NY Inc August 10, 2009 ARAGON COMPLETES 13,000-SF SPACE FOR FORWARD ASSOCIATION Written By Susan Piperato

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A NEW YORK CITY Aragon Construction, New York's premier general contracting and construction management firm, has just completed building a 13,000-square-foot office space for the Forward Association, a nonprofit Jewish organization that publishes The Forward, America's most influential Jewish weekly newspaper. The office suite at 125 Maiden Lane, a 17-story office building in downtown Manhattan, encompasses much of the building's eighth floor.

Aragon built a new executive office wing with private offices, open department areas, conference rooms, informal meeting areas, a reception area, and a broadcast space for video, podcast, and other digital production. The striking space also features a gallery/performance space.

The construction firm paid special attention to the installation of a broad range of materials and surfaces specified by Amie Gross Architects, which used the visual language of the Wiener Werkstætte as a primary inspiration. The palette, for example, is in keeping with those used during the time of the Wiener Werkstætte Materials include marble floors, custom wood doors, several different patterns and colors of carpets, specialty paints, and laser-cut wall panels. The installation also included "borrowed lighting" from internal windows that allow daylight to permeate the office core.

"By working collaboratively," said Aragon president and founder Alex Getelman, "the teams were able to make this highly conceptual space into a beautiful and functional reality."

The site is specifically designed to be conducive to coordination and collaboration across its various departments of the English and Yiddish newspapers and their award-winning website, the jewishdailyforward.com.

"We designed one-of-a-kind group work areas, respecting each department's unique requirements, without using a single generic pattern or layout throughout the entire office space," said Amie Gross AIA, founder and principal at Amie Gross Architects.

Gross noted that in the art department, for example, employees sit at wheeled desks where they can either work individually or push desks together to create large and collaborative work surfaces. Furthermore, each reporter has compact desk space that features a bookshelf for storing research materials. All of the executive offices have internal conferencing areas where leaders can hold informal staff meetings.

Aragon also renovated a 5,000-square-foot office space for a sublease tenant for the short term; it will enable the Forward Association to expand its operations in the future.

"We were really grateful to Aragon for their incredible speed in producing a project of this size and dimension within budget, under a very tight time frame," said Jaime Birman of Levien & Company, Inc., the owner’s representative and project management firm. Aragon delivered the project to substantial completion in a record 10 weeks.

Completed in 1959, 125 Maiden Lane is comprised of 342,371 square feet of office space featuring quality services and amenities, such as a state-of-the-art exercise room with showers and lockers, landscaped roof deck and courtyard with stunning river views, quarterly art exhibits in the grand lobby, excellent security and a 24/7 attended lobby. The building's tenants include US Fund for UNICEF, Empire State Development Corp., Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Civil Service Employees Association, and Community for Education Foundation, among others.