When the Sperone Westwater gallery opens on Manhattan’s Lower East Side next month, it will stand out in every way. To an area where emerging-art galleries occupy storefronts and cramped walk-up spaces, Sperone Westwater will bring an eight-story sliver designed by Sir Norman Foster with laminated- glass facade, three floors of gallery space and a display room that moves from floor to floor. The 20,000-square-foot building, which showcases a blue- chip program led by Lucio Fontana and Bruce Nauman, will add some serious commercial bling to the scruffy emerging-art galleries clustered around the New Museum.

“There’s no gallery of that caliber in the area,” said Laura Solomon, New York art adviser. “Rather than being one of many strong galleries in West Chelsea, they want to be a big fish in a small pond.” Most Lower East Side dealers rent modest spaces at prices ranging from $50 a square foot on Delancey Street to $200 a square foot on Bowery.

The new space will have public galleries on the first three floors, private viewing rooms on the fourth and fifth, offices on the sixth and seventh and a library on the eighth. The mobile exhibition room, with its 13-foot ceilings, can be moved from floor to floor to serve as extra gallery space. During the inaugural show by Guillermo Kuitca, the mobile room will display 54 of the Argentine artist’s painted mattresses.

Younger galleries hope the new heavyweight will boost the number of wealthy patrons strolling around the neighborhood, with its hip bars, boutiques and restaurants. “Their program has strong ties in Europe and big European collectors will be forced to come down here,” said Augusto Arbizo, director of nearby Eleven Rivington gallery. Whether these buyers will acquire art outside the blue-chip emporium is another matter. “Maybe for fun they’ll go to smaller galleries,” said Solomon. “I don’t see that for purchasing the clientele would overlap that much.”