The publisher whose popular family magazine has long been linked with “Pleasantville” and unpleasant visits to dentists”™ offices is poised to change its mailing address.
The Reader”™s Digest Association Inc. plans to move most of its Westchester operations from its iconic campus in Chappaqua to downtown White Plains and its corporate headquarters to Manhattan.
In a Wednesday memo to employees, RDA President and CEO Mary Berner said the company plans to relocate from the town of New Castle location it has occupied for 70 years to leased space at 44 South Broadway, the 21-story Westchester One office building. Berner said 525 of the 650 RDA employees and contractors in Chappaqua will make the move.
The remaining 125 employees will move to RDA”™s planned new Manhattan headquarters at 750 Third Ave. in Grand Central Square, a twin-tower office center managed and partly owned by SL Green Realty Corp. Another 175 employees will relocate there as the company consolidates its Manhattan offices, Berner said.
Both moves must be approved by a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge. The privately owned global corporation in August filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as part of a restructuring plan to reduce its debt load from $2.2 billion to $550 million. The company since then has been scouting other, less costly locations for its Westchester and New York operations.?Berner in her memo noted both the White Plains and Grand Central locations are close to public transportation to allow “efficient movement” between the two offices. She said the company balanced several factors in its real estate decision, including location and the impact on commuting employees, quality of office space, type of building, amenities and good workflow potential.
She said currently depressed markets make this “an incredibly good time to be leasing property.” The moves will bring significant savings on total rent and maintenance costs, she said. ?Reader”™s Digest in 2004 sold its landmark 116-acre campus in Chappaqua for $59 million to a partnership of Summit Development L.L.C., of Southport, Conn., and Greenfield Partners L.L.C., of South Norwalk, Conn. The publisher leases about 290,000 square feet of space in the 690,000-square-foot office complex. The owners since RDA”™s bankruptcy filing tried to negotiate to keep the community”™s corporate fixture as a tenant in possibly reduced space. ?Summit/Greenfield is seeking approval from New Castle town officials for Chappaqua Crossing, a 278-unit housing development, made up largely of age-restricted residences for persons 55 and older, on the former Reader”™s Digest property. ?Westchester One in White Plains is owned by Beacon Capital Partners L.L.C., a real estate investment firm based in Boston, Mass. Beacon in 2006 paid $181 million for the city”™s first skyscraper and last year completed $13 million in capital improvements to the 852,000-square-foot building. For the renovations, Westchester One was named The Office Building of the Year in 2008 by the Westchester chapter of the Building Owners and Managers Association.
