By: Serach Nissim

Fashion giant Ralph Lauren renewed its lease at the Starrett-Lehigh Building in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.

As reported by the NY Post, Ralph Lauren renewed the lease for 250,000 square feet of office space at the building at 601 West 26th Street.  Though Ralph Lauren’s global headquarters remains at the 650 Madison Avenue location, it has housed additional offices in the Starrett-Lehigh Building for well over a decade.  In fact, in 2018 it was leasing about 450,000 square feet at the building.  The behemoth 19-story building boasts 2.3 million square-feet of space, 10 percent of which is now occupied by Ralph Lauren.  Constructed in 1930, it had been one of the most oversized buildings of the industrial era.  In the lease deal, CBRE’s Eric Deutsch and Ken Meyerson represented Ralph Lauren, while RXR’s Denise Rodriguez represented the landlord in-house.

RXR managing director Bill Elder didn’t specifically comment on Ralph Lauren’s lease, but he did say that the building overall has experienced a “big population increase” this year.  Per the Post, Elder said the building’s appeal stemmed from renovations and amenities at the building.  There are now over 100,000 square feet of amenities including Marcus Samuelsson’s Hav + Mar restaurant, the Olly Olly food hall and the 601Athletic fitness Club. The building’s 10th floor also has over 44,000 Square feet of shared amenity space including grand-scale conferencing, event, and flexible workspace zone. There are plans underway to add terrace space on this floor, for a multi-use outdoor experience, compete with cabanas, zen garden, and fire-pit, per the building’s website.  Rents at the building range from the low $60s to the upper $70s per square foot.

Other current Starrett-Lehigh tenants include OXO, Johnson & Johnson and Fashionphile, which sells “pre-owned, ultra-luxury accessories,” as per its website. In 2012, Tommy Hilfiger USA had been the building’s largest tenant, but in 2018 RXR took back the last 226,000 square feet of the fashion company’s space at the building.  Other notable tenants at the building have included:  Martha Stewart, Canada Goose, Hugo Boss, Under Armour, Club Monaco, publisher Scholastic Corp, and advertising agency McGarry Bowen.

The Starrett-Lehigh Building occupies the full trapezoidal block between Eleventh Avenue and Twelfth Ave, along the shores of the North River, which is the southernmost part of the Hudson River.   Developed by the Starrett Corporation and the Lehigh Valley Railroad, it had originally been intended for the railroad industry.  At the time of its completion, the Starrett–Lehigh Building was lauded for its design, copied by other buildings and displayed at the Museum of Modern Art’s 1932 “Modern Architecture: International Exhibition”.

The building was sold in 2011 by a group of investors to Scott Rechler’s RXR Realty for $900 million. The building had been renovated in 1998, attracting dot-com companies as well as fashion companies, as per Wikipedia.  RXR revamped the building again in both the late 2010s and in the early 2020s.  The last renovation included the addition of building amenities on the top floors, replacing original truck bays, to add a billiard room, indoor golf machines, and a shuffleboard court.  In 2022, the building’s food hall, Olly Olly Market, opened with 11 food stalls, and the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission approved plans to build a roof garden above the building’s tenth floor.