Kunskapsskolan USA, a Swedish-based school, has signed a 15,000-square-foot deal at 38 Delancey Street on the Lower East Side to serve as a long-term location for a middle school the organization opened in the city last year.
The school, which Kunskapsskolan calls Innovate Manhattan, committed to the spaced for 10 years. It will be relocating to 38 Delancey Street from 52 Chamber Street, a space it took last year to begin operations in the city preliminarily until it could find a more permanent home.
Innovate Manhattan has 330 students in grades six through eight. The school is Kunskapsskolan’s first US education facility.
Innovate Manhattan will occupy a portion of 38 Delancey Street’s third floor, a space with asking rents around $35 per square foot according to an announcement released by the school.
The space is new construction; 38 Delancey Street, at the corner of Delancey and Forsyth Streets, was finished in 2010. Though most of the building is comprised of residential condo and rental space, the larger base floors are for commercial and retail tenants.
Kunskapsskolan, which employs a Swedish teaching methodology at its schools and has 34 locations in Sweden and the UK, said it expects to roll out a number of schools in the US.
The organization has hired the burgeoning brokerage company Lee & Associates to represent it in this planned expansion.
“We will represent them exclusively as they roll-out more schools throughout the US,” Peter Braus, a senior executive at Lee & Associates who is a lead broker on the team representing Kunskapsskolan, said in a statement.
Mr. Braus, along with real estate executives Jim Wacht and Joel Herskowitz, recently launched the New York branch of the national brokerage chain Lee & Associates. So far the group has had success recruiting brokers. The deal with Innovate Manhattan and the announcement that more leases may be in the works shows that it is following up on that progress with deals, a promising sign for the fledgling New York office.
“This is a very exciting deal for Lee NYC,” Mr. Braus’s statement said.
