Time staffers fear layoffs ahead of move to Brookfield Place

Time Inc. is starting to prep its brands for the big move from Rockefeller Center to Brookfield Place downtown — and it appears the move is running slightly ahead of schedule.

Real Simple Editor Kristin van Ogtrop and her staff will be among the first to move, insiders said. She has been told the magazine will be going in late October.

If nothing else, it should give her plenty of source material for her magazine on how to get a new dwelling in order.

Once she figures it out, the rest of the titles will slowly follow. First in line — the other lifestyle titles. The last to move — the newsweeklies People, Sports Illustrated and Time.

“The culture shift will be seismic because it is all open space” at Brookfield, said one source of the pending move.

Real Simple will get to see everything brand new — but that, of course, is a mixed blessing as Condé Nast’s talent discovered when the earliest transplants to One World Trade Center had to contend with a rat infestation.

The rats had apparently managed to ride the elevators up to the floors in the 20s occupied by Vogue.

The upcoming move also has folks at Time Inc. a bit jittery. There is widespread belief that there will be a new round of cutbacks prior to the move.

That belief was fueled by a revelation last month by a government watchdog group, Good Jobs New York, that publicly traded Time Inc. was given a $7 million grant from the World Trade Center Job Creation & Retention Program that it will be allowed to retain even if it axes nearly one third of its current 2,900-person workforce. GJNY found that the payroll can drop as low as 2,000 by 2017 — and Time Inc. could still retain the grant money.

And as one insider pointed out: “They aren’t going to move someone only to lay them off downtown.”

The company currently occupies 1.5 million square feet in Midtown’s Time & Life Building where it has been located since the building opened in 1959.

The new lease is for six floors and 700,000 square feet at Brookfield Place — less than half the floor space.

A spokeswoman Tuesday did little to spike speculation of more cutbacks.

“As part of our ongoing transformation, we are always looking at ways to work smarter and to operate more efficiently,” she said.