A major industrial building designed by Cass Gilbert at 259 Tenth Avenue adjacent to the High Line in Chelsea is being converted to a new 1,600-pupil private school.

The limestone-clad building is at 25th Street and it falls within the West Chelsea Historic District. It was designed by Gilbert, the architect of the great Woolworth Building across from City Hall Park, in 1928 for R. C. Williams, a wholesale grocery company that consigned the first carload of freight to use the High Line in 1933.

It is very similar in design but smaller to another industrial building that Gilbert designed on Kent Avenue in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. That riverfront building was recently converted for residential use.

The Tenth Avenue building is being converted by Christopher Whittle, a former owner of Esquire magazine, and Benno Schmidt, a former president of Yale University.

The 10-story building would be called Avenues: the World School, and renovation plans by Perkins Eastman call for increasing its height 34 feet higher than zoning allows. The Landmarks Preservation Commission recently held a hearing on the plans but has not yet issued a ruling.

An article today at wsj.com by Shelly Banjo said that Mr. Whittle and Mr. Schmidt plan to announce tomorrow that they have raised $75 million from two private-equity investors and that they expect the for-profit school to open in September 2012.

"In the early 1990s," the article said, "Messrs. Whittle and Schmidt launched Edison Schools, Inc. a for-profit company designed to bring private-sector efficiencies to public schools. Going public several years later, the company helped spur today's charter school movement but eventually came under investigation for financial mismanagement by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Edison Schools settled with the SEC without admitting or denying the commission's findings. The company was taken private in 2003 by Liberty Partners, a private-equity firm that mainly invests on behalf of Florida's state pension fund. Changing the company's name to EdisonLearning Inc., Liberty pushed out the company's management team and is now focusing on educational software.

"Their first attempt at launching a so-called global school came in 2008," the article continued, "when Mssrs. Whittle and Schmidt announced what was then called Nations Academy, a global network in partnership with Dubai-based educational entrepreneur Sunny Varkey. Mr. Whittle said at the time that he planned to build 60 campuses by 2021. The Manhattan location called for a $200 million investment to build a new school on developer Douglas Durst's property on West 57th Street. Amidst the 2008 financial meltdown, the school's funding fell through and the project fizzled out."

"Differences about how to proceed with the school evolved between Mr. Varkey and Mr. Whittle and they 'mutually parted ways in late 2008,' said a spokesman for Mr. Varkey.

Avenues got $37.5 million from Liberty Partners, the New York private-equity firm that became EdisonLearning's majority owner and still runs the company and it also got an additional $37.5 million from LLR Partners, a Philadelphia-based private-equity firm. Ten percent of the funds are personally guaranteed by Mr. Whittle and Alan Greenberg, a media executive who will serve as Avenues' president, the article said.

Nearly $60 million of the funds will go toward renovating Avenues' building, a 215,000 square-foot warehouse owned by real estate investor Douglas Oliver. The school recently signed a 48-year lease with the owner and in February will begin renovations led by architect Perkins Eastman and interior designer Bonetti/Kozerski Studio.

The 10-story building, which has been used for two decades to store sets and props used by ABC television shows, is located on Tenth Avenue and 25th Street, across from the Elliot-Chelsea Houses, an affordable housing project.