Working in High-Rise Style : Real estate: Many building managers are finding that a concierge helps draw quality tenants.

It was a situation not covered by your standard job description. So when the frantic client snapped a heel just before an important meeting, Nadja Dow did the first thing that came to mind. She gave the woman her shoes.

“Luckily, we were about the same size,” Dow said.

In fact, most of Dow’s days couldn’t be crammed into a standard job description.

Dow is a concierge--one of those know-everybody, do-everything gatekeepers that are so familiar in ritzy hotels. But Dow doesn’t work in a hotel.

Instead, she works at a high-rise office tower in downtown Los Angeles. She is one of a growing number of “corporate concierges” who are being hired by office building managers to attract tenants.

As perks go, it’s cheaper than building a health club and more exotic than free rent. But concierges are mostly being used in Los Angeles and a few other large cities to give some extra cachet to office developments that already qualify as high-class real estate, experts say.

Concierges can be found at several luxury buildings downtown, in the Mid-Wilshire area and on the Westside. Many office towers in Orange County and San Diego have hired concierges.

Such well-known buildings as First Interstate World Center in downtown Los Angeles and Fox Plaza in Century City employ them. At least one hospital, Good Samaritan, has even gotten in on the act, offering concierge services for patients.

Many of the concierges once worked in hotels and bring gold-plated Rolodexes with them to get the best seats, a good table or a hefty discount. Their clients are all the employees in their buildings and sometimes neighboring buildings, too.

“It’s like working in a hotel that’s always 100% occupied and always has the same people there,” said Fernando Baell, chief concierge for Pedus Services who works at the 1888 Century Park East building. “We get integrally involved in people’s lives and in their businesses.”

From her concierge desk in the lobby at Broadway Plaza, Dow spends her day as the estimated 30 other corporate concierges in town do. Dow makes dinner reservations, sets up parties, procures theater and movie tickets, buys gifts, arranges for dry cleaning pickups and carries out a variety of tasks, some mundane and some a little more exotic.

“We do all kinds of things,” said Lucia Bartoli, director of concierge services at Excelsior Corporate Concierge, a unit of United Security Industries that employs Dow and several other concierges. “Whatever you can imagine, if it’s legal and you have the time, space and money, we can obtain it for you.”

“A lot of people don’t know what a concierge is . . . but it becomes like an addiction. People use me more and more,” said Sophie Sachiko Kondo, who has worked as a concierge at AT&T; Center in downtown Los Angeles for nearly a year.

Pedus Services was one of the first companies to jump into concierge services locally about five years ago as an addition to its specialties, including security, emergency preparedness and janitorial services.

“It’s an amenity that people are requesting in their buildings to attract tenants and to keep them happy because there’s a glut of space,” said Andre Nicasio, vice president and general manager of Los Angeles-based Pedus. “The last trade show I went to, every security company I saw had a sign up that they offer concierge service.”

Santa Monica-based United Security started Excelsior Corporate Concierge about two years ago because he “saw a need,” said Chief Executive Mark Apicella. “Everybody wanted a new gimmick to make their building better than the rest.

“I know how much time it takes for my secretary to get a gift or make travel arrangements,” Apicella said. “The tenants can utilize their assistants’ or secretaries’ time to run their businesses rather than do these chores.”

With their extensive contacts, concierges are called on to perform an incredible range of duties, including writing a building newsletter and setting up events such as fashion shows, blood drives or monthly giveaways. Some will remind tenants of imminent birthdays and anniversaries. Sometimes the concierge doubles as the security officer for the building.

Dow said she frequently uses the Spanish, French and Arabic that she studied in college. Kondo has set up dates for building tenants. Bartoli said she once procured a live lion for a dinner party. Nicasio said one frequent request is for manicurists who make office visits so that secretaries who break nails don’t have to leave their desks.

Said Baell: “I’ve done everything from help Raquel Welch select a gown for the debut of her exercise video to help a lady give birth.” Baell noted that the latter service primarily consisted of calling the paramedics and persuading the laboring woman that it would be a good idea to go to the hospital.

The cost of a concierge and miscellaneous services vary and is something of a controversy within the mini-industry.

Pedus, for example, treats the service more as promotion for its other offerings. The building manager pays for the concierge; the tenant-clients pay for the items or services purchased, but no separate fees are charged just for making the arrangements, Nicasio said.

Excelsior is also paid by a building’s management and does not charge separate fees. But in its case, vendors from whom gifts or services are purchased contribute to a “commission pool” shared by the company and its concierges.

And independent concierges may take a little from both approaches.

“It’s a growing business, but I wouldn’t say it’s a good business,” Nicasio said. “A company can’t survive just on concierges in office buildings.”

Nicasio estimated that concierge services cost a building an average of $50,000 a year, including salary, benefits and vacation, adding that the cost will vary with the number of concierges employed. Apicella said Excelsior bills an owner $18 a hour for a concierge. That would work out to a little more than $37,000 a year for one concierge working 40 hours a week.

Not all real estate specialists are sold on the idea.

“I don’t have tenants coming to me and saying, ‘I’ll only go into a building that has a concierge,’ ” said Ray Lupone, a senior marketing consultant who primarily represents tenants for the Grubb & Ellis real estate company in Los Angeles.

“It’s a promotional thing,” he said. “It kind of gives the atmosphere of, ‘I’m in a different place.’ ”

But, Lupone added: “There are a million things you can do in an office building that would overall show that you have a class project. If you don’t have those other things, (a concierge) is not going to do it.”

Denis Charles, an executive at the Cushman & Wakefield real estate brokerage, which manages the Broadway Plaza office-hotel-shopping complex, was initially reluctant to hire a concierge two years ago. He’s changed his mind since.

“I wasn’t too sure it was going to work, and then it took off,” Charles said. “The tenants like it a lot.

“In terms of leasing space and retaining your existing tenants with new competition coming on line all the time, it’s very valuable. It all goes into the equation.”