LargaVista and Related Seek ‘Gateway to Soho’ Tenants
By Tobias Salinger June 19, 2014 2:00 pm
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LargaVista Companies and Related Companies showed off the green-laden and glassy designs for their planned seven-story, 83,000-square-foot retail and office building coming to 300 Lafayette Street in Soho at a party for brokers on the site last night.
Architect Rick Cook of Cook + Fox Architects presented his Landmarks Preservation Commmision-approved plans which will incorporate a three-floor prime retail space and 11,500-square-feet of outdoor garden terraces at the event sponsored by CBRE, the building’s leasing agent.
“As architects, we look at sites like these as missing teeth, these remarkable opportunities,” said Mr. Cook during a speech in the garage behind the BP gas station currently on the property. “The site is about visibility and a gateway into Soho.”
LargaVista’s Marcello Porcelli, who told the group of around fifty brokers and real estate movers and shakers that his father Oscar bought the site in 1976, said the finished building will be a tribute to a man who arrived in the country in 1957 with $30 in his pocket and later bought more than 50 properties all over the city.
“He inspires me every day and reminds me that anything is possible with the right work ethic,” said Mr. Porcelli.
Related bought into a long-term lease for the property in February, and, while executive vice president R. Webber Hudson declined to state asking rents or a total cost for the building, he and Richard Hodos of CBRE said the 30,000-square-foot retail space could draw a single tenant looking to cash in on the 300-foot wraparound frontage.
“It’s going to be attractive to a global brand that wants to acquaint themselves to Soho,” said Mr. Hudson, who expects construction to begin later this year. “It’s all state-of-the-art infrastructure you can’t usually find in Soho.”
