Ralph Lauren still paying $70K a day for shuttered Fifth Ave. flagship

It’s been nearly a week since retailer Ralph Lauren abruptly shuttered its Fifth Avenue flagship — but the struggling fashion house is still paying nearly $70,000 a day in rent.

Not only has another tenant not stepped in to claim the space, but the owner of the property at 711 Fifth Avenue hasn’t yet hired a broker to market the 39,000-square-foot retail block.

Ralph Lauren stunned observers when it said it would close the store earlier this month. “I don’t recall any company pulling out of a location with a long-term lease after such a short time on Fifth Avenue,” Tom Cusick, president of the Fifth Avenue Business Improvement District, told the New York Post.

Ralph Lauren signed a $400 million, 16-year lease for the flagship store in 2013 in a deal that worked out to $25 million in average rent a year or $68,493 per day.

“That gives you a good indication of how poorly they were doing at that location that they are paying rent there on an empty space,” one source told the New York Post.

The building is owned by the Coca-Cola Co. CBRE’s [TRDataCustom] Richard Hodos orchestrated the lease to Ralph Lauren, earning REBNY’s Retail Deal of the Year Award.

Ralph Lauren’s former CEO Stefan Larsson, who quit in February, had been implementing a $140 million cost-savings plan for the struggling company, which included closing stores, selling off smaller labels and cutting back on discounts. [NYP] — E.B. Solomont