The Changing Face of Park Avenue

BANKING on Park Avenue? Naturally. Merging and acquiring? Of course. But shopping? Who would think of Park Avenue as a retail destination?

A growing number of customers, to judge from the crowds in the new four-level Syms clothing store at 400 Park Avenue, on the corner of 54th Street. ''We have been very pleased with the performance of the store in its first year,'' said Marcy Syms, president and chief operating officer of Syms Corporation.

Three blocks south, patrons huddle with their cell phones while being fitted for made-to-measure suits in Saint Laurie Merchant Tailors at No. 350. After 84 years downtown, Saint Laurie has found Park Avenue to its liking. ''My sales are up about 30 percent,'' said the chairman, Andrew Kozinn. (Granted, that is a difference of only three suits a day, but at prices ranging up to $1,095, it is no small achievement.)

''Look at the natural light coming in,'' he said. ''Look at the dignity of the area, how pleasant it is, how convenient. So what if Park is not a retail strip the way other sections are? That's almost inconsequential.''

Park Avenue is not in danger any time soon of being mistaken for a mall. But it is changing. Best known as a corporate canyon extending north from Grand Central Terminal, linking the blue-chip world to the blue-blooded one, Park Avenue is assuming a more public face. Ground-floor spaces that were once the undisputed province of understated financial institutions are increasingly tenanted by glitzy showrooms, upscale merchants, chain stores and even -- gasp! -- a restaurant.

At the depth of the recession, about 70 percent of the retail space on Park Avenue south of 51st Street was empty or available, said Robert L. Billingsley, executive vice president of Colliers ABR, agents for several of the towers. Today, there are few vacancies. ''The mausoleums have all filled up,'' Mr. Billingsley said.

With good reason. Rents on Park Avenue might run around $100 to $150 a square foot, one half to two thirds the cost of comparable space on Madison Avenue, said Kate D. Coburn, director of retail services at Cushman & Wakefield. And pedestrian traffic is more than ample.

''There is a constant stream of people on Park Avenue that's been ignored for a while,'' Ms. Coburn said. ''The north end has had retail. It's now moving south.''

New Yorkers could sip the trend themselves beginning in 1996 when a Starbucks opened at 430 Park Avenue, near 55th Street. Across the avenue, the Staples office-product chain planted its bright-red corporate flag.

Two months ago, Borders Books and Music opened a four-level store in the Ritz Tower at 57th Street. And earlier this month, Audi opened a seven-car showroom at No. 250, at 47th Street, as the first of what it said will be a worldwide network of ''showcase dealerships.''

The year ahead promises more big changes:

* Direct entrances to the Metro-North train platforms at Grand Central Terminal are to be opened at Park Avenue and 48th Street, Madison Avenue and 47th Street and in the pedestrian walkways that run through the Helmsley Building, at 46th Street.

* A condominium apartment tower, the first new building along this stretch of Park Avenue in almost two decades, is to be built at the southeast corner of 60th Street by Zeckendorf Realty and a Whitehall Street Real Estate Fund managed by Goldman Sachs & Company.

* Xerox Corporation will open a 20,000-square-foot showroom on 47th Street at the base of the Bear Stearns Building, No. 245, where the lobby and plaza are also undergoing a $13 million renovation.

* Lever House will be looking for a new tenant after 600 Lever Brothers employees move to Connecticut. The Lever Brothers, Chesebrough-Pond and Helene Curtis units are being joined to form Unilever Home and Personal Care USA, with offices in Greenwich and Trumbull.

Some 100 employees of the parent company, Unilever, will stay on Park Avenue for the time being, but the future occupancy of the glass-walled landmark at No. 390, between 53d and 54th Streets, is in question.

(So, too, is the fate of the charming Christmas carousel that has been on display for 45 holiday seasons. ''We're going to pack it away with every intention that it will be there for the 46th year,'' said John T. Gould Jr., a Unilever spokesman. But the tradition is threatened by the impending departure of Lever Brothers and the death earlier this year of Jack Lowery, who designed the carousel each year.)

WHILE Lever Brothers moves off the avenue, the Colgate-Palmolive Company is to stay in place at No. 300 into the next century, as its 41-year-old headquarters building gets a much-needed renovation. Already, new mahogany paneling can be seen in the lobby, between 49th and 50th Streets.

Colgate's lease, which was to have expired in 2000, has been extended to 2010, said Jennifer Marcus Barbara, a spokeswoman.

As part of that renewal agreement, the Uris estate, which owns the building, has undertaken an $18 million upgrade. The tower is getting ''a whole new inside,'' said Joseph C. Peters, senior managing director of Cushman & Wakefield, the managing and rental agent for the building.

Besides the work in the lobby, the heating, ventilating and air-conditioning systems are being modernized, elevators are being speeded up and electrical power is being boosted. Roofs and sidewalks are also being repaired. The renovation is by Swanke Hayden Connell Architects, which also designed the reconstruction of 320 Park Avenue as the new headquarters of the Mutual of America Life Insurance Company.

Both 300 and 320 Park Avenue were originally designed by Emery Roth & Sons, as were a majority of the 23 office towers built after World War II between 46th and 60th Streets. Park Avenue was the vineyard where the shapes of Roth were stored, built in an extraordinarily coherent style, love it or hate it: the corporate glass box.

Because image was so important at these buildings, no retailers needed apply. That legacy will endure at the Zeckendorf tower, which is to rise 35 or 36 stories.

''To create a great residential building, retail is not appropriate,'' said Arthur W. Zeckendorf, a principal in Zeckendorf Realty. The developers would prefer to have a grand lobby and a sitting or dining room.

Clearly aiming for the top of the market, the Zeckendorf project will have only one apartment per floor, ranging from about 5,200 square feet (five bedrooms) to 3,000 square feet (four bedrooms) on the uppermost floors. Ceilings will be 10 feet high and living rooms will be 20 by 30 feet. Condominium units like these might sell between $1,000 and $2,000 a square foot.

THE new building will replace a 12-story structure at No. 515 that was built as an apartment house in 1912, to designs by Denby & Nute, and converted to office use in 1958. It once housed the World Zionist Organization but has been abandoned for years. Demolition is to begin soon.

Frank Williams & Associates, an architectural firm whose credits include the Four Seasons and Rihga Royal Hotels, is designing the Zeckendorf building. ''We are going to try hard to draw heavily on prewar buildings,'' said William Lie Zeckendorf, a principal in Zeckendorf Realty. The facade will be clad in brick, cast stone or limestone.

The Zeckendorfs would not would not assign a development cost to the project, in part because plans are still being drawn up. They said the project did not need any zoning variances or special permits.

Their building will sit in a transitional zone between mid-Manhattan and the Upper East Side. It was just this mix that drew Borders Books and Music, based in Ann Arbor, Mich., to the Ritz Tower at No. 461.

''We're the most conveniently located book-music superstore for one of the finest, most educated populations in the world,'' said Robert F. DiRomualdo, chairman and chief executive of Borders. In addition, he said, office workers fill the place at lunchtime and tourists provide steady traffic.

While Borders has more than 185 stores nationwide, it tailors its inventory to some degree. Mr. DiRomualdo said the 42,600-square-foot Park Avenue store would feature literature, business, computers, arts and fine arts. ''If we don't sell more furnishing magazines and home decor books there than in any other store in our company, I'd be surprised,'' he said.

Drawing on the same well-to-do clientele, Simply Caviar, a mail-order house based in Long Island City, Queens, will open a 60-seat restaurant and food store in February in No. 350, next door to Saint Laurie. A private dining room with room for 20 is to open later, said Irvin Crusoe, a partner in Simply Caviar with David Mills. The architects are Yui Bloch Design.

Both the dining room and store will specialize in caviar, smoked salmon, foie gras and lobster. ''A lot of people in the area indulge in that sort of thing,'' Mr. Crusoe explained. ''They want to have caviar and Scottish salmon for lunch. Now they can walk downstairs.'' At dinner, he said, the restaurant expects to attract guests from nearby hotels.

The hotel trade has proved to be a boon for Saint Laurie, said Mr. Kozinn, its chairman. ''I'm getting tourists that I never got before,'' he said. ''South Americans. Midwesterners. Staying at the Waldorf. Staying at the Palace. I guess they don't have stores where they come from.''

Saint Laurie is a small (2,700-square-foot) but signficant addition to Park Avenue -- first, because it has pushed retail farther south and second, because it has been a downtown fixture since it was founded in 1913 as the Independent Trouser Company by Mr. Kozinn's grandfather, Samuel Kozinsky. Indeed, its office and factory remain at 895 Broadway, near 20th Street.

The new store was designed by Milton Glaser and features a giant yellow tape measure on the wall. Tabletops brim with bolts of heathery tweeds and silk-like ''Super 100'' wools, as well as cashmeres, cheviots, saxonies and flannels.

It is a far cry from a teller's cage.

''If you were an owner on Park Avenue, your choice upfront would probably always be a financial institution,'' said David A. Green, senior managing director in the retail division of the Insignia/Edward S. Gordon Company, agents for 350 Park Avenue.

''With the downsizing in the financial industry,'' he said, ''there just haven't been enough players to fill the space on the ground floors of these buildings.''

Mr. Billingsley, of Colliers ABR, does not count out financial institutions -- ''Banking is not all going to be done in a match box,'' he said -- but neither does he deny the retail allure of the Park Avenue denizen.

''Wouldn't you love to have an Audi dealership and all those guys with their year-end bonuses strolling across the street?'' he asked. Colliers is the rental agent at No. 250, where the corner space had been empty four or five years after the Banco di Sicilia relocated in the building. Mr. Billingsley said he had been approached by discount drugstores and ''gourmet'' delis but turned them away. Then came Audi.

''The fact that the banks were no longer moving into these locations made this an almost classic institutional use,'' said Leon Casper, senior director at Cushman & Wakefield, which represented Audi. At 47th Street, a showroom would be seen by exactly the right audience for a luxury automaker: commuters on their way to Westchester County and Connecticut.

AUDI, a unit of Volkswagen A.G., plans to build showrooms around the world to serve not only as retail dealerships but as high-profile display cases. The New York showroom is the first. ''There was something natural about being on Park Avenue,'' said Kenneth J. Moriarty, marketing director of Audi of America, referring to the BMW Gallery and Mercedes-Benz showroom, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

The 6,450-square-foot Audi Park Avenue showroom, as it is called, opened Dec. 5. It was designed by Jon Greenberg & Associates and Grid/3 International.

Another showroom, for Xerox products, is to open across the avenue next June in a space once occupied by the Bank of New York. Within the showroom, but visible from the street, will be a curving wall with an illuminated version of the digital ''X'' trademark and corporate motto, ''The Document Company.'' There will also be an array of video screens. The design is by Ideo Environments Group and Highland Associates.

At the same time, a renovation is proceeding on the lobby and plaza at No. 245, which is expected to lose its main tenant, Bear Stearns, when its lease expires in 2002.

''We're trying to make the building accessible and welcoming to people and to enliven that very important address,'' said Raul de Armas of Moed de Armas & Shannon, architects of the renovation.

Among other features, the brick-covered plaza will be repaved in granite and the entrance will get a new facade of sheer glass. A larger lobby is being created out of what had been a long corridor. The ceiling of the lobby will be clad in anegre, a honey-colored hardwood, and will seem to glow from within, as it will be brightly illuminated from below.

Besides its showroom at No. 245, Xerox is also taking 100,000 square feet of office space in the building, which is owned by World Financial Properties, successor to Olympia & York. Xerox is consolidating operations there from 135 East 57th Street, 201 East 42d Street and 40 Rector Street.

A critical factor in the choice of 245 Park Avenue was the fact that 69 percent of Xerox's Manhattan work force comes to work through Grand Central, either as suburban or subway commuters, said Joseph A. Catalano, vice president and general manager for New York City operations.

Not many months after they arrive at No. 245, Xerox workers who come into Grand Central on Metro-North -- as well as the 35,000 to 40,000 other commuters who work north of the terminal -- should find one leg of their daily journey easier and faster than they had ever imagined.

Commuters with uptown destinations will no longer have to walk south from their platforms into the terminal, then reverse course, head up the escalators and swarm through the lobby of the Met Life Building.

Instead, they will be able to pop up into the sidewalks above -- almost like cosmopolitan prairie dogs -- through four new northern entrances to the platforms.

The $87.7 million construction project, known as ''North End Access,'' may be completed by November, said Donald N. Nelson, the president of Metro-North.

''We will be reaching way out with this network,'' Mr. Nelson said. ''We have high hopes of increasing ridership significantly. We believe there are a lot of commuters who drive and park in the upper 50's and 60's rather than come into the terminal and walk or take the subway whom we can now nudge onto the trains.''

An average of 10 minutes of travel time might be shaved off the trip, said Donna Evans, a spokeswoman for Metro-North, adding, ''There's no train operation we could do that would save that much time.''

When the project is complete, it will be possible to enter Grand Central from as far north as 48th Street, through a small glass-enclosed structure outside the Westvaco Building, at 299 Park Avenue. A construction fence now marks the spot.

A SECOND entrance will be built on the Madison Avenue side of the Chase Manhattan Bank headquarters, 270 Park Avenue, at 47th Street. This entrance, which is also currently marked by a fence, will have an elevator.

Two more entrances will be tucked into the sides of the ''Helmsley Walks,'' running through the Helmsley Building, between 45th and 45th Streets.

The entrances will be linked to the platforms through a cross-hatched network of two north-south ''spines'' and two east-west ''cross passageways.''

The spines are platforms that were taken out of service along Tracks 22 and 31.

The 45th Street passageway has been created from a former baggage and mail tunnel that runs under the lower level tracks. It is about 400 feet long and is connected to 11 lower-level platforms. It is so far along in construction that terrazzo flooring and wall panels are already in place at the west end, under Track 117.

The 47th Street passageway is entirely new, shoehorned structurally below the upper-level tracks, with enough clearance to permit passage of trains on the lower level. ''We're using all the available space -- down to the inch,'' said John R. Seaboldt, deputy director of facilities engineering. The passageway is about 700 feet long and is connected to 15 upper-level platforms.

Wherever a platform is connected to a passageway, there is an enclosure made of glass block, the first visible sign to railroad passengers of a project that is actually unfolding all around them.

For a project of such complexity, with so many far-reaching implications, North End Access has proceeded with an astonishingly low profile. ''The only disruption for our customers has been a more frequent change of platform assignment,'' Mr. Nelson said. ''It's been almost invisible from the street.'' That will soon change.