Under Armour to Open Flatiron Store at Thor’s 139 Fifth Ave

Under Armour is lacing up its sneakers at one of Thor Equities’ Manhattan retail properties.

The sports equipment and apparel brand inked a 6,750-square-foot lease at 139 Fifth Avenue, an office and retail building owned by developer Joe Sitt’s firm in the Flatiron District, The Real Deal has learned.

Under Armour will occupy the ground floor and lower level of the 24,000-square-foot building, which sits between East 20th and 21st streets, directly across the street from rival Nike’s Flatiron outpost at 156 Fifth Avenue.

Under Armour will move in next month after the current tenant, high-end outdoor apparel brand Arc’teryx, departs at the end of January, according to people familiar with the transaction. The asking rent was $400 per square foot, sources said, well above the Fifth Avenue corridor’s average of $250, according to a REBNY report issued last month.

The exact length of the lease is unknown, but people familiar with the deal described it as a short-term agreement that could turn into a long-term lease.

Thor was represented in the deal by an in-house team, while Cushman & Wakefield’s Kenji Ota represented Under Armour, according to people familiar with the deal.

The six-floor property, which includes Class B office space upstairs, was acquired by Thor in 2002.

Under Armour once planned to open a 53,000-square-foot flagship store in Boston Properties’ General Motors Building at 767 Fifth Avenue in Midtown, the former home of toy retailer FAO Schwarz. After multiple delays, Under Armour put a large portion of that space up for sublease in 2021 and said it would instead focus on smaller locations to maximize profits.

Under Armour’s lease comes as asking rents for Manhattan retail space in most key corridors remain below their pre-pandemic peaks. Only five of 16 Manhattan retail corridors tracked by REBNY saw average asking rents increase from the spring of last year to the fall, but rents along Fifth Avenue between East 14th and East 23rd streets were up 1.8 percent compared to the same period a year earlier.