From left: Jeffrey Roseman, executive vice president at Newmark Knight Frank, Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, and Madison Avenue

At least 60 new retailers have opened on Madison Avenue’s northern strip since January 2010, including high-end stores like Bottega Veneta with its $30,000 purses, the Madison Avenue Business Improvement District told the Wall Street Journal. An additional 10 new stores are under construction. Fifth Avenue also makes positive strides, as demand increases.

It’s a notable comeback for the avenue, which lost multiple high-profile tenants in the recession, including Christian Dior and Yves St. Laurent, driving the vacancy rate up to 15 percent at the worst of the market. Rents, which had soared to $1,500 a foot during the boom, also collapsed. [more]

More and more of the big technology companies are interested in space in Manhattan, in particular because of their desire to be near the advertising companies on Madison Avenue, the New York Times reported. During the upcoming Advertising Week, Yahoo will be able to present its new offices in Viacom’s Times Square building to potential advertising clients, in a way that it wasn’t able to do before.

Yahoo’s Times Square suite at 1540 Broadway has purple-hued conference rooms, a lobby with custom graphics and door pulls shaped like exclamation points, and a dynamic design that are symbolic of a high-tech company. Comments

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As part of an initiative to bolster the Madison Avenue retail corridor between 57th and 86th streets, the area’s business improvement district has handed Chinese and Brazilian tourists more than 10,000 coupons for shops and galleries in the last month. Crain’s reported that the vouchers, known as “Keys to Madison Avenue,” are meant to remedy falling foot traffic that hasn’t returned with the recovery. Retail rents between 57th and 72nd streets on the avenue sit at just $919 a square foot compared to pre-recession rates that topped out at more than $1,200, according to recent market reports. [more]

The tenant mix on Upper Madison Avenue is becoming more diverse, with the arrival of Australian boot maker Ugg and designer Michael Kors, according to a new report from PBS Real Estate, which highlights new trends in retail real estate in New York City, Crain’s reported. The report also shows that a growing number of foreign retailers are seeking to expand in Manhattan, including British retailer Topshop, Spanish brand Desigual and the British brand All Saints. “2011 will see big changes on the streets of Manhattan,” said Laura Pomerantz, principal of PBS. She also noted that West 34th Street, which currently has few vacancies between Fifth and Sixth avenues, is also attracting new tenants. [more]

Gawker’s Rex Sorgatz has designed a new restaurant called 4Food — what he calls “an Apple store meets Chipotle” — to open on Madison Avenue and 40th Street July 6. The organic-based food joint will feature free WiFi, a 240-inch internet monitor tracking Twitter and FourSquare streams, and an on online resale program for its bizarre hamburgers. The burgers will each have holes in them, which can be filled with one of 40 scoops, including edamame, hummus, salsa and chili. Keeping with the tech theme, customers will be encouraged to create online accounts from which to place their orders, and
also have the chance to name and market their creation for a 25-cent store credit. [Gawker]

[more]

With rents beginning to stabilize on Madison Avenue, the 30-plus
vacancies on the corridor between 57th and 72nd streets are

beginning to fill up with what, at the height of the market, would
have been an unlikely array of tenants. Once a corridor only
affordable to luxury jewelers and watchmakers, the city’s prime
shopping strip has begun to attract a more varied set of apparel and
accessories retailers at $800 to $900 per foot, according to Crain’s. [more]

Rents on some of the city’s most prestigious shopping corridors have fallen by nearly a third over the last year, second-quarter retail data from Cushman & Wakefield shows. The sharpest drop was seen on Madison Avenue from 57th to 72nd streets, where average asking rents for first-floor retail fell 31 percent in the second quarter of the year to $745 per square foot from $1,091 per square foot, the firm’s data shows. At the same time, the availability rate grew from 13.4 percent to 15.47 percent. While the rents in most of the six shopping districts covered in the survey declined, one area, Times Square from Eighth Avenue to Broadway and 42nd to 49th streets, saw an increase in average rents from last year. [more]

Retailers previously priced out of Soho and the Upper East Side are taking advantage of falling rents and opening shops. Rents in the city fell an average of 11 percent between fall 2008 and spring 2009, Crain’s New York Business reported. Soho and Nolita are expected to see the biggest drop in rent this year — about 20 percent. Shoe store Camper recently signed a one-year lease on Madison Avenue at 59th Street for about $500 a foot, and thrift shop Housing Works just opened its ninth location in the city on Crosby Street in Soho. In addition, sneaker store Flight Club just leased its third Manhattan location on Lafayette Street for just $70 a foot. Brokers said the space could have fetched $200 a foot last year.

Times Square (left) and the Flatiron District

The average asking rent for all available retail space in Manhattan
fell 11
percent between fall 2008 and spring 2009, the first meaningful decline
since September 11, 2001, according to the Real Estate Board of New
York’s spring 2009 retail report. Some areas, however, saw rents increase. Ground-floor average asking rents
in Times Square increased
71 percent between spring 2009 and the same time last year. The average asking rent in the area — on Broadway and Seventh Avenue, between 42nd and
47th streets — where Forever 21 and American Eagle are opening,
reached $1,381 per square foot this spring, up from $809 during the
same time last year. The median asking rent jumped 79 percent, to
$1,450 a foot from $809. TRD

[more]