BlackRock finished moving its headquarters to 50 Hudson Yards in March, and work on the investment giant's new digs helped Philip Pitruzzello, a BlackRock managing director who steered the development, win the Corporate Real Estate Executive of the Year award from CoreNet Global's New York City chapter.
CoreNet is a nonprofit association representing corporate real estate executives.
“Our goal was to design a tech centric office that was flexible and could guide people in whatever work of the future mode they wanted to undertake,” Pitruzzello said in an interview. “It's bright, it's clean, it's you beautiful space, well lit, comfortable for employees and infused with technology.”
While that design ethos seems to be a common refrain echoed by many employers these days as they seek to bring workers back to the office, Pitruzzello said BlackRock was already planning for the future when it signed the 1 million-square-foot lease in 2017.
“We were thinking ahead….to what our workplace of the future needed to be,” he told CoStar News. “We were able to add collaborative space, space for convening with our clients, and space to study some of the most important issues facing our clients” at the new location, he said.
The pandemic's disruption of the office market and how the health crisis changed the way people work, did in fact influence how BlackRock designed some elements of its new digs. As BlackRock was building its new home “all the way through COVID” before it began to relocate in December with the move completed in March, it has featured more flexible walls and flexible furniture versus it having a “more traditional hard wall environment” in the past, Pitruzzello said.
“If we needed to create a larger teaming space, we could do that easily,” he said, adding employees are back at least four days a week. “We thought a lot about what the future would bring. And our biggest initiative was to create a hyper flexible office environment. So that whatever the future brings, we'd be able to respond quickly to the needs of our business.”
The nearly 3-million-square-foot 50 Hudson Yards is the fourth-largest office building in New York and the biggest to debut during the pandemic. The tower officially opened its doors in October of last year. It’s part of developer Related Cos.’ mega Hudson Yards mix-used complex, the largest U.S. private development. Facebook parent Meta is the largest tenant at 50 Hudson Yards having leased 1.25 million square feet, according to CoStar data.
BlackRock’s new home, designed by NBBJ, also won CoreNet NYC’s Project of the Year award for space spanning more than 300,000 square feet.
While other project winners may have smaller footprints, they all look to share some common threads.
“Companies are enabling their space to work seamlessly, whether you're working at home or working in the office,” Larry Charlip, president of CoreNet NYC and a former real estate executive at video game publisher Take-Two Interactive, said in an interview. “A lot of the technologies that we're seeing in spaces today are really geared toward understanding how occupiers and employees are utilizing the space, and how to make it seamless.”
The award ceremony at the newly redeveloped Casa Cipriani in lower Manhattan attracted some 700 attendees. Charlip said it was the biggest turnout in recent years and included many heads of New York real estate at major companies including Google, Blackstone and PepsiCo.
Here’s a list of other winners.
Project of the Year – Under 25,000 Square Feet
The Playground, 375 Park Ave., New York
Studios Architecture
Project of the Year – 26,000 – 36,000 Square Feet
Arch Manhattan, 1114 6th Ave., New York
IA Interior Architects
Project of the Year – 37,000 – 50,000 Square Feet
1 Willoughby Square, 235 Duffield St., Brooklyn
FXCollaborative
Project of the Year– 50,000 – 85,000 Square Feet
Mitsubishi Corp. (Americas), 151 W. 42nd St., New York
NBBJ
Project of the Year– 86,000 – 150,000 Square Feet
City Harvest’s Cohen Community Food Rescue Center, 150 52nd St., Brooklyn
Ennead Architects
Service Provider of the Year Winner
Katie Nilsen, Vice President, E-J Electric Installation Company
Young Leader of the Year
Michael Martino, Solutions Engineer, CBRE