Just 5 percent of retail spaces in the Flatiron District are tenantless.
The analysis is part of a retail market series undertaken by TRD, whose research team walked the streets to tally up the number of vacant properties in the area from June 11 through June 26. Thirty-six of the Flatiron’s 739 retail properties were vacant, according to the count.
The Flatiron’s vacancy statistic is half that of Soho’s and Noho/Nolita. TRD found during a spring walkthrough that nearly 1 in 10 properties in each of those areas are empty. Another TRD analysis uncovered that about 18 percent of stores in the Meatpacking District were vacant earlier this year as well.
In the second quarter, there were eight leases signed in the Flatiron/Union Square area, totaling almost 59,000 square feet, according to a new report from commercial real estate services firm CBRE. Among the largest leases inked in the borough during that time was for a 19,250-square-foot Uniqlo outpost at 860 Broadway.
Among the biggest vacancies in the neighborhood is at Meriel Realty’s 13-story mixed-use property at 19 Union Square West, where more than 16,600 square feet of retail space sits empty. ABS Partners Real Estate has the listing for that property.
Additionally, the retail space at a nearly 43,000-square-foot Beaux-Arts landmark building known as the Church Missions House at 281 Park Avenue South, is also vacant. Serhant and Avison Young are marketing the building.
Like elsewhere around the city, there are street-level differences in the Flatiron/Union Square. Along Broadway between 14th to 23rd Streets, the asking rent rose by 9.1 percent year over year to $369 per square foot, per CBRE.
But along Fifth Avenue between 14th and 23rd Streets, which recorded the second-largest drop in availability during Q2, the asking rent plunged by more than 10 percent to $338 per square foot — likely stemming from higher-priced properties coming off the market, according to CBRE.
Overall, the Manhattan retail market held steady in the second quarter, with the number of available spaces 37 percent below the peak in 2021. Much of that activity was driven by deals done in Flatiron, according to CBRE’s report.
Hiro Imaizumi, a researcher at CBRE, noted that high rents and capital expenditures are
“making decision-making a longer process for retailers.”
The number of ground-floor availability in the 16 top retail corridors in the borough dropped by 2 percent from the quarter before to 184. Additionally, the average asking rent for retail properties in the borough was $670 per square foot, which was 2 percent higher from the quarter before. Leasing velocity hit 3.9 million square feet, a 4 percent quarterly increase.
The year-over-year stats paint a slightly different picture. Manhattan’s average retail asking rent was down by 6 percent compared to the same time last year, and the number of vacant properties was up 2 percent. However, leasing velocity, fueled by tenants new to Manhattan, was up by 32 percent year over year.
“It’s great to see new tenants helping to shuffle this [tenant] deck that had gotten stagnant,” Imaizumi said.
In the Flatiron, out-of-market visitors — those who do not live or work in the neighborhood — rose by 3.5 percent from January to May compared to the same period last year, according to data provided to TRD by Placer.ai, a location analytics firm. That places the Flatiron in the middle of the pack for year over year visitor growth among the top retail districts in Manhattan.
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Correction: This post corrected the months used in Placer.ai’s data set.