Five months before Tiffany & Co. opens its new downtown store, the company is making moves to support the area’s renewal by giving grants of $1 million each to three downtown nonprofits.

The charitable arm of the jewelry and fine wares company, the Tiffany & Co. Foundation, will distribute the monies to the Battery Conservancy, the New York Harbor Conservancy, and the Friends of the High Line. A formal announcement is scheduled for Tuesday morning at the Fifth Avenue store.

“Tiffany & Co. has a great history downtown — our first shop opened in 1837 at 259 Broadway, and we’re very glad to be coming back and to be supporting the institutions that are revitalizing the area,” the chairman and chief executive of Tiffany & Co, Michael Kowalski, said last Tuesday when he accepted an award from the Battery Conservancy.

“From very early on, Tiffany as a company felt the need to be good corporate citizens. The way that was done years ago was somewhat different than today: We presented the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Natural History with major collections. Today, philanthropy — providing money to institutions — is the most important thing that we can do,” the president of the foundation, Fernanda Kellogg, said.

The downtown organizations selected by the foundation meet the foundation’s aim to support initiatives in both arts and culture and the environment. However, these downtown grants are for amounts much larger than the foundation’s typical $75,000–$100,000 awards.

Other recent large awards include a $2 million gift in 2006 to the Museum of Arts & Design for a “Tiffany & Co. Foundation Jewelry Gallery” in its new location at Two Columbus Circle, and a $535,000 grant to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to endow an internship in the decorative arts.

The new downtown store is scheduled to open at 37 Wall Street, across the street from the New York Stock Exchange, on October 10.