Pearl River Mart finds new home in Tribeca

A year-and-a-half after it shuttered its Soho location amid rapidly rising rents, Asian food emporium Pearl River Mart has announced it will re-open in Tribeca.

The store will open first as a pop-up store at 395 Broadway in late November, Crain’s reported. It will close for a short time in February to allow the owners to build out the full retail space. The store will eventually take a total of 8,000 square feet across the entire basement and first floor of the building, Crain’s reported. The new store is slated to open in May. Lee & Associates’ Peter Braus and JP Sutro had the listing for 395 Broadway.

Pearl River announced it would close its 477 Broadway location in April last year. The market owners were then collectively paying more than $100,000 a month in rent for the 30,000-square-foot space — a figure that was due to increase fivefold if the company renewed at that location with retail space owner Nathan Baden. The business was at that time 44 years old, and had been at 477 Broadway Which Is Between Grand Street and Broome Street — since 2003.  Pearl River operated as an online retailer following the store’s closure.

“[Rent] south of Canal Street is much cheaper,” said one Pearl River owner, Ching Yeh Chen. “It’s not too far from Soho and we are still close to Chinatown, so we think it is an ideal place.”

Retail rents in Soho surged between 2013 and 2014, but dropped 16 percent year-over-year in the second quarter of 2016 to an average of $824 per square foot. [Crain’s] — Miriam Hall