MySpace owner News Corps. is paying $1 million per month to rent an enormous office space near LAX for its social networking property. Too bad the office is sitting totally empty because 40% of the MySpace was laid off after a barrage of other shortcomings, and moving into the new space became a bad idea. The 12-year lease is worth about $350 million, and News Corps. might have to just take it on the chin.
The deal commits News Corp to 420,000 sq ft of space in Playa Vista, near Los Angeles International airport. When it was signed Peter Levinsohn, the former president of News Corp’s Fox Interactive Media unit, used a memo to staff to hail the deal as “the single biggest real-estate transaction in Los Angeles in the last 25 years.”
Yes, the single biggest real-estate transaction in LA in the last 25 years for the greatest social networking site ever invented by man. Oh MySpace, to think of the superlatives we’ve wasted on you.
Empty MySpace office blow for News Corp [FT]
