The National Women’s Soccer League has scored a long-term lease for its new Midtown headquarters, the sports organization and the building’s landlords announced Monday.
The professional soccer league inked a 10-year deal to occupy 21,000 square feet in the 38-story Fred F. French Building at 551 Fifth Ave., nearly double the size of its existing headquarters on Madison Avenue.
The league, in which the city’s Gotham Football Club plays, will take over the entire eighth floor of the roughly 430,000-square-foot building at the corner of 45th Street. It moved its headquarters from Chicago to the Big Apple in 2022 and has since tripled its staff, causing it to require additional space. The league’s existing 11,000-square-foot lease on the third floor of 292 Madison Ave. expires in October, according to information from CoStar.
“Our new headquarters reflects the tremendous growth we’ve seen at our league,” said Lauren Lopez, the league’s chief people and culture officer, “as well as the energy and innovation that are hallmarks of culture as we continue to pave the way for the next generation of female athletes.”
The Feil Organization-owned 551 Fifth, whose lobby will feature National Women’s Soccer League branding when the team moves in this fall, is just south of the NBA’s and NFL’s headquarters. The asking rent was $58 per square foot.
Completed in 1927, the Art Deco building is occupied by about three dozen other retail and office tenants, including Morton’s, The Steakhouse; the Tommy Bahama Restaurant; and law firms Sadis & Goldberg and Rheingold Giuffra Ruffo Plotkin & Hellman, according to information from CoStar.
The Feil Organization was represented by Andrew Wiener, Kevin Driscoll and Henry Korzec in-house, while the National Women’s Soccer League was represented by CBRE’s Conor Denihan and Patrick Moroney. Feil’s portfolio spans more than 24 million square feet of industrial, commercial and retail properties as well as more than 5,000 residential buildings, according to its website.
Created in 2012, the National Women’s Soccer League comprises 14 teams across the country. The Gotham Football Club, which was originally called Jersey Sky Blue, launched in the New York metropolitan area in 2006 and plays at Sports Illustrated Stadium in Harrison, New Jersey.
