A rash of retail vacancies has broken out on Greenwich Avenue — and brokers speculate that Bleecker Street envy is to blame.
Some brokers link the surge of vacancies on Greenwich Avenue to the influence of newly upscale Bleecker Street — specifically the stretch between Bank and Christopher streets, which is home to boutiques like Ralph Lauren, Intermix and Lulu Guinness. It’s an area that hit its stride a few years ago, around the same time that Carrie Bradshaw was teetering around on her Manolo Blahniks on “Sex and the City.”
“A lot of high-end retail went into Bleecker Street, and there aren’t many vacancies there now. There’s always a need for smaller stores, and landlords are seeing that and thinking that it may be spilling over onto Greenwich Avenue,” said Brad Belmont, retail specialist with Winslow & Company. “So the leases come up on older stores, and the landlords don’t renew; we were getting that on Bleecker a few years ago,” Belmont said. “The landlords want market rent.”
Whether Greenwich Avenue will turn into a retail cousin of Bleecker Street — or even the nearby Meatpacking District — is debatable. Yet from the perspective of local merchants, what is taking place on Greenwich Avenue is becoming an all-too-familiar pattern around the city: longtime store owners being forced out by landlords able to raise rents in the generally hot retail market.
Gaige Clark, owner of the flower shop Spruce, had to close her store at 75 Greenwich Avenue in February after her lease ended.
“We had been there almost 10 years, and the landlord wouldn’t even discuss renewing the lease,” Clark said. “Rumor has it he wanted to break through to the empty store next door.” That empty space was previously a popular neighborhood newsstand that closed in early 2006.
Both spaces are still empty, along with a dry cleaner and a restaurant, the Bugambilia Lounge, that closed recently. The former restaurant now serves as advertising space for One Jackson Square, a condominium going up at 122 Greenwich Avenue.
The most recent casualty on the avenue is the architectural salvage and antique furniture store Olde Good Things, at 19 Greenwich Avenue. It closed at the end of April after five years in its current location.
“Our lease was coming up, and the woman we were renting from sold to this Ohio-based firm. They want $19,000 a month for the space, and they’ve got a restaurant lined up for it already,” said Steve, a salesperson at the store who didn’t give his last name. “Our rent was around $5,500.”
Olde Good Things has another store in Chelsea, but the Greenwich Avenue shop was particularly popular.
“This location was very good for us,” Steve said. “It gave us a lot of exposure to people you don’t get in Chelsea — more people from out of the country, tourists, designers and people from the neighborhood. Many people are disappointed about the whole area being gentrified.”
There may be a lot of room for landlords to get higher rents along Greenwich Avenue. Rents on the swanky stretch of Bleecker Street are between $400 and $500 a square foot; on Greenwich Avenue, rents average between $100 and $125 a square foot.
Jonathan Adler, the home furnishings designer, opened his latest store in March at 37 Greenwich Avenue, and the shop is seen by some as a harbinger of boutiques to come.
“When Jonathan Adler opened up his store, I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a bold move and interesting, because that’s the sort of store I would have expected to see on Bleecker,'” said Richard Grossman, director of downtown sales at Halstead and a West Village resident. “The space was cheaper than he could have gotten on Bleecker.”
Grossman said he believes the shifting retail scene on Greenwich Avenue is “not a trend yet.”
“I don’t see the whole area changing; I think if it happens it would just be in a few pockets,” he said. Still, Grossman added, “If Jonathan Adler moved there, other people are due to follow.”
A spokeswoman for the Jonathan Adler store noted that the firm saw the potential for change on the avenue. “We think it’s a really high-traffic, active location, and we saw Greenwich Avenue making the same transformation that Bleecker Street did a few years ago,” said Allison Julius, public relations director for Jonathan Adler.
There are brokers besides Grossman who disagree. “From a retailer standpoint, Greenwich Avenue is not even on the radar screen,” said Ariel Schuster, managing director at Robert K. Futterman & Associates. “It’s not even in the top 10 blocks to be on.”
Schuster mentioned Hudson Street as an up-and-coming area that has more allure for retailers. “If a tenant is priced out of Bleecker or the Meatpacking District, I’d have them look on Hudson,” he said.
The recent vacancies on Greenwich Avenue “may be a function of the fact that landlords may overestimate the value of the retail there,” Schuster said, though he thinks that the current mix of stores and restaurants there doesn’t make much of an impression. “There’s no real destination, nothing to make people take a cab there or walk over for a special trip,” he said.
One Greenwich Avenue restaurateur heartily disagrees and is actively combating that assessment.
Nicky Perry, co-owner of the British eateries Tea and Sympathy and Carry On Tea and Sympathy, and a partner in the fish and chips shop A Salt and Battery, all on Greenwich Avenue between 12th and 13th streets, has launched the Campaign for Little Britain, which aims to bring more of an identity to Greenwich Avenue and the nearby area.
“A lot of us are tied into long leases with reasonable rents, but they’ll run out at some point and we’ll all be in the same boat,” said Perry, who opened Tea and Sympathy more than 16 years ago.
The Campaign for Little Britain, which is also backed by Virgin Atlantic Airlines, wants to have the city formally recognize Little Britain as a neighborhood and is focused on a chunk of the West Village that is host to several British-owned businesses. Some are on Greenwich Avenue, such as Perry’s restaurants, clothing store Showroom 64 and Fiddlesticks, a pub. Others are scattered around the surrounding area and include shops on Bleecker and Hudson streets.
Perry hopes the campaign will not only bring visitors, but also clear up confusion about where the avenue is. “Everyone goes to Greenwich Street instead of Greenwich Avenue,” she said. “Almost all of us have been here for years. We’ve had a nice spirit of community. Surely that’s what we all want?”