{"id":67131,"date":"2025-12-10T19:59:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T19:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/67131\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T19:59:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T19:59:11","slug":"oup-sells-manhattan-offices-for-40-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/67131\/","title":{"rendered":"OUP Sells Manhattan Offices for $40 Million"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"article\">Oxford University Press has finalized the sale of its New York City offices at 198 Madison Ave. in a $40 million deal with an investor group headed by Benchmark Properties. The sale makes good on OUP\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.publishersweekly.com\/pw\/by-topic\/industry-news\/publisher-news\/article\/92207-oxford-university-press-is-leaving-its-new-york-offices.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">initial decision<\/a>, in 2023, to vacate its longtime workspace, which sat on the top six floors of the block-long building.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article\">The sale comes just one week after Scholastic announced the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.publishersweekly.com\/pw\/by-topic\/industry-news\/industry-deals\/article\/99200-scholastic-sells-hq-distribution-facility.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">sale of its own Manhattan headquarters<\/a>, in addition to its primary warehouse located in Jefferson City, Mo., and plans to lease back part of the properties. Net proceeds for the Scholastic deal are expected to top $400 million. <\/p>\n<p class=\"article\">In a statement, an OUP spokesperson told PW, &#8220;We moved out of our office at 198 Madison Avenue in 2023, to find an alternative space that better suited our ways of working. We continue to operate in New York and have moved to a new office space on Fifth Avenue.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"article\">OUP had occupied the B. Altman Building, the landmarked flagship store of the shuttered department store chain in Manhattan, since the mid-1990s.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article\">In 2023, former OUP global academic publisher <a href=\"https:\/\/www.publishersweekly.com\/pw\/by-topic\/industry-news\/publisher-news\/article\/97454-niko-pfund-named-director-of-yale-university-press.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Niko Pfund <\/a>described how changing work habits post-pandemic prompted the publisher to explore alternatives to its sprawling Midtown office space. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to spend money on empty real estate when that money can be better invested in our publishing and our workforce,\u201d Pfund told PW.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article\">While the press has continued to grow over the past few years\u2014most recently with its acquisition of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.publishersweekly.com\/pw\/newsbrief\/index.html?record=5621\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Karger Publishers<\/a> this November\u2014it has also been hit by a number of layoffs both in New York and in the U.K. Last month, OUP <a href=\"https:\/\/www.publishersweekly.com\/pw\/by-topic\/international\/international-book-news\/article\/99090-oxford-university-press-plans-113-layoffs-in-u-k.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">laid off 113 of its U.K. employees<\/a> across multiple divisions, and in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.publishersweekly.com\/pw\/by-topic\/industry-news\/publisher-news\/article\/95921-oxford-university-press-lays-off-two-teams.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">September 2024<\/a>, OUP laid off its U.S.\/North America design team and U.S. content transformation and standards team. Contract negotiations with the OUP USA Guild, which represents the press\u2019s domestic workforce, also brought to light union concerns about inadequate compensation and working conditions, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.publishersweekly.com\/pw\/by-topic\/industry-news\/publisher-news\/article\/95311-union-strikes-outside-u-s-office-of-oxford-university-press.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">resulting in a strike<\/a> in the summer of 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oxford University Press has finalized the sale of its New York City offices at 198 Madison Ave. in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,34880,63,34879,31911],"class_list":["post-67131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-niko-pfund","tag-nyc","tag-oxford-university-press","tag-scholastic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}