The Albanese Organization has finalized and refined its vision for 510 W. 22nd St., the boutique office tower it plans to erect next door to the High Line Park.
Garden City, LI-based Albanese’s plan for the 170,000-square-foot tower just west of the elevated greenway is considerably different from last winter’s announced description — inside and out.
What was originally to be a nine-story, all-steel structure will now be a 10-story concrete one. Terraces first intended only for the second floor have been added to the seventh, eighth and 10th floors as well. They’ll be set into facade cutbacks meant to evoke the days when trains passed through High Line factories.
Floor plates will range from 15,500 to 19,600 square feet. Ceiling heights will average 10 feet; column-free window expanses will offer far-ranging views.
The originally all-glass structure with non-opening windows will now include some operable ones, rare in an office building — architect Rick Cook of Cook + Fox “thought it was critical because of the uniqueness of the site for an office building,” said Albanese President Christopher Albanese.
As part of the project’s “holistic,” environmentally attuned profile, the exterior will feature metal “shelves” extending 2 to 6 inches from the facade. “They shade the building the way a baseball cap shades your face,” Albanese said.
The 510 W. 22nd address is now a vacant five-story garage, a small chunk of which will be retained to meet zoning requirements. What’s now a blank wall abutting the High Line — one of the insanely popular park’s few eyesores, although largely shielded by trees until winter — will become a “reach out and touch it” glass facade, as Albanese put it, similar to those of apartment buildings astride the park.
The developers said in January they needed a 75,000-square-foot anchor tenant to get the project off the ground. Now, Christopher Albanese and CBRE Vice-Chairman Brian Gell, leader of the leasing team, say an office commitment as small as 30,000 square feet might be enough to secure a $90 million construction loan for the $150 million project.
That’s especially true if there’s a deal as well for ground- and second-floor retail space.
Once intended as gallery or event space, it’s now ambitiously designed for a full-scale store or restaurant use with entrances on West 21st and 22nd streets.
Albanese wants to break ground as soon as it can to exploit the High Line corridor’s singular commercial appeal, a function of the park’s gravitational pull on fashion and media tenants, and limited office supply compared with apartments.
Charles Blaichman’s park-straddling 450 W. 14th St., smaller than the Albanese project, quickly filled up once it opened two years ago. When Albanese bought the Chelsea Art Museum building on 22nd Street in 2010, it almost immediately leased the entire 34,000-square-foot property to Hewlett-Packard.
Gell said, “The market in the area is so strong, rents in Midtown South exceed many buildings in Midtown. We believe [510 W. 22nd] is so unique it will warrant a premium rent” from the low $80s per square foot to the low $90s.
One thing hasn’t changed — the new tower is still designed to meet LEED platinum standards.
Albanese has been a leader in “sustainable” design, having developed the environmentally advanced Solaire, Visionaire and Verdesian apartment buildings in Battery Park City.
Two new office tenants have signed on at RFR Realty’s recently upgraded and repositioned 757 Third Ave. Global IT infrastructure services provider NTT America took the 22,809 square-foot 14th floor and NTT DoCoMo USA, too, the 13,194-square-foot 16th floor.
Both new tenants, owned by Japan’s giant NTT Communications Corp., are leaving behind 101 Park Ave.
The 500,000 square-foot tower has 150,000 feet theoretically on the market, but sources said deals are pending for nearly half the space, and a lease is out for an additional 25,000 feet.
In the 10-year deals, the ownership was repped by Jones Lang LaSalle’s Alexander Chudnoff, Mitchell Konsker and Matthew Ginberg and by RFR’s Steve Morrows. The tenant reps were JLL’s Scott Vinett, Newmark Knight Frank’s Tatsuru Kono and Cushman & Wakefield.
The brokers couldn’t be reached or declined to comment.
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It was a good office and retail fit for women’s footwear company Camuto Group. Corporate parent VCS has taken 27,000 square feet at 1370 Sixth Ave., renewing and expanding its office and showroom space from 21,000 square feet.
At the same time, company founder Vince Camuto’s namesake expanding shoe brand has taken the 2,300 square-foot storefront at 123 Fifth Ave. The asking rent was $275 per square foot.
Newmark Knight Frank Retail’s Gregg Gropper and Jay Gilbert represented landlord the Torkian Group on the store deal; Camuto was repped by PBS Real Estate’s Laura Pomerantz.
In the office lease, Newmark’s Jeff Rosenblatt and Rika Lissio repped Camuto and CBRE’s Paul Amrich, Patrice Meagher and Kerry Powers acted for the ownership.