Sony closing retail store at 550 Madison Avenue

Electronics giant will relocate store, along with corporate office, to 11 Madison Avenue

550 Madison Avenue
550 Madison Avenue in Midtown

Sony will be moving more than just its corporate headquarters out of 550 Madison Avenue in Midtown. The electronics giant is set to close its retail store at the base of the 36-story Midtown office-turned-luxury-condominium tower.

The company will vacate more than 25,000 square feet at the base of 550 Madison Avenue, located between East 55th and East 56th streets, where it has operated for nearly 22 years.

The move comes as Sony plans to relocate its New York corporate headquarters out of the 700,000-square-foot building – which it sold to the Chetrit Group and Clipper Equity for $1.1 billion in 2013 – to SL Green Realty’s 11 Madison Avenue, where it will reopen the retail store, according to Crain’s.

Chetrit and Clipper hired RKF broker Karen Bellantoni to market the vacated space at 550 Madison Avenue, which includes 15,000 square feet of conventional ground-floor and basement store space and another 10,000 square feet on the second and third floors.

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The upper floors of the retail space are zoned for cultural use, Crain’s reports, and Bellantoni is targeting a tenant that would potentially use that space as a showroom or museum. Sony currently houses its Wonder Lab technology and entertainment museum in the space.

Asking rent for the Sony retail space would be above $1,000 per square foot, Bellantoni said.

The reopened retail store at 11 Madison Avenue would be one of two standalone Sony retail locations in the country, as the company as shuttered most of its stores in recent years. The other location would be in Los Angeles.

Chetrit and Clipper, meanwhile, are in the process of converting 550 Madison Avenue into a luxury residential building holding 113 condos as well as a 170-key hotel. [Crain’s]Rey Mashayekhi