UWS is gaining a high-end rep

The Upper West Side is becoming more affluent, real estate brokers told the New York Daily News, and no where is that better reflected than in the neighborhood’s rising residential and retail rents. The News points to the Windermere, a rental building long in poor condition at 92nd Street and West End Avenue that Stellar Management recently upgraded. Apartments now rent for between $2,200 per month for a studio and $16,000 a month for a four- or five-bedroom home, under a marketing team led by Brown Harris Stevens’ Shlomi Reuveni.

Just as the 300-unit rental was transformed, so too are the storefronts on nearby streets. “Retailers are finally realizing that the upper West Side is affluent,” said Prudential Douglas Elliman Retail chairwoman Faith Hope Consolo. “Columbus Avenue between 67th and 82nd Streets is 100% occupied, which is influencing the types of businesses just north of it.”

A side affect of that realization is the ouster of mom-and-pop shops for boutiques and national chains, such as the Brooks Brothers that just opened on 88th Street and Broadway. [NYDN]