Upper Fifth Avenue remains world’s priciest retail corridor

Manhattan’s Upper Fifth Avenue retail corridor remains the most expensive retail market in the world, with rents almost 50 percent higher than the second-priciest shopping district in the world, Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay.

Rents On Fifth Avenue between 49th and 60th streets reached $3,500 per square foot through the first half of this year – up 3.6 percent from a year earlier and 46 percent above $2,399 per square foot in Causeway Bay, according to Cushman & Wakefield’s “Main Streets Across the World” report.

Upper Fifth Avenue, the most desirable retail corridor in Manhattan, retains its status as the world’s most expensive market thanks to a strong tourism industry that helps retail tenants attract customers, the report said.

Luxury retailer Bulgari’s new 15-year lease at Wharton Properties and General Growth Properties’s Crown Building at 730 Fifth Avenue, located at the corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue, recently set a new city record with rents in excess of $5,000 per square foot, as The Real Deal reported.

But retail rents in other gateway cities are also on the rise, according to Bloomberg; San Francisco’s Union Square, for instance, saw rents surge 13 percent as vacancy fell to a record 1.1 percent.

Among shopping districts tracked by Cushman, “rents have risen in 35 percent of streets around the world — despite the increased global uncertainty experienced over the past 12 months,” according to the report.

Paris’ Avenue des Champs-Elysees placed third on the list with rents of $1,372 per square foot, while London’s New Bond Street ranked fourth at $1,321 per square foot and Milan’s Via Montenapoleone was fifth at $1,035 per square foot. [Bloomberg] – Rey Mashayekhi