If its rents are any indication, Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue is the most desirable place to sell suits, silver jewelry and iPhones. Its $1,350-per-square-foot rates are the city’s highest, according to a fall report from Colliers International.
But the outer boroughs have their own top shopping addresses too, where competition for space, though nowhere near as
intense as in Manhattan, is also pushing prices skyward.
Brokers said that despite fears of a recession, the number of major commercial
corridors is greatly increasing, and retail rents are quickly rising.
“Our market is very much insulated,
and I’m not expecting much of a downturn
at all,” said Tim King, senior partner at Massey Knakal. “The vacancy rate is practically zilch, and recent new leases are setting new records.”
In the Bronx, a consistently strong retail section is along East Fordham Road at Webster Avenue, overlooking a campus of Fordham University. Rents here average between $100 and $125 a square foot, and vacancy rates are low, brokers said.
The area benefits from the student population, but an even bigger boon is its proximity to popular train and bus lines, said Aaron Malinsky, a partner at the Manhattan-based P/A Associates.
In partnership with the developer Acadia Realty Trust, he’s currently building Fordham Place, a conversion of an old Sears building into offices and 100,000 square feet of shops, spread across four stories.
All but 4,000 square feet is spoken for, Malinsky said, by tenants that include Best Buy and Sears, both of which have taken 30,000-square-foot berths. Fordham Place, whose development cost wasn’t disclosed, opens in late summer, Malinsky said.
“This is part of an ongoing retail effort to take Fordham Road to the next level,” he added.
In Staten Island, for years, the most expensive retail rents were found along a one-mile stretch of Richmond Avenue, between Victory Boulevard and Platinum Avenue, in New Springville.
This busy commercial strip features stand-alone stores such as a P.C. Richard & Son, Barnes & Noble and Linens ‘n Things, as well as the Staten Island Mall. Stores here typically command $60 a square foot, said Michael Prendamano, a sales associate
with Casandra Properties, based in Grasmere, S.I.
But Waterfront Commons, an 80,000-square-foot development set for a 25-acre parcel on Richmond Valley Road, by the Outerbridge Crossing, could edge it out, he said.
Opening in 2010, the open-air two-story complex will contain as-yet-unannounced outlet stores, a first for the region, said Prendamano.
He is marketing the project, which is being developed by Brooklyn’s Leib Puretz. “We’ve been trying to get quality shopping here for years,” Prendamano noted. “We want to keep as many people on the island as we can.”
In Queens, five thoroughfares — most notably Austin Street in Forest Hills and Jamaica Avenue in Jamaica — have rents topping $100. The highest per-square-foot rate, though, is along Roosevelt Avenue in Flushing, east and west of Main Street, brokers said.
Smaller berths there can rent for $150 a foot, with prices slightly lower for larger sites, like the 2,500-square-foot, one-level storefront at 136 Roosevelt Avenue that was recently vacated by KB Toys. A fashion retailer opening in March is paying $130 a foot for it in a 10-year lease, said Spencer Ain, president of Flushing-based Kent Realty Company, which manages the property.
“Once people come out here and see how much foot traffic these streets get, they know they want to be here,” Ain said.
And then of course there’s Brooklyn, the borough outside of Manhattan with the retail scene that may be developing the fastest. One recent study by Massey Knakal indicated that the number of retail corridors there has grown from 75 in 2004 to between 125 and 130 today.
In that time, rents have increased some 15 to 20 percent.
While several streets in Brooklyn are becoming enclaves for higher-end retail, the borough’s most expensive retail thoroughfare is the Fulton Street Mall, where most of the stores cater to lower-middle-class shoppers.
The most expensive section is a five-block stretch between Red Hook Lane and Bond Street. Its wide sidewalks, which flank streets that allow only buses and delivery trucks, see 100,000 people a day, said Brigit Pinnell, economic development director for the Fulton Mall Improvement Association. As such, corner ground-level storefronts can command $250 a square foot in rent, with larger multi-level spaces averaging $110, she said.
Though the strip has historically been dominated by citywide chains selling electronics, jewelry and sneakers, national retailers have lately taken an interest, especially with City Point rising on the site of the former Albee Square Mall.
That development, whose 500,000 square feet of stores will constitute one-fifth of the mall’s retail space, will open in 2009, though no tenants have been announced yet.
Rents will trump other affluent parts of the borough not just because of current foot traffic levels, but because vendors will also want to be near the affluent buyers who have increasingly migrated to the borough over the last few years, said Peter Botsaris, president of Botsaris Realty Group, which has leased Fulton stores.
“Retail follows residential,” he said.