Meta Drops 275,000 sq ft of Workspace at 770 Broadway
Though the company will retain 500,000 sq feet in the Greenwich Village location, the loss of a third of its footprint there is part of a broader downsizing of Meta’s presence in the city.
| 15 Feb 2024 | 10:53
Meta first leased space at 770 Broadway in 2019. Now it is cutting one third of its footprint there. (
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Meta Platforms, the social media giant that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is abandoning 275,000 square feet out of 775,000 square feet of total office space at 770 Broadway, which is near 9th St. in Greenwich Village. The decision will take effect in June, when the lease for that section is due to expire. The company first leased space there from Vornado Realty Trust in 2018, before expanding within the building in 2020 and 2022. Plans for a further 300,000 square foot expansion were scotched later that year, a portent for things to come.
This development marks yet another contraction of the company’s footprint in New York City, after laying off nearly 900 employees, or 15 percent of their NYC workforce, last summer. Just over 5,000 workers remain in the city after a yearlong wave of layoffs across the country, part of a restructuring that Meta executives said was necessary to withstand economic headwinds.
According to Meta’s filing in the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification database, the layoffs affected people working at 30 Hudson Yards, 372 9th Avenue, and the 770 Broadway location that is being downsized. Meta’s downsizing at the latter site leaves 500,000 square feet remaining for their use in a building that contains 1.2 million total, which Vornado has leased out to tenants such as the retailer Wegmans, occupying the ground floor, and Yahoo!, taking up the fourth, fifth, sixth, and ninth floors.
Meanwhile, the bulk of Meta’s NYC presence remains at 50 Hudson Yards, which opened in 2023 and was intended to be a long-term address. Meta signed its lease for 1.5 million square feet there in 2019.
Meta’s withdrawal from 770 Broadway is a blow to Vornado, which is trying to stanch the leak of tenants fleeing from their properties. According to Crain’s New York Business, occupancy in Vornado’s New York portfolio dropped to 89.4 percent last quarter, 50 basis points below the the previous recording last September. On the day that Meta’s non-renewal of the lease was announced, Vornado’s stock price tumbled by 8 percent in afternoon trading, to about $25 a share. CEO Steven Roth insisted that next year will see better daylight, with hopes that people will return to the office from stay-at-home work. “The office leasing market is on the foothills of recovery,” he said on an earnings call.
After the summer 2023 layoffs that cut 182 Meta employees from the 770 Broadway offices, around 2,200 remained in that location. Meta did not respond to requests for comment on whether the downsizing will affect that number.