Hoping to earn rental income, The New York Times is redesigning its office

The New York Times will vacate eight floors of its midtown headquarters in a bid to make some money and improve its efficiency.

“The current way we have configured our office makes us slower and less collaborative,” New York Times CEO Mark Thompson and Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said in a memo to staff Friday. “It is also, frankly, too expensive to occupy this many floors when we don’t truly need them.”

The plan, part of a ongoing reorganization of The New York Times, will require about 400 employees to move out of the building to nearby office space as the newsroom is redesigned by the design firm Gensler.

The New York Times Building, a 52-story glass and steel structure on Manhattan’s West Side, was opened in November 2007 and designed by architect Renzo Piano. Its other tenants include developer Forest City Ratner and law firms Covington & Burling LLP and Osler and Hoskin & Harcourt LLP.

Many news organizations have either rented out or sold their newsroom space in recent years to shore up their finances. The Washington Post, The Seattle Times and The Minneapolis Star Tribune all sold their land and relocated to different buildings in a bid to increase revenue.

Big corner offices, including those of the publisher and the CEO, will be eliminated in the spirit of purging legacy excesses, according to the memo.

“The coming redesign will introduce more team rooms and common spaces,” Thompson and Sulzberger wrote. “And, we will do away with big corner offices, like the ones you see on the 16th and 17th floors, including, yes, the publisher and CEO’s offices. We don’t need to preserve those vestiges from a different era, so we won’t.”

Here’s the memo: