REAL ESTATE New York
Retail Moves Off the Beaten Path
From the Upper
West Side to Lower
Manhattan, and to a
lesser extent in the
outer boroughs, stores
are opening where
none had been before
By Paul Bubny
With Fifth and Madison avenues long established as premier corridors, New York City has never had much concern about attracting shop- pers—or retailers. Yet there’s plenty of room to grow, and much of it is
happening not on the well-worn paths but as a result of boldly going where no
retailer has gone before. “There’s growth in the Main-and-Main corridors—Fifth
Avenue, the streets of SoHo and now the Meatpacking District—but the residential corridors are changing dramatically,” observes Faith Hope Consolo, chairman
of retail leasing and sales at Douglas Elliman.
There’s “more work to do,” in Manhattan as well as in the still-underserved
outer boroughs, Consolo says. “We’re the tourist capital of the world. We’re going
to have more than 55 million visitors by the end of the year, so we continue to
attract everything. In Times Square, the numbers are off the charts, more than
Fifth Avenue in some instances.”
On the Upper West Side, the Douglas Elliman leasing team lately has seen “so
much leasing activity that Columbus Avenue now has zero vacancy, as does
Broadway in the 60s, 70s, 80s and pushing into the 90s,” Consolo said. Some 40
blocks south on the same side of Manhattan, Related Cos.’ massive Hudson Yards
mixed-use development represents what Consolo calls “the next frontier.”
Having already signed handbag maker Coach Inc. as an anchor tenant in the
project’s South Tower with a 740,000-square-foot office condominium, Related
and Oxford Properties Group also secured commitments in April from L’Oréal
USA and software company SAP for a total of 517,000 square feet of office. The
The Howard Hughes Corp. will redevelop the Pier 17 retail pavilion at the South Street Seaport, one
of a number of high-visibility projects coming to Lower Manhattan.
