CAA News Today

After two years of research and numerous site visits in the five boroughs of New York, CAA signed a fifteen-year lease for a new office at 50 Broadway in lower Manhattan. The property—located in a rich historical district near Wall Street, Battery Park, Trinity Church, the National Museum of the American Indian, and the National September 11 Memorial and Museum—is owned by the 50 Broadway Realty Corporation, an entity of the United Federation of Teachers, which is headquartered in the building. The move comes at the end of CAA’s twenty-five-year lease at 275 Seventh Avenue in Chelsea.

The affordable, furnished office of approximately 9,500 square feet is located on a single floor with a variety of building amenities, including an auditorium, meeting rooms, and a staff cafeteria. It also features natural light through windows on the east, west, and north sides. Since the new office comes largely furnished, CAA has invested little in construction, equipment, and furniture, other than the purchase of a few desks, bookshelves, and a conference table and chairs. Two significant changes, a new telephone system and a new internet service provider, will improve member communications. The installation of carpet, resurfacing of concrete corridors, and repainting of office walls are currently under way and should be completed prior to the move day: Saturday, July 23, 2011.

Meanwhile, CAA staff has been reorganizing and purging files, archiving materials, completing a space utilization analysis, relocating books and periodicals, and coordinating logistics with the movers and with the managements of the old and new buildings. The physical move will happen in one day, and—aside from the normal readjustment period required to be comfortably relocated—CAA expects no interruption in services or operations: the main website, the Online Career Center, caa.reviews, and other online services and publications will all function normally.

CAA is excited about the prospect of becoming a player in lower Manhattan’s ongoing revitalization efforts for residential, commercial, and cultural purposes. The new address for the organization beginning Monday, July 25, 2011, is: College Art Association, 50 Broadway, 21st Floor, New York, NY 10004. The primary telephone and fax numbers will remain the same: 212-691-1051 and 212-627-2381, respectively. CAA staff, however, will be unavailable from Thursday, July 21, through Monday morning, July 25; the telephone and fax numbers will also not be working during that time.

The CAA Board of Directors and staff wish to thank the legal acumen of Steven Alden and Jeffrey Cunard of Debevoise & Plimpton LLC and the real-estate expertise of Carri Lyon of Cushman & Wakefield in securing the new location. Everyone is welcome to attend an open house at the new CAA office, to be held on Saturday afternoon, October 22, 2011.