West Chelsea events space Glasshouses is opening a second venue on the Far West Side, where it’s signed a lease for a new 75,000-square-foot space overlooking the Hudson River.
The trendy events space, the brainchild of real estate developer Jack Guttman, signed a 30-year deal with the Bay Ridge Auto Group for the new space at 660 12th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen, a representative for Glasshouses told The Real Deal.
The two floors – one for events and another for amenities and VIP areas – will be constructed on top of Bay Ridge Auto’s two-story showroom between West 48th and West 49th streets. The auto company inked a deal in 2013 to buy a condo and leftover air rights totaling 300,000 square feet for $16.6 million from TF Cornerstone above the large distribution center it leases to FedEx.
“We’re very bullish on the West Side,” said Glasshouse Group partner Alex Holiday.
“If you go a little bit east, you’re not going to get buildings with this type of footprint,” added Holiday, who bills the new Glasshouses West as the biggest private events space in New York City. “I don’t think you can replicate that anywhere in the city.”
Renderings of 660 12th Avenue
The asking rent in the deal was $80s per square foot, according to broker Jay Cummings of J.R. Cummings Co. Real Estate, who marketed the space on behalf of Bay Ridge Auto. Cummings said there’s still about 40,000 square feet of space left to lease, and the area’s seen a boon from workers who live in the thousands of housing units coming online on the Far West Side.
“There are a lot of workers moving to that area,” he said.
Glasshouses currently runs two events spaces near the High Line at the Chelsea Arts tower between 10th and 11th avenues. Guttman, not to be confused with Jack Guttman of Pearl Realty Management, developed the commercial-condominium building at 545 West 25th Street in 2007 with Young Woo & Associates.
He and partner Steve Schwartz own more than 20 storage facilities in the metro area, including the 1,900-unit Gotham Mini Storage at 501 10th Avenue. The two in 2015 shelved plans for a $300 million, 240,000-square-foot television production complex on the West Side Highway at 51st and 52nd streets after options expired on pieces of the assemblage.
Holiday said the new Glasshouses space is scheduled to open in the fall of 2019.