French luxury home goods maker Daum Inc. and its sister dinnerware company Haviland will officially move out of its longtime Madison Avenue storefront to 4,500 square feet of office and retail space at 499 Park Avenue, where the business had been recently operating a temporary store for the holiday season.
With its new lease, Daum and Haviland will be taking 1,500 square feet on a ground floor space and 3,000 square feet on the concourse, brokers close to the deal said. The lease is for ten years, with asking rents at $250 per square foot for the ground floor and $45 per square foot for the concourse.
Daum Inc. was rapidly growing out of its old space at 694 Madison Avenue, where it had been for 20 years, and needed to move to a new location where it would be “in the middle of the action on Park Avenue, where you have this critical mass of flatware, porcelain, antiques and home furnishings,” said Jonathan Krivine, a Director at Newmark (NMRK) Knight Frank who represented Daum in the deal.
“They were really in kind of a zone where it was largely jewelry,” added Mr. Krivine about the company’s Madison Avenue store.
Daum had six years remaining on its Madison Avenue lease.
Hines, 499 Park Avenue’s landlord, was represented by Gene Spiegelman, Alisa Amsterdam, and Michael O’Neill, all of Cushman & Wakefield (CWK).
The 499 Park Avenue building had a ground floor space that was once the home of disgraced lawyer Marc Dreier and his now-defunct law firm Dreier LLP. The ground floor was also the former site of Bloomberg LP’s headquarters before it moved into its own tower at 731 Lexington Avenue.
“It hadn’t been in the retail inventory in quite a while,” said Mr. Spiegelman.
French luxury porcelain maker Bernardaud formerly occupied the entire ground floor space to the north of the lobby but shrunk its storefront to half the size, Mr. Spiegelman said.
Daum and Haviland, both century-old French luxury goods makers who have been operating in the US market for the past thirty years, held a soft opening at the new 499 Park Avenue storefront for the 2011 holiday season. Both are now renovating the space—which will also house offices for Daum and Haviland—and are slated to open this spring, said Mr. Krivine.
Once complete, Daum and Haviland will officially be neighbors to fellow luxury collectables vendors like Scully and Scully and James Robinson, just as Mr. Krivine had wanted.
Daniel Edward Rosen, Staff Writer, is reachable at DRosen@Observer.com and can be followed at Twiter.com/Dedwardro
