Livestream to move HQ to former 3rd Ward Bushwick facility

Livestream will be opening up its offices in the former 3rd Ward space in Bushwick shortly, according to the New York Times. It’s a move that had been rumored for months.

The story covers much more than the opening of the new facility, though. It also explores a light manufacturing operation Livestream is launching, its relationship to the neighborhood and Manhattan and the larger Brooklyn tech scene story.

One of the trends highlighted in the Times story is the lack of office-ready space for medium sized companies. Yet traveling around Brooklyn, there are lots of underutilized or empty buildings in the borough. They just haven’t been perceived to be in the right places. It will be interesting to see if the placement of three big companies far outside of Dumbo starts to expand what entrepreneurs think of as an acceptable location.

From the NYT story:

Etsy, Kickstarter and Livestream had the resources, clout and luck to claim major office space — and in Kickstarter’s and Livestream’s cases, renovate it themselves — while small start-ups in Brooklyn can operate out of homes or co-working spaces. But midsize companies like Vice Media, or smaller, growing ones, have struggled to expand in or move to Brooklyn. Mr. Haot said he spent years looking for new offices in the area before stumbling on the Bushwick building.

With the exception of the boom years around World War II, the market for move-in-ready Brooklyn commercial space has never been tighter, Mr. [Christopher] Havens [a Brooklyn real estate specialist] said. There is less total space available in Brooklyn than the amount of vacant office space in Manhattan, he said. Things may not loosen up until two or three years from now, when more warehouses are fully converted and more new buildings open.

Livestream appears to be the first technology company of its size in Bushwick, but Mr. Haot is confident that someday, all the warehouses surrounding his new building will house his peers. For now, he will settle for bringing them to Bushwick through video.