Americas Tower offers partnership with the arts.

Once upon a time, in a time that seemed long, long ago but was only the 1980s, high-profile museums and art galleries seemed almost de rigueur in commercial office buildings.

Today it seems like the cultural amenities that help define and differentiate a building's image have gone the way of single digit vacancy rates. Some major Midtown installations, like the IBM Gallery and Whitney Museum of American Art satellite at Equitable Tower, are gone. Announcements of commercial developments in the 1990s do not trumpet cultural facilities, but the high technology, enhanced security and other must-have features that more realistically define the priorities and mood of today's more conservative market.

But there is always the exception. While Americas Tower, at 1177 Avenue of the Americas, has all the 21st Century building technologies and services in place, it has also managed to successfully engineer a corporate/arts partnership with the National Sculpture Society that has brought a major new exhibition space and arts asset to Midtown, provided impetus to the programs of one of the country's oldest arts organizations and added cultural cache to the marketing of the one million square foot Class A tower.

In the Spring of 1992, the now 85 percent leased Americas Tower was launched into the market. The only newly constructed office building of that year and the first full blockfront tower to be constructed on Avenue of the Americas in a decade, the building was conceived during the boom and entered the market just in time for the glut.

Left partially clad, partially skeletal for 14 months as a result a partnership dispute, the construction hiatus provided time for the owners, KG A&A Corporation, a subsidiary of Kumagai Gumi  Co. Ltd., to re-engineer the building to meet vastly changed market conditions. They included such features as fiber optics, four-step air cleansing as well as a standby power generation system and a plan to align the building with the arts, all of which would serve to support Americas Tower's market positioning as "Corporate America's Premier Address."

KG A&A Corporation began its arts association by commissioning "The Gorgeous Mosaic," a one-ton, 23-foot sculpture designed and executed by Simon Verity, master sculptor of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The stone tribute to New York's cultural diversity was unveiled at the building's opening, given as a gift to the City, and permanently installed in the lobby of Bellevue Hospital Center in 1993.

But it was the National Sculpture Society, then located in 1,500 square feet on East 26th Street, that provided the longterm relationship that would attract attention nd support the stately, elegant image of the tower and provide a first-class class headquarters and exhibition facility for an organization that could not otherwise afford Class A space in a prime Midtown location.

"Our relationship with National Sculpture Society enhances marketing Americas Tower as a prestigious corporate headquarters address," says Nancy C. Nemiroff, vice president of leasing and management for KG A&A Corporation. "The arts association is not a major factor in our tenants leasing decisions, but it does lend prestige."

National Sculpture Society, the oldest organization of professional sculptors in the United States, founded in 1893, relocated its headquarters, including archives, lecture room, executive offices and a gallery, to the 15th floor of Americas Tower in 1992. Their 4,000 square-foot space is adjacent to the building's leasing offices and those of KG A&A Corporation, making it virtually impossible for prospective tenants to miss on building tours.

Tenants of Americas Tower, which now include a diversity of international banking and financial institutions and insurance, accounting, consulting and communications companies, can participate in the Society's tenant loan program, which provides complimentary sculpture to building offices.

But by far the most prominent element of the collaboration is the permanent lobby showcase for year-round revolving exhibitions of large-scale figurative sculpture.

Described as "museum-like" in The Architecture of New York by Don Reynolds, the lobby of Americas Tower includes 40-foot ceilings, spacious entrance and corridor dimensions, and polished and rough granite finishings that provide a complementary setting and space necessary for exhibition of monumental works. Colorful silk-like banners, identical to those found at major museums, hang from the building's colonnade.

The partnership with Americas Tower has boosted the image, presence and revenues of National Sculpture Society, according to Gwen Pier, NSS executive director.

In addition to thousands of building tenants, the lobby exhibitions attract approximately 1,000 people a month, about 250 of which also visit the Society's gallery. The lobby showcase has also resulted in the sale of four featured sculptures, three of which sold during the run of "Wildlife in Midtown," the second Americas Tower exhibition.

For Americas Tower, once a troubled development, now the headquarters of prestigious international corporations, the partnership with National Sculpture Society helped to reposition the building as a premier address.

"When you walk through a lobby with a world-class sculpture exhibition, there's definite impact," said Nemiroff. "It says this building is elegant, prestigious, solid and affluent, all the attributes you want in a corporate headquarters."

The current exhibition, "All Sculpture Great and Small" runs through January 6, 1995.