A Left Coast company is making its first investment in New York in several years by buying a former industrial complex turned office building on West 43rd Street.

Sources tell us San Francisco-based DivcoWest, together with one of its funds, is in contract to purchase 311 W. 43rd St. from the William Macklowe Co. and Principal Financial for north of $130 million.

Also known as The Press, and previously as the Media Arts Building, it has the de rigueur co-working giant WeWork as its largest tenant, with 63,732 square feet plus its own lobby and roof deck.

WeWork holds down the former Scribner’s offices on the top floors of the 15-story building that once held its printing plant.

The Cantonese restaurant Hakkasan has the street retail while in between is a variety of office tenants skewed toward the theater arts, including the Manhattan Theatre Club.

Macklowe and Principal purchased the building in December 2015 for $107 million from Atlas Capital. That company acquired it in December 2012 for $62.4 million from its longtime family owner, Richard Berry, who had previously bought out the Durst family.

Billy Macklowe, wife Julie — founder of vbeauté — and 11-year-old Zoe added to their family in July with the birth of daughter Dylan on July 15.

Macklowe is currently developing a ground-up medical building at 323 E. 61st St. and closing soon with Goldman Sachs on the sales of the luxury condos at 21 E. 12th St. ­in Greenwich Village on the ex-site of a former Bowlmor.

The CEO of Divco­West, Stuart Shiff, founded the investment company in 1993 and since then has purchased 42 million square feet all over California as well as in Boston and Washington, DC, where it also has offices.

The Press was marketed by the Cushman & Wakefield investment team of Douglas Harmon, Adam Spies, Kevin Donner, Adam Doneger, Joshua King and Marcella Fasulo.

Earlier this year, the team sold the 1199 SEIU development site across West 43rd Street through a 99-year ground lease to Taconic Partners and National Real Estate Advisors for a future residential rental and retail project. The C&W team this year sold the 375-apartment rental tower, The Helux, down the block at 520 W. 43rd St., to a Dermot and PGGM venture for $193 million.

In 2013, a Divco fund together with a Brickman fund bought the three buildings at 24-28 W. 25th St. and 40 W. 25th St. and sold through the brokerage team to the Japanese companies Jowa and Unizo in 2015.

Macklowe could not be reached, while Cushman and Divco spokesmen declined to comment.


The enterprise office leasing company Knotel has taken control of its largest space yet, and this one is at The Times Building near Times Square.

Knotel has now subleased 51,104 square feet on the eighth floor of 229 W. 43rd St. — the former home of The New York Times that also counts Snapchat and other tech companies as tenants.

Founded by Amol Sarva in 2016, Knotel concentrates on serving companies with 50 or more employees and is expanding rapidly with close to 100 locations in markets that include San Francisco, Los Angeles, London, Brazil and Berlin.

Knotel was represented by Michael Cohen, John Pavone and Jessica Verdi of Colliers International in the sublease from the Engine Group.

Rebranded as Engine in July, the British-based firm is now located at 261 Madison Ave. and provides data-driven marketing solutions for brands, agencies and publishers.

Engine was represented by John Maher of CBRE and David Mahoney of CBRE’s Chicago office.

David Cheikin of Columbia Property Trust, which owns the office portion of the Times Building, represented the building in-house along with a CBRE team.

The huge retail slice is owned separately by Kushner Cos.

If you are seeking cool offices with event space, terraces and a cafeteria, you should know that the former Yahoo offices at the Times Building are for sublease via Cushman & Wakefield.