A venture capital firm started by Reddit co-founder and Serena Williams’ husband Alexis Ohanian inked a long-term lease for an entire Soho building.
Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six will occupy 10,000 square feet at 216 Lafayette Street, including the ground floor retail space and two floors of office, a source familiar with the deal said. The recently renovated building is owned by Michael and Shany Ashkenazy’s 101 Holdings.
The space will be used for the company’s flagship office and an experience center. The asking rent was $2 million per year.
A Retail by MONA team led by Brandon Singer represented the landlord in the deal. JLL’s Patrick Smith, Jamie Katcher and Emilie Goldman represented the tenant. The brokers could not immediately be reached for comment.
The section of Lafayette Street between Broome and Houston streets has become a hub for technology and venture capital firms. Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz recently doubled its space at 200 Lafayette Street. In October, OpenAI inked a lease for 90,000 square feet at Kushner Companies’ Puck Building. Thrive Capital, a venture capital firm that backs OpenAI, and Microsoft also have offices there.
Tech-adjacent companies have been making an office comeback in Manhattan after drastically scaling back office leasing and putting millions of square feet on the sublet market for several years after the pandemic. Thanks in part to stabilizing interest rates and venture capital funding returning to some hot tech sectors, these businesses are growing — and inking large leases again.
The sector kicked off 2025 with its strongest start in 25 years, according to a new CBRE report on tech leasing in Manhattan. Tech tenants inked deals for 1.2 million square feet in the first quarter and added another 441,000 square feet in April. That was almost the total for the entire year in 2023, when tech leasing dropped to its lowest level since 2011, according to CBRE.
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Tech companies are back in the Manhattan office market
Andreessen Horowitz doubles space at LaSalle’s 200 Lafayette
Tishman Speyer in talks to buy Soho office for around $120M
