.Then...

In 1931, Starrett-Lehigh Combined Form With Function

Taking up one city block between 11th and 12th avenues and West 26th and West 27th streets, the behemoth Starrett-Lehigh Building was born out of necessity and ingenuity and was a rare American example of the International Style of architecture popular in Europe at the time.

The unique idea of combining warehousing with internal railcar and freight truck offloading came about through a joint venture between Starrett Investing Corp. and the Lehigh Valley Railroad. Its goal was to alleviate the heavy traffic that would surely come as a result of the bustling business of the 1930s from west of the Hudson River.

In June 1930, Starrett Investing Corp. signed a 99-year lease with Lehigh Valley Railroad to have Starrett Brothers & Eken construct the 1.8-million-sf building. The asset was an innovation in warehousing technology, with railcars running directly into the first floor, while huge elevators would take the freight directly to higher floors, making "every floor a first floor," as noted in the 1986 New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission report on the building.

In 1930, Col. William A. Starrett was quoted as saying, "When water and rail and automotive transportation can be joined up in a great terminal, where under the same roof, executives, sales, storage, assembly and distribution all can be carried on in a single terminal unit we will have defeated the major affliction of modern metropolitan life—traffic congestion."

With tracks leading directly from the Hudson River piers into the building, freight cars from boats could also be moved into the 30,000-pound capacity elevators to truck pits on the upper floors.

"Its immense scale and presence on the Hudson River takes us back to the grand era of shipping and the port of New York City," says Elise Quasebarth, partner and architect at Higgins and Quasebarth Restoration. "These great huge elevators in the interior could actually hold trucks, which could go up on the floors. It got the loading off the streets."

But railcar freight transportation and waterway transport gave way primarily to trucking, especially after the completion of the Holland Tunnel, the George Washington Bridge and the Lincoln Tunnel, in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In addition, the Lehigh Valley Railroad, much like other freight railroad companies in the Northeast, experienced a decline in the 1940s. Thus the railroad ended its association with the Starrett-Lehigh building in 1944. The tracks were removed from the ground floor, although the building continued to draw tenants from the warehousing and manufacturing industries, according to the landmarks report.

"The building was intended to be factories on every level," explains Robert Marino of Robert Marino Architects, a current tenant. "I don't think it was ever wildly popular the way it was envisioned; and it was not mated to any particular manufacturing use."

The vision for the building was innovative indeed, but the building's architecture was just as pioneering and stands as an example of the International Style, relatively uncommon for US buildings in the 1930s. In fact, the building was part of the International Exposition of Modern Architecture at the Modern Museum of Art.

The building was designed by Cory and Cory, which specialized in industrial buildings, along with Japanese architect Yasuo Matsui. Matsui also designed 40 Wall St., now the Trump Building.

In 1986, 55 years after it was completed, the Starrett-Lehigh was recognized by the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission, which noted that the building was "one of the finest examples of 20th century industrial-warehouse architecture in New York City."

Now...

Home to Fashion, Media and High-Tech Tenants, the Asset is 96% Leased

The Starrett-Lehigh Building contains roughly the same amount of space as the Empire State Building. But, by the late 1990s, the building was more than 40% empty—yet another underutilized, outdated industrial property on the Far West Side. Despite its deteriorating condition, the asset retained a sleek, modern look that was unique for a structure of its age and type and, at the height of the late '90s tech boom, it caught the attention of 601 West Associates, an investment group headed by Mark Karasick, Harry Skydell and David Werner and financed by Credit Suisse First Boston. Purchasing the structure from the Helmsley-Spear Co. in 1998 for $151 million, the group originally considered redeveloping the space for big-box retail before taking note of a growing demand for high-tech and artists' space in the area.

"When Helmsley was selling it, there were a number of studios here already," says Karasick. "We thought this was a good opportunity to continue in that direction.

"Re-dubbing the structure "The Starrett-Lehigh Center for Creative Arts, Media & Technology," the new owners targeted young dot-coms and the growing community of photographers and artists that had begun attaining critical mass in the West Chelsea area. The ownership launched a $30-million capital improvement program, adding five new passenger elevators and rebuilding woefully insufficient air conditioning and electrical systems while refurbishing the building's red-brick façade and wall-to-ceiling windows under strict Landmarks-regulated guidelines. Out went companies like Allied Book Binding and Motorola, which operated a repair facility on the ground floor, and in came upstart office users like advertising guru Jay Chiat's now-defunct internet startup Screaming Media.

Starrett-Lehigh was hard-hit by the tech burst and 9/11 but, as the quality of the building's amenities continued to improve, its caliber of tenants grew upscale.

At the top of the tenant list today is Tommy Hilfiger, which relocated its US headquarters to Starrett-Lehigh last year after selling its namesake headquarters at 25 West 39th St., and Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, the first marquee corporate name to take a chance on the massive-yet-remote outpost back in 2000. In fact, Stewart recently added to the building's public profile by filming her reality TV show, The Apprentice: Martha Stewart here; contestants even dormed within the 160,000-sf space.

Another company that saw the building's potential early on was Hugo Boss, which also relocated its New York showroom and North American corporate headquarters to Starrett-Lehigh in 2000. "They literally moved from a prime spot on Fifth Avenue to here," Peter Thorsen, director of leasing for 601 West Associates, says. "For someone to do that four, five years ago, that was a big deal. It was a big leap for them."

Among the building's attractions are its floor plates—floors one through nine are a whopping 150,000 sf and all floors are 60,000 sf or larger, save for a 20,000-sf penthouse occupied by John Hardy Jewelers—and its 13-foot-high ceilings. It's that expansiveness that has made Starrett-Lehigh, currently 96% leased, into a western outpost of the Fashion District.

Access to the building's upper-floor setbacks has also created wraparound outdoor terraces that take full advantage of the building's views. "Most offices have 270 degree river views—even the most northeast corner of the building has river views," Thorsen says.

While a handful of manufacturing and industrial tenants remain, Karasick says they will all be vacating in the near future. "At the time we came in, the average rent was between $5 and $6. For a while, we were getting in the low $40s for new rents and now we're in the mid $30s. After 9/11 we got beat up, but we've started coming back. Right now, the average rent is about $25 or $30. We have wanted to have a mix of tenants, and it is continuing to evolve."

Thorsen says he is currently discussing an office lease with a Fortune 500 company, a move that would bring a new level of prestige to the once-barren West Side. "It's actually a company in the Top 100," he says.

Further solidifying the building's financial foundation, the Shorenstein Co. purchased a passive minority stake in the building as part of a $219-million recapitalization arranged by Carlton Advisory Services last year.

As a landmarked structure, updating Starrett-Lehigh proved to be an arduous task that continues on to this day. "It has taken a tremendous amount of effort to bring the building to what it is," says Michael Goldsmith of Ludwig Michael Goldsmith Architects, the lead architect behind Starrett-Lehigh's overhaul. "Every set of drawings had to be reviewed by Landmarks, and in a building of this size, there were a lot."

One of the first things the developers did to smooth the transition from raw manufacturing hub to high-tech destination was replace one of its three giant, 30-foot-wide truck elevators—Starrett-Lehigh is one of only two buildings in the city still equipped with one—with additional passenger elevators. The building, which had only had four passenger elevators in its earlier life, now has nine.

"It was especially important for tenants to move deliveries in and out easily," Karasick says. "As we began to transform from serving 500 people a day to serving 3,000, we converted one truck elevator to two passenger elevators and we're about to convert an additional truck elevator into two more passenger elevators."

In order to expand the building's front entrance and lobby space, the truck elevator exits on 26th Street were closed off, with trucks redirected into the basement, exiting on 27th Street. "The lobby, as small as it is, is now three or four times bigger than it was," Goldsmith says. "We got rid of the existing entrance in the re-design, which is part of why Landmarks supported it—clearly it was not the original entrance to the building. Sure enough when we took off what was there, the original facade was underneath. The real challenge was getting the infrastructure up to speed with the new tenancy. The new air conditioning required cooling towers be put on the roof. It is functionally very difficult to provide air conditioning and electrical for tenants in a landmarked building."

While the MTA's No. 7 line extension will one day bring subway riders to 11th Avenue, in the meantime, free shuttle buses to transport workers to and from Penn and Grand Central stations are included with the cost of rent.

"We felt there was this kind of potential right off the bat," Karasick notes. "Did we realize it would be this big of a difference in six, eight years? No."