-site laundry, rock-climbing walls, and destination restaurants — which seems to be part of Amazon strategy as well, at least at its headquarters, which is getting a steakhouse and a ground-floor food hall that promises “a curated culinary journey.” But perhaps the main perk at Amazon’s Manhattan offices will be space for everyone to sit.
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