WHAT THE CLIENT ASKED FOR

The new owner of the historic Hanover and Wall building on Wall Street approached us to help them renovate and add value to, 800 residential units in the building’s interior.

Our initial success led to further projects redesigning:

• the building’s main lobby

• a series of commercial tenancy spaces on street level 

• a new amenity area roof terrace on the 25th floor.

THE CHALLENGES WE FACED

The client wanted to increase the residencies resale value within the regulatory and statutory guidelines imposed on the building. These included requirements such as minimum daylight levels for bedrooms, a barrier-free kitchen design, and high-efficacy lighting.

From an early stage, we defined the lobby as a central part of the total user experience and value-adding exercise, and so it deserved some serious redesigning. We redesigned the two existing lobbies to make it one impressive entrance experience,, including a new mail room and direct access to amenity spaces on the second floor, that better reflected the scale and quality of the renovated apartments.

We also helped the client realize the potential for commercial units on the street level, which were underperforming and lacked market appeal. We achieved this by enlarging and replacing the storefronts on the ground floor to match the look and feel of the Wall Street financial aesthetic.

HOW WE OVERCAME THE CHALLENGES

We pooled our residential development experience (along with our adaptive re-use experience) to create an easily implementable, pared-back but elegant interior layout and design scheme based on current residential market trends.

We assimilated the two existing lobbies for 63 and 67 to offer a far more impressive ‘first experience’, with optimized accessibility and circulation functions. We also created attention-grabbing commercial storefronts with elegant lighting plans and window front designs that:

• increased exposure

• allowed for more opportunities to place signage 

• increased the units’ marketability.

Our meticulous record-keeping and communication meant everyone always felt confident and in control as we developed and built the project at pace. 

The client appointed us as the architect for all future Alt-1 filing procedures for the building, and again to work on expanding the 25th floor’s interior and exterior amenity space. 

Wall Street exemplifies our ability to get projects built.