NBC Renews 35-Year Rockefeller Center Lease

NBC, based at Rockefeller Center since the center opened in 1933, said Tuesday it will stay there until at least the year 2022, ending months of speculation that it might move elsewhere here or even to New Jersey.

The decision, due in large part to city agreements on tax abatements and low-interest financing for renovations, was announced at a City Hall press conference that one NBC official described as a “love feast.”

Those at the feast included NBC president Robert C. Wright, Rockefeller Group president Richard C. Volell and Mayor Ed Koch, who quipped that NBC’s commitment to the city “may even outlast my tenure as mayor.”

About 3,500 of NBC’s 7,800-member staff work at NBC’s offices and studios at Rockefeller Center in midtown Manhattan, where the “NBC Nightly News,” “Today,” “Late Night With David Letterman” and “Saturday Night Live” are produced.

NBC’s leases had been scheduled to start expiring in 1994, the last one in 1997. Citing high costs of staying at Rockefeller Center, the company began scouting other sites for its headquarters and studios three years ago.

At least five possibilities were considered, two in suburban New Jersey. Billionaire developer Donald Trump also tried to lure NBC to his proposed Television City project here.

But Trump, whose project would have been built on Manhattan’s Upper West side, called off his NBC effort in October, citing what he called the city’s “long, cumbersome and uncertain” zoning and review processes.

NBC’s decision to stay in New York represented a triumph for Koch, who in recent months has seen several major corporations, among them JC Penney and the Mobil Corp., pull up corporate stakes and relocate.

NBC’s announcement came after the company and city officials agreed on a plan under which NBC will get a $73-million real estate tax abatement that starts in 1989.

City officials said the city’s Industrial Development Agency also agreed to NBC’s request for up to $800 million in low-interest financing from taxable bonds that would be backed by NBC’s credit and repaid by the company.

NBC occupies 10 complete floors in the 70-story RCA Building in Rockefeller Center and has space on another eight floors.

Under terms of its new agreement with the Rockefeller Group, NBC’s leases will be extended through 2022, with options to renew the leases for three 10-year periods through the year 2052.

Asked for comment on the tax and financing agreements between NBC and the city, CBS spokeswoman Alice Henderson said her company will take the matter under review, adding that “we do want to evaluate what kind of deal NBC got, because we don’t want to be at a competitive disadvantage.” ABC had no immediate comment.

Neither ABC nor CBS have said they might leave New York.