No more nomadic roaming for Kickstarter: the 50-employee company is putting down roots with the purchase of what the New York Post dubs “a ruin”—the landmarked husk of a Greenpoint pencil factory. Oh, to be Lena Dunham and have the appropriate generation-defining wisecrack for this situation!
CEO Perry Chen informed the community board back in June that, “We are hoping to stay at 58 Kent [Street] forever—to be our permanent headquarters.” What is this “permanent” of which you speak? Whatever happened to pulling up stakes with every new round of funding?
In a detail sure to warm the hearts of typewriter-loving startup folk across the city, the landmarked building was home to the Eberhard Faber Pencil Company factory for nearly a century, from the 1870s until its relocation in the 1950s. But at this point, according to thePost, just about all that remains is “a two-story wall of mixed red bricks and boarded arched windows.”
Kickstarter plans to convert this pricey shell (cost: $7.5 million) into an idyllic startup HQ, complete with rooftop garden penthouse. Behold, the perfect synecdoche for Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s economic strategy.
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