The metamorphosis of Times Square began two decades ago as block after block was slowly transformed. One of the
more extreme makeovers can be found on 42nd Street, between Times Square and Bryant Park.
As recently as a few years ago, the block was still attracting the homeless and discount stores. The block received a big
boost when the Condé Nast building, the 48-story glass skyscraper that is also home to the Nasdaq Stock Exchange,
opened in 2000. But it wasn't until this month, when construction of the Bank of America Tower was finally
completed, that the block took on a completely new feel and personality.
"It's safer, it's cleaner and it's beautiful. It's the hub that connects to everywhere," says Nicholas Ghattas, president of
American Properties Inc., which owns the Bush Tower, located on the south side of the block.
The $2 billion, 55-story Bank of America Tower was a joint venture between Bank of America Corp. and the Durst
Organization, one of the city's largest office landlords. The tower stands between 42nd and 43rd street on Sixth
Avenue, diagonally opposite Bryant Park. The environmentally conscious skyscraper also houses on the ground floor
the restored Henry Miller's Theatre, on 43rd Street between Sixth Avenue and Broadway.
Another tenant is the American cuisine restaurant
Aureole, which relocated from a townhouse at 61st Street and Madison. Owner Charles Palmer says he foresaw "a once
in a lifetime opportunity" to reposition his restaurant by moving it to a location that is frequented by business
executives, tourists and locals. After work hours, the bar scene buzzes.
But there is still work to be done. Plans to turn the former Knickerbocker Hotel, at 42nd and Broadway, into a five-star
hotel were scrapped after the building's former owner, Istithmar World Capital, the private-equity arm of the Dubai
government's investment fund, handed back the keys to its lender, Danske Bank, after defaulting on its $300 million
mortgage.
The building was sold in March to a partnership with New York real-estate developer Stanley Chera, Highgate
Holdings and Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp.
The new owners plan to convert the 250,000 square feet of space above a Gap retail store into a hotel, but not a fivestar.
Write to Brittany Hutson at brittany.hutson@wsj.com

CBRE teams begins filling openings that came with leasing downturn
Canaras Capital Management has signed a lease for 5,000 square
feet at 130 West 42nd Street, the 29-story building’s entire 15th
floor.
The deal is one of two to be done in recent months at the building,
since the real estate firm that owns the property, American
Properties Inc., hired a team from the brokerage CB Richard Ellis
to manage the tower’s leasing.
The Outdoor Channel, a California-based television network that
according to its website, “offers programming that captures
theexcitement of hunting, fishing, Western lifestyle, off-road
motorsports, adventure and other outdoor lifestyles” also recently
took space.
The channel signed for 130 West 42nd Street’s entire 28th floor, a
2,500 square foot space that it plans to use for its Manhattan sales
office.
Asking rents in the deals were $40 per square foot, but because the
leasing market still favors tenants – even though deal activity and
occupancy rates have begun to pick up in recent months – both
tenants could have negotiated lower rates.
The Outdoor Channel took over space that had been vacated by
Platinum Funding, a boutique financial firm that remains a tenant in
the building but negotiated with American Properties to downsize
during the depths of the economic downturn. The space was
desirable because Platinum had equipped it with an attractive office
installation and also because it has access to an outdoor terrace with
views of Bryant Park across the street.
Paul Walker, a vice president with CBRE who, with another CBRE
executive Jon Fales, leads the building’s leasing team, represented
American Properties in the two transactions. Walker said that the
move-in condition of the 28th floor at least allowed American
Properties to avoid having to pay for costly incentives that many
landlords have found themselves having to lay out for tenants
during the weak period in the market, typically in the form of
contributions to the construction work involved in preparing a space
for occupancy.
The deal with Canaras, a firm whose website states it specializes in
investments in corporate debt such as junk bonds, did require these
incentives. Walker said that American Properties agreed to pay for
a portion of the cost and oversee the work involved in outfitting its
floor with a custom fit-out, what is known as a build-to-suit. The
financial firm will be relocating from 1995 Broadway, a building
near Lincoln Center at the upper fringe of midtown.
American Properties, a real estate holding company owned by a
Lebanese family, has owned 130 West 42nd Street for nearly 30
years. The property, known as the Bush Building after its
developer, Irving Bush, who erected the distinctive slim tower in
1917, had seen vacancy rise during the recession to around ten
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percent, higher, according to Walker, than almost any other period
during American Properties’ tenure as owner. The vacancy, Walker
said, underscored just how much the midtown market had
weakened last year.
Walker said available space remains in the building, including the
8,0000 square foot ninth floor, which has unusual 18-foot ceiling
heights. He said that American Properties made shrewd upgrades to
the building that have improved its ability to find tenants during the
slowdown, including the decision to install additional windows as
the company performed recent maintenance work on the façade.
“I’m optimistic about the market at this point,” Walker said. “The
owners who have put money into their buildings and present the
best product are going to lease space this year.”
Walker also said the roughly 200,000 square foot building’s 14
floor, a 5,000 square foot space, is vacant.
Ed Wartels of Cresa Partners represented The Outdoor Channel in
its deal and Harry Greely, a broker at Cushman & Wakefield,
represented Canaras.

Situe rue Michel Chiha a promimite du centre d’affaires Aresco et de l’ancien palais Takieddine Solh, le projet Kantari Residence se compose de trios blocs avec 20 unites de 225 a 300 m2 et deux penthouses au 11e et au 12e etage de 475 et 535 m2, Il y a un logement par palier, “Nos etudes de marche ont demontre que la demande de la clientele locale et expatriee est orientee vers les appartements confortables de 250 a 300 m2 avec trios chambers a coucher”, explique Marwan Dalloul, vice-president de la societe American Propoerties Inc., proprietaire du projet.

Achetee il y a une vingtaine d’annee, la parcelle occupe un site avec une large façade le long de la rue Chiha. Cette specificite permet d’avoir des degagements et une belle luminosite pour toutes les chambers. De plus, la façade domine le batiment historique de l’Universite Haigazian qui beneficie d’un jardin. Naturellement, les etages eleves de Kantari Residence ont des vues sur le littoral. “Le site a l’avantage d’etre accessible de Tout-Beyrouth. De plus, le projet est proche du centre-ville, de Verdun, de Clemenceau, de Hamra, du jardin Sanayeh et front de mer. Dans une ville saturee par les emboutelillages, c’est un plus d’etre a promimite des centres d’affaires et des rues marchandes. Comme Spears, Kantari a un grand potential pour devenir une adresse residentielle au centre de Beyrouth”, explique Marwan Dalloul.

Dessine par l’architecte Nabil Azar, le projet Kantari Residence dispose egalement d’espaces commerciaux au rez-de-chaussee. “Nous avons un total de 650 m2 de boutiques. Nous n’avons pas encore decide s ices locaux seront a la location ou a la vente”. Les travaux d’excavation qui seront effectues par la societe du constructeur Hassib Ibrahim vont debuter en automne 2009 et se termineront fin 2011.

La commercialisdation n’est past commence dans l’attente de l’officialisation de la grille de prix.

Fondee en 1983, American Properties Inc. dispose d’un patrimoine immobilier sur trios continents ; Etats-Unis, Europe et Moyen-Orient. “ Nos investissements touchent a la fois les secteurs des bureaux, des commerces et du residential. Notre portefeuille compte des biens fanciers pour d’eventuels developpements et des immeubles de bureaux aux Etats-Unis tells que DNA Tower a Denver, The Bush Tower et 140 a New York. Au Liban, Kantari Residence est notre premier projet immobilier. La stabilite polique et securitaire nous a encourages a demarrer ce projet” dit Marwan Dalloul.

American Properties Inc. of New York, owner of the Denver Newspaper Agency Tower, is trying to decide what to do with office space in that building vacated by the defunct Rocky Mountain News.

One of American Properties’ main options is to find one or more sublease tenants for the Rocky space, which is leased by the Denver Newspaper Agency LLP (DNA), according to local real estate experts.

If the real estate company puts the empty space on the market as sublease space, it will add even more to what’s already a glut of such space in Denver’s central business district.

“We have no details yet,” Marwan Dalloul, an American Properties managing director, said of the Rocky space. “We should know more in a week.”

Dalloul said he didn’t know how much space the newspaper occupied, but that footage is being calculated.

Rocky Mountain News owner The E.W. Scripps Co. of Cincinnati shut down the 149-year-old newspaper on Feb. 27, laying off more than 200 newsroom staffers.

The Rocky occupied the fifth floor of the 11-story, 320,000-square-foot DNA Tower. The L-shaped building’s floors each measure roughly 29,000 square feet.

The DNA Tower is located at 101 W. Colfax Ave.

The DNA was created in 2001 as part of a joint operating agreement (JOA) to publish The Denver Post and Rocky, including handling both papers’ business operations. Those operations included advertising and subscription sales.

The agency continues to publish the Post.

The amount of downtown Denver sublease space more than doubled from November 2008 to mid-February — from 350,000 square feet to 750,000 square feet — as companies downsized because of the recession, according to local office leasing brokers.

“If the Rocky space comes on the market, it would be just another piece of sublease space that would soften the sublease market even more,” said Todd Roebken, national director for tenant representation at Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. in Denver. “It’s bad timing. With companies downsizing, we’re seeing more and more sublease space.”

The upside of all that available sublease space is that companies can get good space at a bargain price, Roebken said.

Brokers say there’s a big gap, ranging from 10 percent to 20 percent, between asking rents and rental rates tenants actually are paying.

“This is a great time for tenants. … We do have a fair amount of sublease space, and there’s more coming,” said Jim McGrath, senior vice president and co-branch manager at the Denver office of Studley Inc., a tenant representation specialist. “We’ll continue to see downward pressure on rents.”

Some of the largest blocks of downtown sublease space on the market include nearly 100,000 square feet of space on five floors at Wells Fargo Center formerly occupied by Newmont Mining Corp.’s headquarters, and 126,000 square feet of Gates Corp. headquarters space on four floors at 1551 Wewatta.

Asking rent for the Newmont space, whose Wells Fargo Center lease expires in 2012, is $32 to $34 per square foot per year full service, according to a brochure for the space. Studley is marketing the footage.

With a full-service rental rate, the building owner pays expenses such as taxes, insurance and utilities.

Newmont’s downtown space is available for sublease because the gold-mining company relocated its main office in late 2008 to the newly built Palazzo Verdi building in suburban Greenwood Village.

The Gates building has sublease space because Gates Corp. has downsized.

Denver Business Journal - by Paula Moore

By STEVE CUOZZO NY Post

January 24, 2006 -- Realty Check

BIG changes are coming to West 42nd Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues. The miserable-looking south midblock is finally going to be redeveloped this year, and the ugly-duckling "Building That Times Square Forgot" to its east will soon come down.

Marwan Dalloul, principal of American Properties, says demolition of the flea market between Bush Tower at 130 W. 42nd St. and 1466 Broadway will start this spring. The site is directly across from where Douglas Durst's giant One Bryant Park is now going up.

"If everything goes well, we should be starting by April or May" on 140 W. 42nd St., the office and retail project he's had on the drawing board for several years, Dalloul said.

American Properties owns Bush Tower as well as the low-rise discount bazaar next door. The new 140 W. 42nd, designed by architects Gruzen Samson, will have 180,000 square feet, including 12,000 square feet of stores. It was designed in 2004 but Dalloul was waiting for the right market.

The whole of 42nd Street is booming, nowhere more so than between Madison Avenue and Broadway where more than 6 million square feet of new offices have been built and mostly leased in 6 different towers over the past few years.

Among the success stories is 275,000-foot 505 Fifth Ave., which Axel Stawski built on spec and is now mostly leased to anchor tenant CIT and other financial firms.

Dalloul, who also plans to build before he signs tenants, said, "Stawski's project was definitely inspiring in some ways. We can only hope to repeat the success he had. He timed it perfectly, and the timing is good today, too."

Dalloul is confident about financing but declined to be specific. He said the only thing that might delay construction would be engineering issues involved with connecting the new building with Bush Tower.

Meanwhile, dorky, six-story 124 W. 42nd St. just east of Bush Tower will finally come down. Sources say that Equity Office Properties, which bought the former Verizon tower at 1095 Sixth Ave. at the corner, is buying the long vacant eyesore from the Kassover family.

The purchase will give Equity elbow room to expand the plaza at the foot of 1095 Sixth. It will get rid of a blight next door to the tower on which it's about to spend $260 million for a new façade and capital improvements.

steve.cuozzo@nypost.com

Crain's New York Business January 17, 2005

42nd St.'s Midsection Expands



New towers, pricey renovations upgrade area east of Sixth Avenue

By Jeremy Quittner

Published on April 21, 2002

In the late 1990s, the Durst Organization jump-started the revitalization of the Times Square area when it built a speculative office tower at 4 Times Square and Broadway. After breaking ground, the developer needed only six months to fully lease the building, with Conde Nast as the lead tenant.

Now, Durst's latest venture, the construction of the world-class Bank of America glass-and-steel tower at 1 Bryant Park and West 42nd Street, is helping transform the corridor's midsection. This part of the 42nd Street area is a hotbed of activity.

There's the upcoming sale of the 1 million-square-foot Verizon Building at 1095 Sixth Ave., the major refurbishing of old buildings, and the construction of several new buildings, some of which are expected to fetch staggeringly high rents, even by Manhattan standards.

Formerly untouchable

"In the last five years, you have seen major real estate families and institutions making commitments to an area that formerly no one would touch," says Harry Blair, managing director at Manhattan-based brokerage firm GVA Williams.

While vacancy rates for Class A commercial space have risen slightly around Grand Central Terminal, rents in the neighborhood are climbing. The increases can be tied to the extensive renovations in the area.

Grubb & Ellis, for example, led a $50 million refurbishment of the 550,000-square-foot 1120 Sixth Ave., between West 43rd and West 44th streets, for which it is the leasing agent. The overhaul included a reskinning of the building and a compression of the garage to add an extra 30,000 square feet of office space. Asking rents are currently hovering around $60 a square foot.

Similarly, GVA Williams is repositioning the nearby National Association Building at 25 W. 43rd St., which was bought in 2000 by Chicago-based Transwestern Investment Co. In addition to a $3.5 million renovation that included upgrades to the lobby and office suites, GVA also gave the building a new address, 28 W. 44th St., to align it with the hotels and posh Ivy League clubs on that block.

The 300,000-square-foot building is now about 90% occupied, says Mr. Blair, who is the leasing agent for the building.

Through the roof

More dramatic than the area's renovations is the new construction that will upgrade the Sixth Avenue axis. The 2.1 million-square-foot Bank of America tower, expected to be completed in 2008, will hit the market with rents of more than $100 a square foot, says developer Douglas Durst.

One block east, New York developer Axel Stawski broke ground last March on 505 Fifth Ave., a 300,000-square-foot speculative building that will have about 25,000 square feet of retail space and 275,000 square feet of Class A office space when it is completed next fall. Asking rents are expected to be more than $70 per square foot.

Similarly, American Properties plans construction in a lot adjacent to Bush Tower, calling the new structure 140 W. 42nd St. Slated for completion in 2007, the building will cost $70 million and will contain 180,000 square feet of commercial Class A space.

"The whole area is changing because of Bank of America and new construction," says Robert Von Ancken, executive managing director for Grubb & Ellis. "Owners have decided to upgrade from Class B to Class A buildings."

Business Week

APRIL 25, 2000

Upstart Telcos Battle for Equal Access -- to Office Buildings They're running into brick walls with landlords who want a piece of their revenues

Marwan Dalloul doesn't have a problem letting telecommunications companies have access to the the roof or basement of his office building on 42nd Street in midtown Manhattan. But they'll have to pay him first. That puts Dalloul, a partner at Manhattan-based American Properties, in the crosshairs of a growing number of upstart telecoms. They want the Federal Communications Commission or Congress to mandate open access to commercial buildings across the country at a price the government -- not landlords, like Dalloul -- decides upon.

Such a mandate, say the telecoms, would ensure fair competition in the sizzling business of providing broadband, bundled data, voice, and video services to multitenant commercial properties. Ultimately, they add, injecting competition into state-of-the-art telecom services, which remain pricey in big urban areas, would be good for the economy. For example, a T-1 line can cost up to $1,500 a month for just one tenant in a commercial office building. "The speed at which people gain access to new services and lower prices is affected by how quickly equal access to the buildings is achieved," says David Turetsky, senior vice-president for law and regulatory affairs at fixed wireless provider Teligent.

But building owners such as Dalloul say any legal intervention would be a taking of their private property and a violation of the Constitution unless they are fairly compensated for it. What's more, they don't want to be held responsible for the equipment on their premises. "I think it's ridiculous. If there's a problem with the equipment, then we'll get blamed for it and have to fix it," says Dalloul. At stake is the future of 375 new telecom businesses that booked revenues of $26.9 billion collectively last year. But with the exception of only three companies, all failed to turn an operating profit.

BIG SPENDERS. Called competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs), these upstarts sprang from the 1996 Telecommunications Reform Act, a massive congressional missive aimed at giving life to moribund telecom markets. CLECs represent a wide variety of technologies ranging from fixed wireless providers such as Winstar Communications and Teligent, to high-speed DSL providers like Covad Communications, to high-speed business Internet connectivity providers such as IntelliSpace.

All told, CLECs have invested more than $30 billion since 1996 and continue to invest $1 billion a month to build out their networks. This alternative telecom infrastructure now includes 10.4 million access lines, which represents about 7% of total access lines in the U.S., according to the Association for Local Telecommunications Services, a CLEC trade organization.

With their spiffy new technology and the clout of the 1996 reform act, the CLECs have begun to take on the Bells, Sprint, and MCI WorldCom. They hope to skim off high-paying, data-munching business by delivering bundled local communications services or discounted services to urban areas at rates that are 30% cheaper than those offered by the big providers.

So far, the telecom upstarts have chalked up impressive growth. Revenues have risen more than 11-fold since 1996, according to New Paradigm Resources Group, a consultant group that serves CLECs. Seeing the growth and the possibility of picking off revenues from the slow-moving Bells, venture capital has gushed to the CLECs to the tune of $7.43 billion in 1999, according to Credit Suisse First Boston.

But, led by Winstar and Teligent, the CLECs have managed to get into only 16,000 of about 750,000 commercial office buildings in the country. That's not enough to achieve the critical mass they need to compete. And many CLECs claim landlords are slowing their growth by refusing to give them access to rooftops and basements so they can place dishes and switches. The landlords, in some cases, claim that the traditional telco facilities, which usually provide high-speed capacity, are enough. In a boom market with a tight real estate picture, some landlords feel no compulsion to sign deals for telecom diversity, particularly when many tenants are locked into multiyear deals.

Worst of all, say the CLECs, some building owners try to gouge them by demanding exorbitant equity stakes or hefty percentages of service revenue. "Some building owners have taken a position that unless you are going to give us a piece of your business, we are not going to talk to you," says a top executive at one large CLEC who asked not to be identified.

EXAGGERATED CLAIMS? In contrast, the Bells and other traditional local-phone providers usually get carte blanche to go into buildings. The CLECs complain that their established rivals are still riding on their past role as fulfillers of the Universal Service Act, which mandated providing phone service to as many Americans as possible. But in today's wireless world where universal access is no longer an issue, they claim that the Bells' entrée to properties gives them a major leg up on rivals. "You cannot compete in the telecom market if you're paying a building owner 10% of your revenues when your monopoly competitor is getting free access," says Glenn Manishin, a partner at Patton Boggs, the Washington (D.C.) law firm that represents Winstar.

Commercial landlords counter that accusations of price gouging are wildly overstated. According to a survey of 4,000 office-building owners taken by the Building Owners & Management Assn. (BOMA), the average rent per square foot in the U.S. is $20 dollars, of which only 12 cents comes from revenue-sharing agreements with CLECs.

The landlords say CLECs sing a sad song to Congress while singing a happy tune to expectant shareholders. And building owners also believe that the jousting for access is no more than a manifestation of a healthy market economy. "Nobody is telling the CLECs that they have to do the deal. If it's too expensive, they can go elsewhere," says Gerry Lederer, BOMA's vice-president for government and industry affairs.

WHAT IS "FAIR"? Some CLECs claim to be having no trouble at all signing up buildings. For example, Marc Josephson, CEO of New York-based IntelliSpace, thinks that government intrusion is unnecessary and that companies will find a way in the free market to provide better services at lower cost. Even the landlords admit that giving multiple telecom providers access will make their buildings more marketable and improve the quality of their rental space.

But a showdown is building. The CLECs have petitioned the FCC to issue a ruling on access, and insiders say it could come as early as this summer. To date, these same sources say, the FCC has come down strongly in favor of equal access. But the real estate and telecom lobbies wield considerable power in the nation's capital.

On Capitol Hill, Representative Michael G. Oxley (R-Ohio), chairman of the telecommunications subcommittee of the House Commerce Committee, is sponsoring a bill that would force access to rooftops of commercial buildings but award building owners "fair" compensation. What fair means still hasn't been specified. Lobbyists on both sides don't see any legislation passing Congress this year. The Oxley measure is flatly opposed by the real estate lobby and is regarded as only a prelude to more serious legislative attempts next year. Meantime, the CLECs will keep knocking on the landlords' doors.

NEW YORK TIMES May 23, 2004 By JOSH BARBANEL

It is only in the new Times Square of glitzy super-size 40 story buildings that the tall aluminum-and-gray glass tower planned for the south side of 42nd Street just off Seventh Avenue could seem small and modest, almost too tiny to attract notice. ''Anywhere else this would be considered a big building,'' said Marwan Dalloul, vice president of American Properties. The company, controlled by a patient Lebanese family, bought property on the street more than two decades ago and waited for Times Square to turn around. The new 23 story building, to be known as 140 West 42nd Street, is to have 143,000 square feet of space for office and commercial use. It is down the street from the 48-story, 1.6 million-square-foot Condé Nast building, and across from the site of the 50-story, 2.1 million square foot Bank of America Building. The height of the new building was pared back at the request of the Landmarks Preservation Commission so that it would be a slightly shorter, modern echo of the Bush Tower, a narrow 29-story gothic building next door that is a city landmark and influenced a decade of skyscraper construction after it was completed in 1917. And with a landmark building on the other side as well, the former Knickerbocker Hotel, built in the French renaissance style with a mansard roof, the architect, Jordan Gruzen of Gruzen Samton, turned this to his advantage and designed a building that was more understated and less flashy than many other Times Square buildings. ''We tried not to be demonstrative, or to show off or be aggressive, but to do a softer building, to do justice to our landmarked neighbors,'' he said. ''It is finely detailed and is not going to disappear. It is going have a very quiet dignity.'' The new building site was assembled from three small lots to create a 75-foot-wide building, and development rights from from nearby buildings were used to add more bulk. Mr. Dalloul said that demolition of a five-story building on part of the site would begin this fall, with construction to begin before year-end. He said the company was in talks with several major tenants but would go ahead and put together its financing and begin construction before any large leases were signed. Construction is to be completed by the fall of 2006, he said. The close coordination between the Bush Tower, also owned by Mr. Dalloul's group, and 140 West 42nd Street will also let tenants break through walls between the two buildings and create much larger floors. Although floors in the new building range from 9,000 square feet on the lower floors to 5,000 in the highest, tenants could create combined floor areas of up to 25,000 feet. Mr. Dalloul said that although occupancy in the Bush Tower slumped in the last downturn, occupancy was now 95 percent and rents on new leases had risen. At the new building, he said he hoped for rents of more than $60 a square foot, from financial firms to architects to Broadway producers.

The Bush Tower; also known as 130 West 42nd, has now been taken off the market. Managed and leased by American Properties, whose parent company is Lavoisier, the 231,000 square-footer had been offered through CB Commercial, but sources say offers were not meeting with the pricing expectations. The offshore group also owns that little development site to the west next door at 140 West, and now plans to develop it themselves.

The vast majority of the building is leased, and CoStar is showing only a 12,000 square-foot retail space available for an asking of $110 afoot, along with some scattered small office suites.

"We are trying to assemble some of the retail so it's being left vacant," explained Nicholas Ghattas of American, who confirmed they themselves are going to develop the land and continue to upgrade the building. "It's a landmark, and is a modern building in a historical shell," he said.

They are working on a feasibility study to determine the best use for the next door parcel, which has 75,000 square feet as of right, and up to 130,000 square feet with variances. "It can be a hotel or an office or even four stories of retail only," suggested Ghattas, whose parent company has owned it for 18 years and has self-managed it onsite for 15 years.

"We've moved it from what it was... to one of the better buildings in the area," he continued. "Our tenants are friendly, and we are in the building and always attend to them, and we have 24-hour services."

The plans will capitalize on the resurgence of Times Square and Bryant Park.

August 20, 2003

Colliers ABR, Inc. announced that Pronto Pizza has signed a 10-year, 3,000 SF lease at 135 W. 41st St. in New York City. John Grotto, of Colliers ABR, represented the tenant in the transaction. Nicholas Ghattas, of American Properties, Inc., represented the landlord.

 

April 21, 2002

WHEN the 29-story Bush Building at 130 West 42nd Street was finished in 1917, it was a sudden skinny apparition on the Midtown skyline. Now a development group that has owned it for two decades is preparing plans to put up a flanking tower that would be separated by six inches, but would be connected on each floor.

Irving T. Bush, born in 1869 and beneficiary of the sale of his father's oil refinery in Brooklyn to Standard Oil, could have taken it easy. But as a youth he saw the disorganization of New York's port facilities — ships waiting for limited dock space, confused traffic, competition for facilities — and in 1902 founded the Bush Terminal along the Brooklyn waterfront, with a goal of providing coordinated port activities. This complex grew to 250 acres, with 21 miles of railroad track. In a profile in The New Yorker in 1927, the writer Niven Busch Jr., said Bush had the "uneven, angry energy of a man who has been confronted all his life with the opportunity to loaf."

Bush felt he could provide a similar coordinated approach in office and showroom space in Manhattan for his Bush Terminal tenants. In 1916 Bush developed the plans for a 29-story tower on a 50-foot front lot on the south side of 42nd Street between the Sixth Avenue and Broadway. His Bush Terminal International Exhibit Building was conceived to provide office space for importers and manufacturers as well as an expansive clubroom with a library specializing in books on manufacturing and a restaurant.

Bush hired the architect Harvey Wiley Corbett, who had already designed several Brooklyn factory buildings. To Corbett, the idea of a building more than 400 feet high and only 50 feet wide was exhilarating, not silly. He later predicted a city of buildings literally half a mile high, with escalators on the outside.

Corbett made the Bush Building a razor blade of the Gothic, one long soaring rise of medieval elements combining into a single vertical. The interior was also Gothicized, with heavy, deep-relief choir-style oak paneling, oriental carpets and antique furniture in the club areas. "One of the truly beautiful things in the city," Vanity Fair said in 1917, when the building was finished. Bush had his office at the top floor of the building.

As he did later with his apartment building at 1 Fifth Avenue, Corbett used brick striping in three colors to give the huge blank side walls a paneled effect. In 1919 the writer Harriet Gillespie singled out this feature for particular praise in the magazine Architecture, contrasting Corbett's design with more typical treatments: "We leave the side wall, the most conspicuous part of our buildings, to bask in unadorned ugliness, while we slather our fronts with every conceivable style."

In 1920 the magazine Literary Digest reported that the building's visitors included a buyer from a Paris restaurant who ordered electric dishwashers, someone from Venezuela who ordered 1,000 dozen portable bathtubs for babies and a woman who started a baby bonnet business from the building and wound up with an operation employing 500 workers.

Although never the tallest building in New York, it was for years one of the most admired by critics. In 1926, the architectural historian Talbot Hamlin said that "at night, when floodlights set the delicate detail of the upper portions agleam, there arises the romance of a new American Beauty."

But Lewis Mumford was one of the few unconvinced that Corbett was a visionary. Writing in Architecture in 1927, he noted that Corbett's grand gesture was compromised by his own promotion of urban density; covered by a new building to the west, the Bush Building "no longer has its original aesthetic importance." Mumford questioned the basic premise of skyscrapers: "Congestion on the scale that Mr. Corbett would have it is far too expensive a public luxury," he wrote, especially in regard to the demands of traffic. And in 1933, after he had taken over the "Skyline" column in The New Yorker, Mumford even derided Corbett's trompe l'oeil panel effect, calling it one of Corbett's "notorious clichés."

Bush temporarily lost control of his empire in 1933, but then gained it back and held it until his death in 1948. Later, the Bush Building faded into the general seediness that overwhelmed Times Square. Around 1980 a Lebanese family group bought the Bush Building and modernized much of the interior.

Now, with other investors, the owners are working on a new building directly to the west. Marwan Dalloul, a family member, says he was just a child at the time it was acquired, but he is now working on the project, being designed by the architects at Gruzen Samton.

Jordan Gruzen, a partner, says the firm's 23-story building, replacing much lower buildings, is to rise six inches away from the Bush Building — a requirement of earthquake codes — but tenants will be able to make connections at each floor like the accordion connections and sliding metal plates between railroad cars. This will nearly doubling the 5,000-square-foot floor plates of the original tower.

Mr. Gruzen says the new tower will be glass with "a soft receding look," to defer to the older building, where restoration work will replace missing finials and copper details, which have been removed over time. "We want to recreate its original value," Mr. Dalloul said.