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Bryan Goldberg’s Bustle Digital Group is being sued for nearly $3 million in back rent for “abandoning” the lease on its offices at 315 Park Avenue South. As Crain’s reports, the lawsuit alleges that Bustle Digital Group stopped paying rent to Columbia Property Trust in October 2023 — a few months after Goldberg shuttered Gawker, citing a decision to “reprioritize some of our investments” — and eventually left the space in December without settling their debt.
Goldberg, who founded Bustle and the Bleacher Report and later acquired and subsequently shut down both Gawker and the Outline, had reportedly been paying $3.1 million a year to rent the tenth and 11th floors of the boutique office building near the Flatiron. Per the suit, BDG now owes $2.3 million in back rent. Columbia Property Trust’s lawsuit claims the company also owes late fees and other expenses, bringing the total sum to $2.7 million.
Rent wasn’t the only trouble with 315 Park, a former Gawker staffer tells me: There were never enough chairs or desks. “We were told that if we wanted to work there we had to work out of the kitchen.”