There’s a Baccarat hotel on West 53rd Street. Soon, there will be a Baccarat-branded boutique office building, too.
The French luxury crystal line is moving its US office headquarters from 635 Madison Avenue, where it has an elegant store, to Marx Realty’s 545 Madison Ave. — which would make the boutique property possibly the first office tower to identify itself with a luxury brand.
Baccarat signed for 10,000 square feet. But the deal with Marx goes beyond the space commitment. The 260-year-old brand’s esthetic will be “woven into the fabric of the building,” Marx CEO Craig Deitelzweig said, “to complement its hotel-like sensibility.”
Baccarat chandeliers will soon adorn the lobby and public areas and its barware will be used in the lounge. The ground-floor window will have the Baccarat name’s distinctive logotype.
“It will be their first branded office building,” Deitelzweig said. “It started when they were looking for new office space. They liked the way 545 Madison look, it was in synch with their brand, and then we started talking about a kind of partnership.”
Marx previously spent $24 million to juice up the property with a hotel-like lobby, a tenants’ club floor, library, walnut and bronze trim, and curved lobby surfaces.
The tower’s 145,000 square feet are 90 percent leased, Deitelzweig said. Asking rents range from $86 to $135 per square foot — the highest figure applying to the Baccarat space.
