The website maker is close to signing on for 100,000 square feet of space that is occupied by Merrill, a printing company in a West side district that was once full of them.
The fast-growing website-maker Squarespace is close to leasing a big new office space that's anything but square.
The company, sources say, will take 100,000 square feet in the trendy office district Hudson Square, a neighborhood on the West Side just north of Canal Street once filled with printing companies. In recent years, it has drawn a hipper crowd of big name tenants such as Viacom, CBS and Pearson.
A spokesman for Squarespace confirmed that the company was interested in taking space at 225 Varick St., but said that a deal had not yet been done and that the company was still considering other locations as well.
Squarespace would be completing the area's rapid and dramatic transformation away from the printing business. It would fill space that will soon be vacated by the last major printing operation in the area, Merrill Corp., which uses the space for language translation services related to its document-printing business. It wasn't immediately clear by press time where Merrill, which bases its operations in midtown, would relocate that printing arm if the Squarespace deal is finalized.
Squarespace has grown rapidly as a provider of snazzy-looking website designs for small businesses and individuals. The company is eyeing three floors—10, 11 and 12—at 225 Varick St., one of more than a dozen beefy former manufacturing buildings in the Hudson Square neighborhood owned by Trinity Real Estate. It would pay rents in the mid-$60s per square foot, well above what space in the neighborhood cost just a few years ago before it began to take off as an extension of the ultra-hot midtown south office district.
Correction: Squarespace is close to signing a lease for 100,000 square feet of space at 225 Varick St. A deal has not been finalized. That fact was misstated in an earlier version of the headline, summary and text of this article published online Aug. 29, 2014.