Rolling Stone Publisher Said in Talks to Relocate to Brooklyn

(Bloomberg) -- Wenner Media LLC, publisher of Rolling Stone magazine, is in talks to move its headquarters from Manhattan to a 19th-century former coffee warehouse on the Brooklyn waterfront, a person with knowledge of the negotiations said.

The publisher, whose titles also include US Weekly and Men's Journal, is discussing taking 50,000 to 70,000 square feet (4,600 to 6,500 square meters) at Empire Stores on the East River in the Dumbo section, Brooklyn's most expensive submarket, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. The company, now based at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, is negotiating details of a lease and neither side has committed to a deal, the person said.

If a lease is completed, Wenner Media would be trading the traditional power center of Midtown for the raw vitality of millennial-driven Brooklyn, possibly enhancing its ability to attract young workers and boosting its credibility as a digital publisher. Such a move by a high-profile media company also would help strengthen Brooklyn's growing office market.

‘Holy Grail'

“With Wenner Media, a real corporate tenant strongly considering a move to Empire Stores in Brooklyn, that is like the holy grail for the Brooklyn developers,” said Zev Holzman, a broker with Savills Studley Inc. who isn't involved in the talks. “They're looking for Manhattan corporate tenants to move to Brooklyn.”

Kathryn Brenner, a Wenner Media spokeswoman, and Wendi Kopsick, a spokeswoman for 1290 Avenue of the Americas landlord Vornado Realty Trust, declined to comment. Jack Cayre, a principal of Midtown Equities LLC, developer of Empire Stores, said he couldn't comment on possible lease talks “nor confirm or deny the identity of tenants that we may or may not be speaking with.”

“I can tell you that demand for our relatively limited space is overwhelming and we are excited about the growing roster of tenants that we are curating for this building,” Cayre said in an e-mail.

If Wenner Media agrees to relocate, it would become the third well-known media company in the Rockefeller Center area of Midtown to do so. Time Inc. left the Time & Life Building at 1271 Avenue of the Americas in favor of lower Manhattan's Brookfield Place, and SportsNet New York, the broadcaster that televises New York Mets baseball games, agreed to move downtown to 4 World Trade Center from the same building.

Digital Push

Publisher Jann Wenner, 70, who started Rolling Stone in a San Francisco warehouse in 1967, has been looking for ways to keep his magazines relevant to a generation more apt to read articles on smartphones and tablets than in print. In 2014, he put his 25-year-old son Gus Wenner in charge of the company's digital strategy.

In May, Wenner Media announced the creation of Glixel, a digital-only publication that covers video games. “Gaming is today what rock 'n' roll was when Rolling Stone was founded,” Gus Wenner was told the New York Times.

Midtown Equities, which won the rights to develop the long-dormant Empire Stores in 2013, is seeking $65 a square foot for space on the third and fourth floors of the six-story building, and $85 a square foot for space on top two stories, according to research firm CoStar Group Inc. Tenants include furniture merchant West Elm and 72andSunny, a Los Angeles-based advertising company. The building is 62 percent leased, according to CoStar.

One complication for the Wenners is that their lease at 1290 Avenue of the Americas won't expire for some time and they would have to pay Vornado a termination fee to void the agreement, according to the person with knowledge of the talks.

A move to Brooklyn for Rolling Stone “sounds smart to me,” onetime publisher Joe Armstrong said in an e-mail. “Never understood why they were on Avenue of Americas surrounded by banks and corporate offices anyway.”

To contact the reporter on this story: David M. Levitt in New York at dlevitt@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Taub at dtaub@bloomberg.net, Christine Maurus