Condé Nast Subleases 48K SF at 1 World Trade Center to Kroll

Publishing giant Condé Nast will hand over another piece of its 1.2 million-square-foot 1 World Trade Center headquarters, this time to private-eye-turned-financial-advisory firm Kroll.

Kroll signed a 10-year sublease for 48,026 square feet across the entire 31st floor of the 104-story tower, according to a source with knowledge of the deal and Condé Nast’s broker, JLL (JLL). Asking rent was $59 per square foot, the source said. 

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Kroll will move its headquarters from the 17th floor of 55 East 52nd Street in Midtown to 1 WTC, according to Bisnow, which first reported the deal.

The firm was founded in 1972 by corporate investigations guru Jules Kroll, who grew it into a global operation thanks to his flair for helping clients with such tasks as “recovering the wealth plundered by dictators,” according to a 2009 New Yorker profile.

Avison Young’s Michael Gottlieb, Martin Cottingham and Alexis Odgers arranged the deal for Kroll while JLL’s Peter Riguardi, Joseph Messina, Andrew Coe, Jessica Berkey and Matthew Rosen represented Condé Nast.

A spokesperson for Avison Young declined to comment. 

Condé Nast has lately had a rocky relationship with its 1 World Trade Center landlords, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the Durst Organization. The magazine conglomerate relocated from Times Square to the 20th through 44th floors of the Financial District tower shortly after 1 WTC was completed in 2014. However, it put much of that space on the sublet market, hiring JLL in 2018 to hunt down prospective subtenants.

The situation escalated in 2021 when Condé Nast withheld $2.4 million in rent to gain leverage in negotiations to reduce its footprint and rent, but Condé Nast eventually paid up later that year.

Since 2019, Condé Nast sublet out more than 230,000 square feet of its 1 WTC space to New York Life Insurance Company, Ennead Architects, Ambac Financial Group, Constellation Agency and Reddit.

At least six other floors of Condé Nast’s offices are listed for sublease online. It’s unclear how much space it plans to retain in the tower.

A spokesperson for Durst declined to comment and a spokesperson for Condé Nast did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Abigail Nehring can be reached at anehring@commercialobserver.com.