Quirky Leases at 601 W. 27th St.

NEW YORK CITY-Quirky Inc., an online product development company launched in 2009, is quadrupling its space in a move to the Terminal Warehouse Building in far-west Chelsea. The address of the building--601 W. 27^th St.--puts Quirky across the street from the Starrett-Lehigh Building, the sale of which GlobeSt.com reported on Monday.

Ben Kaufman, the company’s founder and CEO, tells GlobeSt.com that the move was brought about by growth. Still, the need for more space didn’t deter him from sticking to some basic requirements as far as the new, envisioned space was concerned.

“We wanted a building that had some sort of history in the realm of invention and moving industry forward, and the Terminal Warehouse Building has that,” Kaufman says. “And we needed a space that was flexible enough for us to be able to do some light manufacturing, more on the prototyping side of things, combined with the day to day office stuff that we encounter.”

Studley senior managing director Greg Taubin represented Quirky and was tasked with finding space that was unusual in its usage but also located in an area that is extremely tight as far as availability is concerned.

“This was one of the more challenging assignments that I’ve had recently, primarily due to the nature of the business and the use within the office space that they would be conducting business wise and their size,” Taubin says. “The type of space that they were looking for--figure 25,000 to 30,000 rentable square feet--in the submarket of which they wanted to be is extremely tight.”

Taubin says the landlord, Waterfront New York Realty Corp., has started converting storage space in the building to office space, and that the openness of the space Quirky will occupy suits what Kaufman was looking for.

“We were trying to avoid spending major capital and secure space that was existing space that we would retrofit but Ben’s mandate was really finding that rustic, aesthetically pleasing type of space with high ceilings, good light, a very vibrant open type of feel,” he says.

Quirky will move from 628 Broadway in SoHo, where the company occupies roughly 6,000 square feet. It plans to move by year end. While Taubin represented the company in the 10-year lease, Waterfront New York Realty Corp. was represented in-house by Chris Flagg.