The next time you find yourself at the George Washington Bridge bus station at 177th Street and Broadway with a half-hour to kill, you might consider going shopping.
No kidding. Discounted rents, high fashion, and ubiquitous bank branches are at the heart of the high-traffic retail scene in Washington Heights, home to a mix of cultures and consumers that’s about 75 percent Dominican, but also counts migr s from Lower Manhattan and long-time intergenerational Jewish families who’ve stayed in the neighborhood.
With Dominican eateries and bodegas on almost every corner, a unique New York eclectic ambience prevails. Add two major subway lines the A/C and the No. 1 train, a bus terminal that has more than 7.5 million travelers going through its doors every year, and amazing foot traffic, and you’ve got a recipe for retail success.
Despite a discounters’ image reminiscent of the West 14th Street of old before the Greenmarket, before May’s department store was replaced by Zeckendorf Towers 18 years ago 181st Street’s big-brand retailers like Radio Shack, Footlocker, and Jennifer Convertible, and discounters like Jimmy Jazz, Tribeca, and Zodiac, are key to the strip’s success.
The area is also quietly becoming the Soho of Upper Manhattan (see sidebar). While you’re running off to Bloomingdale’s and Bergdorf’s for your favorite designer jeans, those in the know are haggling 5 to 10 percent off at hidden gems like Privada on 178th Street and Broadway, or Da Locura five blocks south.
“You’ve got low rents for students and young families looking to plant their roots, and you can hop on the subway and be downtown in 20 minutes,” said Matthew Gorman, vice president of retail services at CB Richard Ellis. “But, I think it’s more Lower East Side-ish than Soho,” he added, noting that the area, known as WaHi, for Washington Heights and Inwood, is still in transition to becoming a full-fledged shopping district.
Gorman said the area is surpassing the retail expectations of Harlem to the south, notable given the amount of gentrification and development in that neighborhood. Bank branches recently targeted the area as part of their expansion throughout the city.
“What I see as a trend in Washington Heights is the Banco Populars and the Chases and the Western Unions that go up there to service the population,” said Gorman.
Banks figure prominently in the heavily immigrant Heights not just for the large number of cash remittances going overseas, but also because of cash deposits. State and federal law mandating exposure in neighborhoods of all income levels also plays in the equation. That makes moving to the Heights a double win, Gorman said.
“A lot of financial institutions want to be there, that’s where the action is,” he added, noting the huge traffic volumes on 181st Street and a standard price of $150-per-square-foot retail rents.
The Port Authority bus station on 177th Street and Broadway, with 13,000 passengers passing through a day, is a key retail location that may expand. It currently has 30,000 usable square feet for retail, including Rite Aid at 6,000 square feet and Off-Track Betting at 2,700 square feet.
“In the case of the bus station, we are trying to determine what would be of benefit to the community,” said Frank DiMola, the Port Authority’s director of real estate. As a result, “the complexion of the retail could change, such as several large tenants,” or multiple tenants, he said.
The agency has added a new retail tenant, Washington Heights Optical, to the interior, a change that radically alters the terminal ambience by adding bright light and a streamlined frontage.
Norice Ormsby, who owns the store with her husband, was in business for more than six years on 180th and St. Nicholas when she learned of this space, she said.
She now pays one-third the rent, tripled her space to 800 square feet for $2,000 a month, and pays no state real estate taxes because the Port Authority is a state agency. She and her husband gutted and renovated the space, and her investment is already paying off even though she has only been open for two weeks, she said.
Full-service tastes Uptown
In the neighborhoods farther south, Lower Manhattan migr s priced out of areas like the Lower East Side seeking lower rents and lower-cost co-op prices are also generating new retail needs.
Take, for example, the neighborhoods of Riverside Drive from 155th to 177th streets, where many apartments are being converted to condominiums and co-ops.
New residents are looking for services like dry-cleaning, drug stores, and supermarkets, said Robert Shapiro, director of sales in Northern Manhattan for Massey Knakal Realty Services.
The same thing is also happening in Sugar Hill, between Convent and St. Nicholas avenues from 145th to 155th streets, as well as Jumel Terrace from 160th to 162nd streets, Shapiro said.
“New people are bringing money into the neighborhood and want to have better amenities, and everybody’s getting the benefits of it,” said Shapiro. “Broadway properties are very sought after,” he added, noting a number of national chains moving in at 148th and 161st streets, including Taco Bell, KFC, Dunkin’ Donuts, and a fancy new pizzeria.
Many say the area is cash rich because of the drug trade that runs in open-air markets from 135th Street and Broadway all the way up to 181st Street. But storeowners and brokers say that crime has decreased significantly since 2000, and Upper Manhattan is also cleaner.
“It’s safer now and cleaner too, much cleaner than it was four years ago,” said Eddie Cabrera, manager at Chocolate, which sells fragrances and sunglasses at St. Nicholas Avenue between 180th and 181st streets. “Bloomberg picks up the garbage three times a day. With Giuliani you could spend days with no garbage truck.”
Still, not everyone is sanguine about the area. Despite pockets of retail and residential success stories, some brokers are less than excited by the Heights.
Nicole Meyer of Newmark Realty said she brokered 7,500 square feet of retail with 150 feet of wrap-around frontal space on Amsterdam and 162nd Street for $40 a square foot to a medical facility and a couple of other retail stores, for far below the price that one might find either on Broadway or near the bus station on 177th Street.
“For my customer base, I haven’t seen as much demand for the area,” she said, noting she has more business in Harlem.