Time Warner to Flee Time Warner Center

Time Warner Inc. has announced a tentative deal to move its New York headquarters out of its namesake Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle and into the proposed Hudson Yards development at 10th Avenue and 33rd Street.

The 80-story skyscraper at the city’s old rail yards is being developed by Related Cos. (New York), which also developed the Time Warner Center 10 years ago. At the time, the center – with its jazz theatre, Mondrian hotel, pricey condominiums and luxury Shops at Columbus Circle (including a Whole Foods in the basement) – was considered the savior of the busy West Side neighborhood just below Lincoln Center and just west of Central Park.

While the move is regarded as a coup for Related, which is also moving its headquarters out of the Time Warner Center and into the 26-acre Hudson Yards project (presumably to be renamed Time Warner Center), it leaves Columbus Circle again without a defining corporate presence.

Related is expected to pay Time Warner about $1.3 billion for the company’s old Time Warner space, which Time Warner would lease for about five years, until the new tower is completed.

This year, Related started work on a 47-story office tower in Hudson Yards, at the northwest corner of 30th Street and 10th Avenue, which will be home to Coach, L’Oreal USA and SAP, the software company.

The new complex would comprise the two office towers, a glass-walled luxury mall between them, a cultural institution, a 72-story residential building and a 60-story mixed-use tower with a hotel, office space and condominiums at the top.