The media company behind brands including W Magazine, Bustle and the now-shuttered Gawker owes its landlord almost $3 million in back rent and other expenses after abandoning its lease on Park Avenue South, a new lawsuit claims.
BDG Media, founded by entrepreneur Bryan Goldberg, inked a lease with the real estate firm Columbia Property Trust back in 2016 for the 10th and 11th floors at 315 Park Ave. South, taking 34,100 square feet overall, according to a lawsuit Columbia filed Thursday in New York County Supreme Court. The lease set the company’s rent at about $3.1 million per year, or $260,000 per month, according to the suit.
But BDG stopped paying rent to Columbia as of October 2023, ultimately racking up about $2.3 million in missing payments, the suit claims. When Columbia notified BDG in early December that it needed to pay off its debt by the end of the year, an attorney for the media company replied that it planned to surrender its space to the landlord by then, according to the lawsuit. Columbia replied that if BDG chose to leave its 315 Park Ave. South office, that would mean it had abandoned the space and defaulted on its lease, and it would still need to pay back all of its missing rent, the suit says.
BDG did indeed leave its space at the end of the year but without paying Columbia any of its missing rent, the lawsuit claims. It also owed the real estate company about $183,000 in late fees and about $275,000 for expenses like electricity and insurance, bringing its total bill to more than $2.7 million, according to the suit.
Columbia is suing BDG for breach of contract and attorneys’ fees. A representative for the real estate firm declined to comment on the lawsuit, and representatives for BDG did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
Columbia bought 315 Park Ave. South for about $350 million in 2015, property records show. It is 89.7% leased with estimated office rents of $72 to $88 per square foot, according to commercial real estate database CoStar. Office tenants at the Flatiron District building include PitchBook and the artificial intelligence company Harvey, which just recently doubled its footprint at the property, while retail tenants include Equinox and Just Salad.
The company’s total real estate portfolio spans about 7 million square feet across New York, Washington, D.C., Boston and San Francisco. It recently sold its Greenwich Village office building at 799 Broadway to Savanna for $255 million — less than the value of its debt — and it sold its Midtown South office building at 149 Madison Ave. to a limited liability company linked to Enchanté Accessories in 2023 for $77 million, a roughly $11 million loss.
Goldberg, who was a Crain’s 40 Under 40 in 2019, founded his current media firm in 2013 as Bustle Digital Group. The company acquired Gawker in 2018 after it was infamously shut down following a lawsuit by former wrestler Hulk Hogan, but Goldberg then announced in early 2023 that they would again shut down the relaunched site, citing “‘a surprisingly difficult’ start to the year,” The New York Times reported at the time.
It was unclear as of press time which specific BDG brands operated out of the 315 Park Ave. South office. Crain’s reported at the time of the 2016 lease that Bustle itself would be moving into the building, and 315 Park Ave. South is still listed as the contact address on BDG’s website, indicating that it served as the headquarters for many if not all of its publications.
