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’s initial decision, in 2023, to vacate its longtime workspace, which sat on the top six floors of the block-long building.
The sale comes just one week after Scholastic announced the sale of its own Manhattan headquarters, 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.
In a statement, an OUP spokesperson told PW, "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."
OUP had occupied the B. Altman Building, the landmarked flagship store of the shuttered department store chain in Manhattan, since the mid-1990s.
In 2023, former OUP global academic publisher Niko Pfund described how changing work habits post-pandemic prompted the publisher to explore alternatives to its sprawling Midtown office space. “We don’t want to spend money on empty real estate when that money can be better invested in our publishing and our workforce,” Pfund told PW.
While the press has continued to grow over the past few years—most recently with its acquisition of Karger Publishers this November—it has also been hit by a number of layoffs both in New York and in the U.K. Last month, OUP laid off 113 of its U.K. employees across multiple divisions, and in September 2024, 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’s domestic workforce, also brought to light union concerns about inadequate compensation and working conditions, resulting in a strike in the summer of 2024.
