Nearly 1 in 10 stores in Noho and Nolita don’t have tenants.
The Real Deal pounded the pavement between May 27 and June 11 to track empty storefronts in the two downtown neighborhoods.
Out of 553 properties in Noho and Nolita, 51 were vacant as of the time of the study — or 9.2 percent.
The rate was slightly below that found for neighboring Soho, where 11 percent of stores were empty when TRD analyzed the neighborhood in late May. But Soho, Noho and Nolita’s retail vacancy rate was far lower than that of the Meatpacking District, where about 1 in 5 properties were vacant as of the time of TRD’s count.
In Noho and Nolita, the amount of vacant space totals almost 185,000 square feet (square footage could not be obtained for all stores). The largest empty store is the Moklam Enterprises’ six-story, office-and-retail building at 622 Broadway.
The landlord is looking to fill more than 48,000 square feet of space across three levels and a basement, according to the listing by Newmark’s Jeffrey Roseman and Jeremy Tucker. A Best Buy occupied the space for 20 years.
“It’s an interesting project in the sense that we have so much space and there are less people looking for 48,000 square feet than there were 10 years ago,” Tucker said. “So we’re looking at all sorts of exciting ways to chop it up.”
A couple of blocks up from that property is the 12-story building at 692 Broadway. Once home to Tower Records, the property has the second-largest retail vacancy in the two neighborhoods, with three floors of retail space spanning more than 13,400 square feet without tenants.
Soho in particular rebounded better than some other Manhattan retail corridors from the plunge in visitors during the pandemic. The area recorded a 7.2 percent growth in visitors — those who do not live or work there — from 2023 to 2024. That was the second-greatest annual increase during that time period among the borough’s top shopping districts, according to data provided by Placer.ai.
Noho and Union Square were third, with a 6.1 percent growth in visitors to those neighborhoods. However, the growth in Noho’s visitors was more tempered from January through May of 2024 to that same period in 2025, coming in at 0.9 percent. In Soho, it was 6.7 percent.
Fitness and food tenants have been popular in the neighborhoods, which Tucker said have positive outlooks.
“The interest from brands that aren’t in New York and haven’t come here yet is still tremendous,” he said.
The City Council in 2021 rezoned Soho, Noho and parts of other areas in an effort to make those areas more affordable and provide more housing. The change modernized retail regulations and allowed residential — including affordable housing — and commercial uses in what were manufacturing zones.
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