NEW YORK CITY—In keeping with the true spirit of the holiday season, the landlord of a Midtown office building is writing a $25,000 check to the Wounded Warriors Project—which helps injured veterans—in lieu of spending that same money on holiday decorations for the lobby.
Edison Properties, which owns and operates the Hippodrome—at 1120 Ave. of the Americas—has notified building tenants of the measure on a 12-foot by 15-foot sign in the lobby that has temporarily replaced a mural. The sign reads “They've sacrificed so much for us. This holiday season, we're giving back. We donated to the Wounded Warrior Project instead of decorating our lobby. Happy Holidays.”
Says Andy Gottesman, principal of the Hippodrome, “About five or six years ago we were casting about for something different to do for the holidays. We wanted to do something creative and meaningful and we're pretty good with messaging.” The company—which belongs to the Gottesman family—owns Manhattan Mini-Storage, an entity that previously has posted well-known clever advertisements on the subway and elsewhere around town.
Hippodrome tenants have been very receptive to this year's effort, Gottesman says. “Tenants love it, we've been getting positive emails saying things like, “I'm a veteran,” or “my son is a veteran and I appreciate what you're doing. This really seems to have struck a nerve.”
This isn't the first time the Gottesmans have earmarked the lobby holiday decoration money for a charitable organization. They select a different group each year and create clever signage to match.
Previous beneficiaries have included Meals-On-Wheels, Dress for Success and a housing provider. Matching signage, respectively, said, “Empty walls fill tables”; “Instead of decorating, we dressed down so she can dress up; and “It's easier to enjoy decorations once you have a home.” Building occupants enjoy the annual change of organization, Gottesman notes. “It's a surprise they get every year.” The 617,000-square-foot building was formerly a theater but has served as an office building, with Edison at the helm, since 1978. A multi-year renovation recently was completed.
Leveraging the feel good spirit of the holiday season, and the positive response tenants have expressed to this effort, he has approached other building owners suggesting that they make a similar approach.
The pitch is typically met with resistance, either because landlords say they just have too much on their plate or they feel that tenants enjoy the holiday decorations.
“We understand that,” contends Gottesman, “but ifyou could get some other Midtown buildings to do this in Midtown, you could raise an unreal amount of money. They easily spend tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, on holiday decorations.”
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Rayna Katz
Rayna Katz is a seasoned business journalist whose extensive experience includes coverage of the lodging sector, travel and the culinary space. She was most recently content director for a business-to-business publisher, overseeing four publications. While at Meeting News, a travel trade publication, she received a Best Reporting award for a story on meeting cancellations in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
