Susan Farley for The New York Times

At the Fashion Accessories Center on West 33rd Street, Ronald Gordon, left; David L. Levy, center, of the real estate firm Adams & Company; and Daniel M. Friedman pay homage to a common theme, the handbag.

REGIONAL MARKET / MANHATTAN
Showrooms That Fit Like a Glove
By C. J. HUGHES

The Fulton Fish Market is packing up and moving to the Bronx. The butter-and-egg district vanished decades ago, well before the area became known as TriBeCa. Only a handful of advertising agencies still call Madison Avenue home. And steep rents in a newly fashionable residential neighborhood are putting the squeeze on the tiny Flower District near Chelsea.

As the list grows, finding Manhattan blocks that are tied tightly to one industry is getting as hard as finding a T-shirt tag that reads "Made in U.S.A."

Yet an effort to group like-minded businesses in the Garment District seems to be flourishing, although such groupings are not splayed out but arranged under single roofs.

Seven specialty buildings managed by Adams & Company, a Manhattan real estate firm, dedicate 1.9 million square feet of commercial space to specific segments of the fashion industry: coats, for example; or accessories like gloves, hats and jewelry; or children's clothes.

The buildings are some 99 percent leased, according to the company, although it has taken a while. For years, Adams struggled to condense the children's clothes industry from three locations into the Children's Wear Center at 34 West 33rd Street, and after some money-losing years has recently brought the building close to full occupancy.

Typically, businesses might cluster to realize economies of scale. Buying raw materials like copper or cotton in bulk instead of individually, for instance, could save each manufacturer lots of money.

Here, though, almost none of the 290 tenants still makes clothes on site, and the philosophy seems closer to that in locating a Burger King near a McDonald's, or clustering theaters and restaurants: to succeed, you need to make the options easy for the customer.

In the Garment District, there are buyers for stores from around the world. "They don't want to spend their week in New York running from building to building," said David L. Levy, a principal of Adams & Company. "They like the idea of just hopping an elevator to go to their next appointment."

For women's handbags, a buyer would head to the Fashion Accessories Center, a 13-story, 319,200-square-foot 1920 building at 10 West 33rd Street, where the "list by type of product" option on the lobby's touch-screen kiosk directs him or her to the right floor.

After extensive renovations, the offices within the Fashion Accessories Center sport tall windows and shiny oak floors, and pinpoint track lights have replaced dingy drop ceilings.

The spaces vary from 900 square feet to 20,000 square feet, though most are in the 2,500-square-foot range, and they lease for $35 a square foot annually in 3- to 10-year leases. That price, real estate professionals say, is 50 percent higher than the market rate in the neighborhood for Class B buildings, meaning somewhat dated properties with less than splendid addresses.

Smaller tenants, like the handbag makers Chinese Laundry, Hobo International and Barganza, value these clean, bright spaces because they work well as showrooms.

"Our space used to have a Willy Loman look," said Linda DeRosa, likening her old linoleum-layered showroom to a set piece in "Death of a Salesman."

In 2000, Ms. DeRosa moved her handbag-and-belt business at 320 Fifth Avenue, where she had been for years, to a 1,600-square-foot space on the 10th floor of the Fashion Accessories Center. Her rent rose about 10 percent, but she says that the change was worth it.

"It's more sparse here, so the merchandise can speak for itself," she said.

Adams likes the spaces' modular nature. Because these tenants tend not to customize their offices, they can be easily swapped in and out.

At the Outerwear Center at 463 Seventh Avenue, a 22-story, 408,511-square-foot building that was constructed in 1925, there are 54 tenants, just one shy of full occupancy. They pay $30 a square foot for spaces that range from 1,000 square feet to 22,000 square feet, Mr. Adams said.

Other buildings command less rent per square foot, but mostly because the tenants take larger spaces. In the Menswear Center, a 19-story, 160,000-square-foot building at 42 West 38th Street, for example, tenants like Perry Ellis pay $27 a square foot, Mr. Levy said. Larger tenants do tend to customize their spaces.

Adams takes a piecemeal approach to renovation, sprucing up spaces only as leases expire, part of a $30 million process that has been going on since the firm took over the properties in 1999. Other touches have included installing new elevators and electrical systems, and repainting hallways.

"They were in tough shape," Mr. Levy said.

The transition from old to new fashion businesses - from noisy, cramped factories to hushed, airy front offices - has created some interesting bedfellows at the Contemporary Fashion Building at 231 West 39th Street. Orderly showrooms for Hard Tail Forever and James Perse are down the hall from Gelberg Braid, whose looms have been clattering away since 1930.

This is something of an anomaly. For the most part, fashion houses in the Garment District have outsourced pattern making, cutting and storage to companies overseas - the neighborhood suffered a 31 percent drop-off in clothing factory jobs from 1988 to 2000, and a 61 percent decline in textile factory jobs in the same period, according to figures from the Fashion Center Business Improvement District, which leases space in an Adams building.

This means that Garment District fashion houses require a lot less space, so they can move from the avenues - their longtime locations - to smaller spaces on the side streets. In fact, two old garment buildings, 1350 Broadway and 1328 Broadway, are now being converted to office space, forcing tenants to look elsewhere, a situation that has benefited Adams, Mr. Levy said.

But as SoHo discovered long ago, there are also aesthetic benefits to setting up shop in former factories. "These open spaces have a creative and artsy identity, which appeals to young designers," said Barbara Randall, the business improvement district's executive director.

John Powers, regional chairman of the real estate firm CB Richard Ellis, who sees many examples of decentralization by Manhattan industries, said the fashion business was bucking the trend, becoming more centralized instead of less.

"The competitive advantages of being clustered together have been offset over time by functionality and cost," Mr. Powers said. "But fashion operates more like a retail business, so it's still beneficial."



Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | RSS | Help | Back to Top
 
- posted by Michael P. Whelan @ 6:19 PM