Printing House condos launch signature scent

It’s not every condo that has a signature fragrance. (Sniff, sniff.) Ah, but the Printing House in the West Village does.

When the old printing factory-turned-condo launched sales in early spring, it not only debuted four custom-designed model units; it introduced “Australian Coast,” a scent hand-picked by developers Myles Horn, Belvedere Capital Management and Angelo, Gordon & Co.

The fragrance, sprayed through six shoe-box-sized machines strategically placed throughout the lobby and the model units, is what the developers hope will “add to the experience of a buyer entering the building,” said Matt Muller, a project manager for Horn.

Muller thinks the 64-unit Printing House, at 421 Hudson Street, is the first residential new development in New York City to put on a refreshing air, so to speak. Lots of hotels, though, like to smell good — and that’s where the development team got the idea.

The scent, available only commercially, comes from a line marketed by a North Carolina company called ScentAir. The cost: about $2,200 a quarter, Muller said.

Scent can be an effective tool to market a building’s aesthetic, explained Caroline Errickson, the New York account executive for ScentAir, which counts Starwood hotels, many Holiday Inns and Disney among its clients. “Part of the experience is when [buyers] first walk in the door, that smell is already triggering a happy feeling,” she said.

The developers sampled dozens of ScentAir’s fragrances, “from more floral to citrusy stuff,” Muller said. “We did it on-site, in one of our units, to get the feeling.”

The group’s final pick was chosen for what Muller described as its “breathy airiness.”

“A lot of our design is open and airy, so we wanted to play on that,” he added. “It’s just something fresh, clean and crisp.”