The opening reception on Thursday, May 10^th from 6 pm to 9 pm will be in the exhibition space in Studio 1440B of RXR’s Starrett Lehigh building at 601 West 26^th Street.

On this self-guided tour, visitors will have exclusive access to private artist’s studios based in the heart of the West Chelsea Arts District.

“The West Chelsea Artists Open Studio incorporates the building’s legacy of ‘manufacturing creativity since 1931.’ We are proud to be a part of this wonderful celebration of talent and to provide a venue for one of New York’s most artistic, creative events, carrying forward Starrett-Lehigh’s rich cultural tradition,” said William Elder, Executive Vice President and Managing Director of RXR’s New York City division.

A full roster of participating artists and studio locations can be found here: http://www.westchelseaartists.com/

Built in 1932 and renovated in 2001, the iconic Starrett-Lehigh Building is one of Manhattan’s top ten largest office buildings and occupies the entire square block bounded by West 26th and West 27th Streets between 11th and 12th Avenues. A $30 million capital program to renovate the building’s infrastructure was recently completed. RXR plans to invest an additional $50 million to further position Starrett-Lehigh as one of Manhattan’s leading properties serving New York’s fast-growing “creative class” workforce.

High-profile tenants include Tommy Hilfiger, Martha Stewart-Omnimedia, advertising firm Dentsu McGarry Bowen, Hugo Boss and Ralph Lauren/Polo. Starrett-Lehigh’s appeal is evidenced by a 93 percent current occupancy rate. Average occupancy at the property has exceeded 90 percent over the past 10 years and 96 percent over the last five years.

Located in the heart of the Chelsea West neighborhood, Starrett-Lehigh is uniquely positioned to benefit from the revolutionary changes taking place in the area such as the recent opening of the new 26th Street entrance to the High Line, the enormous infrastructure investments being made in the development of the nearby Hudson Yards and the extension of the number 7 subway line into the community.

“The Starrett-Lehigh acquisition represents an opportunity for us to acquire an irreplaceable building at a substantial discount to replacement cost,” said Scott Rechler, Chairman and CEO of RXR. “We are extremely excited to have the opportunity to bring this extraordinary building to an even higher level of excellence.”

“We see the property as a destination for innovative companies and well positioned to benefit from transformative developments in the immediate area,” said William Elder, Executive Vice President and Managing Director, New York City for RXR. “The Starrett-Lehigh Building is one of Manhattan’s leading properties for the City’s creative professionals. Its unique character is a perfect fit for tenants in the technology, media, high-end fashion and advertising industries, providing them with open floor plates, high ceilings, sweeping views of the Hudson River and a robust building infrastructure.”

“It’s a few hundred square feet, and it’s always packed,” said Alfonse Amore, vice president for property management for the building’s landlord, Trinity Real Estate. “We have 35, 40 bicycles there a day.”

Trinity opened the bike room in August 2008 at a cost of about $30,000 for lighting, a paint job, a new front door and, of course, bike racks (10, at $2,500 each). That does not include the forfeited rent from leasing it as storage space. In Manhattan, such rent can run from the low teens a square foot annually to $30, depending on the neighborhood and the demand.

The city does not track the number of dedicated bike rooms in office buildings, according to the Department of Transportation, which since December 2009 has required those with freight elevators to provide bike storage if a tenant asks. (Exemptions are available, but a landlord would still have to provide alternative parking or demonstrate a serious safety concern related to using the elevator.) But the number of rooms as opposed to simply racks appears to be growing.

The bike room at 345 Hudson Street joins those at, among other places, 1330 Avenue of the Americas, 340 Madison Avenue, 520 Eighth Avenue and, perhaps the most ballyhooed, the Empire State Building. Some landlords say they are happy to add and maintain the spaces in a commercial real estate market that is increasingly favoring green construction and retrofitting, for financial and public relations reasons. And bike advocates see the rooms as the finest example of a shift in policy and in psychology.

“The law doesn’t require bike rooms,” said Noah Budnick, the deputy director of the nonprofit Transportation Alternatives. “The law just requires that the buildings let the people get their bikes from the street to their office. They’re both good solutions.” Transportation Alternatives, which worked with the city on the 2009 law, does not track the number of dedicated bike rooms, but estimates that they, along with other bike storage, are growing.

“We’re hearing more and more that this is a selling point for the real estate industry,” Mr. Budnick added. “You’re seeing office spaces marketed with bike rooms, which is pretty awesome.”

Still, landlords know they are sacrificing something — possible rent on ground-floor and subterranean spaces turned over free to the tenants paying rent upstairs — and some wonder if dedicated bike rooms will be sustainable if rents continue to rise from recessionary lows.

Bike rooms arrived in the biggest way with an announcement in April by Malkin Holdings that the landlord would open a bike room at the base of the Empire State Building. The announcement came during New York’s debate over bike lanes and less than two years after Anthony E. Malkin, the president of Malkin Holdings, started a $550 million renovation of the Empire State Building to make it environmentally friendly.

The tower’s bike room was carved out of 780 square feet of retail space for which the landlord could normally charge $500 a square foot annually, but, as Mr. Malkin said in an e-mail, it was “very deep space,” tucked away from foot traffic and therefore likely to rent at a discount.

Such pragmatism seems to govern landlords on bike rooms. “And why not, right?” said Frank Pusinelli, the executive vice president for operations, property management and construction for RXR Realty. “It’s better than having tenants bring their bikes up to the space.”

RXR maintains bike rooms at three towers: 1330 Avenue of the Americas, which houses five to 10 bicycles each weekday in a 225-square-foot space, at a cost to build of just around $1,000; 340 Madison Avenue, which draws as many as 30 each day to a 425-square-foot area that opened in September in unused basement space, at a cost of $4,500; and the Starrett-Lehigh Building on West 26th Street, where an 1,800-square-foot space holds about 150 bicycles each day, from employees of tenants like Martha Stewart Living and Hugo Boss. The bike room was created by the previous landlord, Shorenstein Properties, which sold the building to RXR last spring.

But one thing may be preventing landlords from building even more bike rooms: showers.

In new office buildings, the U.S. Green Building Council, which certifies buildings as LEED-compliant, awards points only for bike rooms with showers and changing rooms. And in existing buildings, bike rooms also do not automatically earn LEED points because they are based on behavioral changes in tenants — for instance, if a tenant allows employees to telecommute or if a landlord puts in a bike room that gets heavy use. LEED certification, shorthand for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is important to landlords because it tells the public, and investors, that their buildings save energy.

The building council’s requirement that new buildings have showers, which can be costly to install and take up more space, is a sticking point for some New York landlords. While a rinse may be necessary for riders pedaling 10 miles to a suburban office park, landlords say, Manhattan employees coming from, say, Park Slope in Brooklyn, usually won’t work up much of a sweat.

“You have a lot of buildings here which would like to get LEED points,” said Eric Gural, an executive managing director of Newmark Knight Frank who oversees the 1,000-square-foot bike room at 520 Eighth Avenue. “If we didn’t have to put a shower in, I think you’d see a lot more bike rooms that would be provided by landlords.” (The bike room at 520 Eighth, like all others in this article, lacks a shower.)

So the installation of dedicated bike rooms in Manhattan’s commercial buildings appears linked to landlords’ willingness to take a hit on underused or empty space. Changes in the LEED points system might spur growth, but the pull of more lucrative uses might arrest it.

“A Park Avenue landlord with a couple of hundred dollars a square foot,” Mr. Amore of Trinity said, “is going to have a hard time making that decision.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 17, 2011

An article in the Square Feet pages on Wednesday about commercial buildings with bicycle rooms described incorrectly a 2009 New York City law that requires commercial office buildings to allow cyclists to bring bicycles into their offices. Buildings with freight elevators must provide access for bicycles if tenants ask for it, but the buildings are not required to provide storage for bicycles.

The maneuvering was led by music management firm Harry Fox Agency, which terminated its 47,144-square-foot sublease from Tommy Hilfiger USA at Starrett-Lehigh and fled to 36,921 square feet at the Trump Building at 40 Wall Street. Harry Fox was represented by Studley.

Tommy Hilfiger, represented by Matthew Asrtachan of Jones Lang LaSalle, then relinquished Harry Fox Agency’s former space in a restructuring deal with RXR, that freed the landlord to lease it directly to advertising firm McGarryBowen. McGarryBowen was represented by David Hollander and Sacha Zarba of CBRE.

Finally, RXR took back 21,000 square feet that Lord & Taylor rented but subleased to Tommy Hilfiger, and leased it directly to Tommy Hilfiger, which now has a total of 350,000 square feet in the 2.2 million-square-foot building at 601 West 26th Street. Rob Silver of Newmark Knight Frank represented Lord & Taylor.

“We engineered the entire structure so that it could satisfy the needs not just for Harry Fox, but also for McGarryBowen who needed more space, for Tommy Hilfiger who needed more space, for Lord & Taylor who did not need their 21,000 square feet anymore and for the landlord to receive market rents,” said Greg Taubin, senior managing director at Studley.

Dentsu McGarry Bowen will add approximately 47,000 square feet to the 110,000 square feet it currently leases in the iconic Starrett-Lehigh Building, one of Manhattan’s ten largest office buildings. Built in 1932 and renovated in 2001, the 19-story, 2.3-million-square-foot building occupies the entire square block bounded by West 26th and West 27th Streets between 11th and 12th Avenues.

RXR purchased the Starrett-Lehigh property in August 2011 and is in the midst of a $50 million renovation of the building, to further position it as one of Manhattan’s leading properties serving New York’s fast-growing “creative class” workforce.

To accommodate Dentsu McGarry Bowen’s needs, RXR worked with the Harry Fox Agency, which was subleasing the 47,000-square-feet from Tommy Hilfiger USA. HFA and Tommy Hilfiger were released from their leases and the space was then leased to Dentsu McGarry Bowen on a direct basis. Tommy Hilfiger, which was still leasing approximately 230,000 feet of space at Starrett-Lehigh, then took an additional 21,000 square feet, to bring its total to more than 250,000 square feet.

In the transaction, Dentsu McGarry Bowen was represented by David Hollander and Sacha Zarba of CB Richard Ellis; HFA was represented by Greg Taubin of Studley; and Tommy Hilfiger was represented by Matthew Astrachan of Jones Lang LaSalle.

“When we purchased Starrett-Lehigh, we knew there would be opportunities to expand our existing tenant base,” said William Elder, Executive Vice President and Managing Director of RXR’s New York City Division. “But we also knew the property had high occupancy levels. We were able to make this work thanks to the incredible efforts and cooperative nature of the

brokers and tenants involved. We look forward to continuing our creative pursuit for other opportunities just like this one.”