With a bit more than 3 acres fronting Greenwich Avenue at the corner of Greenwich and East Putnam avenues, Pickwick Plaza has until now remained a quiet presence in a bustling, designer coat-cosseted neighborhood. Built in the 1970s to house Xerox headquarters, it was something of a funless cypher along a strip that thrived in the popular imagination ”” and in reality behind some storefronts ”” as platinum fantasy.
That is changing with an ongoing $20 million upgrade that has opened Pickwick Plaza to Greenwich Avenue via a major retail real estate space (or spaces depending on subdivision).
The work is also remaking the office element of Pickwick Plaza and, when phase 2 is completed, will further open the property to the public with what Manhattan-based owner Kensico Properties described as a “living wall” of growth along a newly made entry on Greenwich Avenue.
In Pickwick”™s building No. 3, the work is “substantially complete,” said Kensico”™s Nancy Lara, who toured the property recently with the senior property manager, Glenn Haber, and the buildings”™ engineer, Danny Kilkullen. Views in No. 3 include the Long Island Sound and, owing to the height, a good deal of Long Island beyond.
“It”™s the corner of Main and Main,” said Lara. “You could not have a better location.”
The site”™s three buildings possess 280,000 square feet and are now about 66 percent filled. The mostly business-lease equation has remained viable for some time, attracting an A-list of clients that today includes Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Merrill Lynch and Sotheby”™s International Realty. (Sotheby”™s is part of Pickwick Plaza”™s original retailing layout on East Putnam Avenue.) Lara said future marketing efforts will target similar tenants. “We have had interest from two or three hedge funds just in the last year,” she said.
Kensico Properties bought Pickwick Plaza, reportedly for $235 million, in 2006. Lara said at least part of the impetus was to diversify north of Manhattan, where Kensico owns several properties. That diversification also includes ownership of 55 Railroad Ave. in Greenwich.
In 2014, Kensico Properties initiated the current upgrade that includes halls, bathrooms, elevators and entries. There are also upgrades to the site”™s 850-car garage, which features five levels and which is partly available for public use in the retail-centric section of town where parking can be tough to find.
Newmark Grubb Knight Frank in Greenwich is marketing the new retail space through the efforts of Jessica Curtis. It is being offered in footprints of up to nearly 8,800 square feet or as small as 1,904 square feet. Jay Hruska of Stamford”™s Cushman & Wakefield Inc. office is leading the marketing effort for the office space, about 100,000 square feet of which is available.
“You never knew it was here or you never knew it was this big,” said Lara of the plaza. “But it had become antiquated. It did not have the amenities to match the location.
“We”™re modernizing everything,” she said. “We”™re bringing the property into the 21st century.” She said the next phase involves upgrades for buildings 1 and 2 And for landscaping.
The architect is Stamford-based Perkins Eastman. Addressing the side of the property that fronts on Mason Street, Perkins Eastman in a statement said renovations there “will include an improved pedestrian connection to the street with a new building approach and landscaping.”
