Pratt Institute

Real Estate Weekly, Dec 8, 1999

Pratt Institute has purchased six floors of a seven-story Manhattan commercial building at 142 West 14th Street, between Avenue of the Americas and Seventh Avenue. The purchase price was $11.5 million and approximately $8 million will be spent to renovate the building.

"This represents a significant step for Pratt," said Thomas F. Schutte, president of Pratt Institute. "We have been leasing space for a number of years, but we have not been able to expand to meet the needs of our current and future students in our Manhattan-based programs. It is important to understand that this property will simply replace our current Manhattan campus. We will continue to develop and maintain our main campus in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn."

Pratt will occupy floors two through seven of the building, approximately 64,000 gross square feet. The ground floor will be owned by 144 West 14th Street Owners, LLC. The architectural firm of Ebrenkrantz, Eckstut and Kuhn has been retained for the renovation of the building. Classes currently held at Pratt's other Manhattan facility will be relocated to the new 14th Street campus beginning with the spring 2001 semester.

The new building will house Pratt's Graduate Communications and Packaging Design program, and the Institute's two-year Associate Degree programs in Digital Design, Graphic Design and Illustration. The campus also will be home to degree programs in the School of Information and Library Science, the School of Architecture and the School of Art and Design. A wide variety of certificate and non-credit programming will be offered at the new campus under the auspices of Pratt's School of Professional Studies. The Manhattan campus will also feature a professional art gallery, which will have rotating exhibitions of works by important figures in the contemporary art world.