Galleries to move into former Dia Foundation space

By Patrick Hedlund

While the Dia Art Foundation has already fled its massive West 22nd Street digs, the renowned building will retain its existence as art space with the announcement this week that it would be converted to high-end galleries.

The entire four-story property between 10th and 11th Avenues is slated to rent for gallery tenants, with an additional two-and-a-half stories of residential penthouses to be built on top of the existing brick warehouse, project architect Joseph Pell Lombardi told Chelsea Now.

Lombardi was tapped to design the building by the anonymous buyer, who purchased it from the Dia for $38.55 million late last year. He said all 38,000 square feet of existing space will rent as galleries, with the addition of 22,000 square feet of residential space to be constructed above the current building.

“We’ve had an endless amount of phone calls from gallery owners with interest in [taking space],” said Lombardi, noting its 16-foot ceilings and long spans between columns. He added that preservation of the building for galleries will continue to promote West Chelsea as the center of New York’s art world. “That’s the kind of product that you don’t get on the Lower East Side.”

The buyer wanted to stay mindful of the property’s rich past with Dia as a tenant, which helped contribute to the new owner’s decision to develop the building as gallery space, said Hugh Finnegan of the Boston-based Sullivan & Worcester law firm, which represents the unnamed buyer.

“They’re very respectful of the history of the space, and want to do whatever they can to preserve that,” Finnegan noted.

Dia Director Jeffrey Weiss told Chelsea Now last month that the foundation decided to leave because of over-commercialization in the area and a desire to move to a more diverse neighborhood. He chuckled when informed of the news that gallery space in his old building would be renting for about $100 to $120 per square foot, according to figures provided by Lombardi.

“It’s nice to see that it will be partly devoted to art space, but it remains commercial art space,” he said, adding the news didn’t come as a surprise. “That to me is not necessarily a sign of the continuing presence of art in Chelsea, so much as it’s just a reality of the commercial market at this point.”

The price per square foot of the gallery space will come at more of a premium than the penthouses above, which will rent in the $75- to $95-per-foot range, Lombardi said. The residential portion will include approximately five total units, with about 4,000 to 5,000 square feet per unit and Hudson River views.

For the gallery space, Lombardi expects that each of the four floors will house no more than two tenants—or around 4,750 square feet per gallery—with the possibility of some tenants taking over entire floors.

While lamenting the loss of Dia, Miles Manning, director of the Elizabeth Harris Gallery on West 20th Street, said the oversaturation of galleries in Chelsea and an impending recession might make it hard for the new space to stay filled.

“To me, there’s enough art galleries now; I don’t think there needs to be any more,” said Manning, formerly director of the Danish Contemporary Art Center, which moved to West 22nd Street in 1997 because of its proximity to Dia. “What was there before was a unique operation. Just another gallery building is—so what?”

Matt Garson, who just signed a three-year lease for his space in collaboration with the Brenda Taylor Gallery on West 25th Street, agreed that with the current overabundance of galleries in the neighborhood, he’d prefer to see residential development keep pace and therefore more people coming through gallery doors.

“I think it’s a positive thing, personally,” said the owner of Garson Fine Art, who also has operations in Cleveland and Miami but came to Chelsea for the first time in September. “But the more people in the neighborhood, the more walking traffic you [have]. I’d rather have more people than more galleries.”

The residential component of the former Dia property then would present a fine complement to the adjoining galleries for Garson, but Weiss still anticipates the art community’s eventual shift away from Chelsea as the real estate market there continues to boom.

“It may someday mean decentralization of the commercial scene and the emergence of a new model,” he added, without yet saying where the foundation will take new space. “It corresponds to everything we know right now about the continuing life of Chelsea as a site for luxury development above all else.”