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Pop-up shops still popular in slow market
Two small production companies are touching down for 10 days each in vacant Soho spaces owned by Zar Property, according to David Zar, the company’s president.
The new pop-up shops are the latest in a trend that, according to Prudential Douglas Elliman’s retail veteran Faith Hope Consolo is “here to stay,” she told The Real Deal in January.
The first space, a 1,600-square-foot penthouse at 42 Greene Street, previously housed a photographer’s studio. Blink productions, which is coming to the city to produce a half-hour documentary about the Tribeca film festival, plans to use the space to interview producers and directors involved in the event.
The fifth-floor loft has been vacant for three months and is currently on the market for $38 per square foot. In February, Zar rented out the ground-floor retail space in the building to Vanity Fair, which held Fashion Week-related events there for two weeks.
Temporary tenants like these have for several years provided a way for the city’s landlords to fill vacant spaces in the weeks between long-term leases. But they’ve have become more ubiquitous during the recession as commercial space languishes on the market with no permanent takers.
Zar’s second pop-up shop will be on the 6,500-square-foot ground level of 64 Wooster Street, where B-Reel plans to shoot a video for Google. Zar purchased 64 Wooster just over one year ago and has been keeping it vacant while renovating the property. The space isn’t officially on the rental market yet.
Zar is ultimately looking for longer-term tenants — between three and seven years — for both spaces, he said. Though he declined to state the price for a 10-day stint in either of his buildings, he said both spaces drew “very competitive” rates. No brokers were involved in either of the deals.
“We were approached by a couple of local guys, so we thought, why not? It’s temporary income and we just wanted to get the momentum going,” Zar said.