A global enterprise as profitable as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck are ageless will join the Westchester business community this year.
Having found the “right space” for future growth and current needs, Disney Publishing Worldwide will shift the bulk of its operations from Manhattan to Westchester One, an 850,000-square-foot office building at 44 S. Broadway in the White Plains central business district.
Between October and December, the company plans to relocate 175 of its 225 Manhattan employees to White Plains, said April Hattori, vice president of communications at Disney Publishing Worldwide. With senior management, financial, technology and book sales and marketing staff making the move, “That represents our primary operations, so it will be our headquarters,” she said, but did not specify a site.
Twenty editorial employees at three Disney Book Group imprints ”“ Disney Editions, Disney Press and Hyperion Books for Children ”“ will move to a midtown Manhattan location from the company”™s office at 114 Fifth Ave. About 30 Disney magazine sales and marketing employees also will remain in New York City.
The Disney division is expected to lease one floor of the 23-story Westchester One, according to a real estate source.
Although Disney employees in Manhattan were told of the pending move two weeks ago, the company would not confirm the specific site selected in White Plains.
“The lease isn”™t finalized yet and therefore there isn”™t much information I can share at this point,” Hattori said.
An agent from Cushman and Wakefield of Connecticut Inc. representing Westchester One”™s owner in lease negotiations said he could not comment on the reported Disney move. A CB Richard Ellis agent representing the tenant could not be reached for comment at presstime.
Hattori said the company will assist employees in the move by offering a transitional commuter allowance and free parking in White Plains.
She said the planned move to a “state-of-the-art” building “is to accommodate our future growth. That facility will provide a collaborative and creative work environment. It has open work areas and many conference rooms that will make that possible.”
“The reason for the move is identifying (the) right space for our current and future needs,” she said.
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The Disney division also should realize substantial cost savings with the move from Manhattan, where, in a tight office market, rents in some buildings approach $100 per square foot. Available office space at Westchester One rents from $19 to $35 per square foot, according to the building”™s listing at MrOfficeSpace.com.
The tallest office building in the county, Westchester One is owned by Beacon Capital Partners L.L.C., a Boston investment firm that last summer paid $181 million for the property. At the time of the purchase, Alan M. Leventhal, chairman and chief executive officer of Beacon Capital Partners, said the new owner wanted to attract new tenants while retaining existing ones. He anticipated “a real push by companies in Manhattan that have a need but have a lack of space in Manhattan.”
The building”™s largest tenant at 300,000 square feet, Argent Mortgage Company L.L.C., in March laid off several hundred workers at its two offices in White Plains in the company”™s second round of layoffs since the nationwide collapse of the subprime lending market for home buyers. The company reportedly has been marketing all of its White Plains space through Cushman and Wakefield, the managing agent at Westchester One.
Other tenants at 44 South Broadway include Blue Sky Studios, a maker of computer-generated animated characters, films and commercials; Oxford Health Plans; Rail Europe; Reuters America, the financial news and information company, and SMARTS, a business software company.
Disney Publishing Worldwide (DPW) traces its legacy to the introduction of the first Disney comic strip in 1930. Those original Disney characters, Mickey and Donald, still are featured internationally in its most popular comic weeklies, of which about 115 million copies were sold in 2005. Mickey Mouse magazine is published in 35 countries, with China its fastest-growing market.
DPW publishes 274 children”™s magazines worldwide, selling 230 million copies, which represents about 53 percent of all children”™s magazine sales in the world.
The company claims to reach more than 1 billion readers annually in 85 languages across 75 countries. Its annual retail value is an estimated $2 billion.
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