Lighthouse International

New York, New York

Getting Full Value from Its Headquarters Building

Step One – Vision: The Lighthouse International, a nonprofit devoted to the visually impaired, wanted its midtown Manhattan headquarters building – the retail store and entrance as well as the 14 floors above – to operate at their full potential.

Step Two – Their Current Facility: We did a two part analysis that focused first on the entrance and retail store, and then on all of the floors, identifying functions, size and level of use. Our audit showed, for example, that their auditorium was under used, that the retail store could be reorganized to have greater presence and that some office spaces were much larger than needed.

Step Three – Their New Facility: We looked at the rear of the first floor and suggested they convert it into conference rooms and pair them with the auditorium, to be rented as a conference center. We also discovered that generous amounts of space on the floors above were used by relatively few staff. By combining some of the spaces, they could create two leasable floors. For the ground floor, we proposed a new entry that asserted their name on a canopy across the facade. The store and lobby were given more functional layouts.

Step Four – The Right Resolution: With a construction budget of $500,000, the ground floor conference facility and the two leasable floors were created, introducing all new income. The project was designed, engineered, filed for building permits, bid and constructed in five months.