NEW YORK CITY-After a short-period of trouble, the current ownership of Manhattan’s famed Lipstick Building is pushing the property back up to top-tier status. New York City-based Herald Square Properties is working with co-asset manager with Argentinean real estate firm Irsa International to give the 34-story, 636,000-square-foot building at 885 Third Ave. a makeover.

Current capital improvements here include renovations of the lobby and plaza, as well as the implementation of a pre-built, Gensler-designed office space program, says Gerard “Jerry” Nocera, head of HSP, who tells GlobeSt.com that the building is undergoing a transformation after several years of distress. “This is a positive cash flowing asset right now that’s well capitalized,” he says. “It’s no longer a building that suffers from a choke-hold of a mortgage.”

The building went through an ownership and structural change at the end of last year and again in January 2011, Nocera says. The previous owner, Metropolitan Real Estate Investors LLC, ran into financial troubles almost immediately after purchasing the building from Tishman Speyer in 2007. “It was right at the advent of the whole market collapse and they just got caught in that,” he says. “It took about three years to unwind.”