CBS Puts Manhattan Broadcast Center Up for Sale

CBS Entertainment has confirmed that it is putting on the market the CBS Broadcast Center, the Manhattan television production complex it has occupied on West 57^th Street since the 1950s.

According to a report in the New York Post, CBS entertainment, which merged with Viacom in 2019 and became part of Paramount Global, is planning to relocate in newer digs in Manhattan.

The network has yet to select a site for the relocation. After the Post published its report earlier this month, CBS Entertainment CEO George Cheeks confirmed the move in a memo to staff that was also published in the tabloid.

“It is true that the company has retained a real estate consultant to evaluate selling the BC and to identify a new home for our teams there,” Cheeks said, in the memo.

The CBS CEO also said the company is in the “early stages” of planning its relocation and that any “potential sale [and] design and build of a new facility and an eventual move is very hard to predict.”

However, citing an unnamed source, the Post reported that at least three major commercial developers and/or landlords have expressed what the tabloid called “preliminary interest” in making a deal with CBS for the Broadcast Center.

Although it may want to migrate out of the Broadcast Center into newer studio space, CBS won’t be leaving the neighborhood on W. 57^th Street: the company recently renewed a 281K SF at SL Green’s 555 W. 57^th St., a modern office and studio building across the street from the Broadcast Center.

America’s three original TV networks—have all been making adjustments in the footprints of the NYC facilities. In addition to the disclosure from CBS, NBC earlier this year revealed plans to build a luxury hotel over its studios atop Radio City Music Hall at 30 Rock.

In April, Tishman Speyer has unveiled plans for a luxury hotel that will repurpose 10 floors of 30 Rockefeller Center on top of NBC’s studios and Radio City Music Hall.

Aspen Hospitality, a co-owner of the office property and a subsidiary of the Chicago-based Crown family, is planning to build a 130-key Little Nell Hotel in the space above the studios where Saturday Night Live and the Today show are broadcast, the Wall Street Journal reported.

This will be the second Little Nell luxury lodging outlet. The first, a 92-room hotel in—you guess it, Aspen—charges $1,800 per night.

The plan for the new hotel could be a test of the special permitting process for new hotels NYC established in the middle of the pandemic when the hotel industry in the Big Apple was being clobbered.

The special permitting process was enacted at the end of 2021 after proponents argued it would prevent an “oversaturation” of hotels in Manhattan. Opponents argued that the bill would have a chilling effect on the hotel industry; in terms of new construction, they were right: no applications were filed in 2022.

Aspen Hospitality is aiming to open the new Little Nell in three years. The project will first need to be approved by NYC’s Department of City Planning, the Planning Commission and the City Council.

According to Tishman, the office portion of Rockefeller Center is 93% leased, by like most of the office buildings in the city, the landmark is only bustling with office workers on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

In 2018, Silverstein paid $1.2B for the nine-building former ABC campus on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Last year, Extell Development paid about $900M for the office portion of the campus.