http://www.nypost.com/seven/06162009...dg__174487.htm
HIGH TIME FOR HIGH LINE BLDG.
Manhattan's latest hot spot -- the new High Line Park -- will connect with a renovated office and retail building,
seen here in an artist's rendering.
June 16, 2009
COMING soon to the new High Line Park: A gleaming, 15-story boutique office and retail building through which the park literally passes.
Since the long-awaited elevated park between Gansevoort and West 20th streets opened last week, strollers have been awed by the Standard Hotel that straddles it, but baffled by the 103-foot-long tunnel at 14th Street topped by 11 stories of structural steel.
But CB Developers' 450 W. 14th St., officially the High Line Building, will start coming into focus next month when installation of curtain-wall glass is expected to start.
The tiny tower now under construction is a rare commercial breed. Designed by Morris Adjmi Architects to LEEDS Gold standards, it will have a mere 78,000 square feet of office space on 10 new floors, two of which have already been leased to Helmut Lang.
The glass office floors will stand atop a landmarked, masonry base -- a former meat cold-storage facility -- containing 7,636 square feet of retail under a 23-foot-high ceiling, and over 4,000 square feet in the basement.
The park runs above the store section and beneath the offices.
It's "the only building that features a structure which is entirely integrated with that of the High Line," Adjmi said.
The office floors are being marketed by a Newmark Knight Frank team led by Brian Waterman. Asking rents run from the mid-$70s to the mid-$80s.
Winick's Lori Shabtai and Kelly Gedinsky are handling the retail, where the ground-floor "ask" is $300 a foot, "significantly less" than other retail nearby, Gedinsky said.
Until the park opened last week, it might have been hard for many to visualize.
Charles Blaichman, a CB principal, chuckled, "I think a lot of people didn't actually get it."
Winick's Gedinsky echoed, "It's hard for people to visualize something that does not exist."
But the park is already so popular, employees inside 450 W. 14th St. will have a lot of company.