Sephora, Life Time Fitness in talks at One Wall Street: sources

UPDATED, April 18, 10:23 a.m.: Sephora and Life Time Fitness are in talks to take a combined 90,000 square feet of retail space at Macklowe Properties’ office-to-residential Condominium Conversion One Wall Street, sources told The Real Deal.

The French cosmetics chain and the big-box fitness center are each negotiating to join Whole Foods at the base of the $1.5 billion conversion project, sources said. The 944,000-square-foot, Robert A.M. Stern-designed property’s residential component, once expected to be at least half-comprised of rentals, is slated to either be entirely condo or close to it.

Developer Harry Macklowe told Bloomberg last month there are two pending retail leases totaling 90,000 square feet, but declined to identify the prospective tenants. Sephora would take a space in the neighborhood of 10,000 square feet, with Life Time Fitness occupying the rest.

Sources said Life Time is among multiple possible fitness tenants circling the space, and no leases are out yet for either space.

“On the heels of establishing our inaugural brand presence in Manhattan in June 2016, we are continuing to explore additional opportunities in the city, as well as in other existing and new markets across the country,” said a Life Time Fitness spokesperson, who denied an active lease negotiation for the space.

Whole Foods signed a lease in July 2016 for 44,000 square feet of the 150,000-square-foot retail component. The store would open in late 2018 across two floors with the address of 60-80 Broadway. Ground-floor retail asking rents in the Financial District averaged $345 per square foot, according to a fall 2016 report from the Real Estate Board of New York.

RKF’s [TRDataCustom] Robert K. Futterman, who is marketing the building’s retail along with colleagues Jaclyn Totolo, Peter Whitenack and Scott Zinovoy, declined to comment. Representatives for Macklowe and Sephora could not be immediately reached.

Life Time’s fitness centers are typically significantly larger than rivals Equinox and Blink Fitness, with spaces ranging from 70,000 square feet to as much as north of 200,000 square feet nationally. The chain’s sole New York City location is a 70,000-square-foot space at the Moinian Group’s 71-story rental tower Sky called Life Time Athletic, which opened last year.

Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jaber al-Thani, one of the world’s richest men and the former prime minister of Qatar, is the main equity backer behind One Wall Street, as TRD recently reported.

(To view a ranking of Manhattan’s top office tenants of 2016, click here)