Though no leases have been signed yet, Mr. Senise said he had approached Jeffrey Deitch, the former director of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and an art dealer whose SoHo gallery was known for large-scale performances.

“We did not proceed with our original plan,” Mr. Deitch wrote in an email, “but it is a phenomenal space, and I hope that it will still be possible to work with them in an art project there.”

A century ago, the building was home to the Lidgerwood Manufacturing Company, which produced cable-car-like construction equipment used to build dams, like one at the Croton Falls Reservoir in Putnam County. More recently, Time Moving and Storage owned the building, which housed stacks of document boxes climbing toward the 45-foot ceilings, company officials said.

“The value of the buildings in that neighborhood had grown to such a level, it just made economic sense to consolidate our operations,” said James Dowse, chief operating officer of Time Moving, which owned four Red Hook buildings, all of which have been sold.

The building shows its age. Supported by wood trusses in places, the roof leaks when it rains.

For his part, Mr. Senise will spend $20 million to patch the roof, remove cinder blocks from rows of windows and install a heating system, as well as peel back a section of roof to reopen a courtyard. “But the building itself is beautiful the way it is, so you don’t want to change it too much,” he added. He paid $11.8 million for it in 2012.

Still, given that the site is situated just a few yards from the water and flooded in 2012 along with much of the neighborhood during Hurricane Sandy, protection from future flooding damage is a high priority.