Just weeks after high-end steakhouse Morton’s signed a lease for nearly 15,000 square feet of space from Muss Development on the ground-floor of the Marriott Brooklyn Bridge Hotel, the real estate firm has snagged the adjacent retail condominium.
Muss officially closed the deal to purchase the space from the city, which owns the building at 345 Adams and occupies a large portion of it with city offices. Muss is now seeking another high-end name to fill the retail space.
The deals mark a turning point for an area that sits at the mouth of the Fulton Street Mall, which is dominated by lower end stores and restaurants.
“High-end retailers are seeing Downtown Brooklyn as a valid location to move into,” said Robert C. Greenstone, chairman and CEO of Robert Greenstone Realty Corp, which represented Morton’s at 333 Adams and is the exclusive agent for Muss at 345 Adams.
He said that candidate tenants for 345 Adams Street would be “luxury names, but not high-high… not like Hermes or Tiffany.”
He said Muss closed on the two-floor, 40,000-square-foot, retail condominium last week. The space has about 200 feet of frontage on Adams Street.
Restaurant reviewers for the New York Times and New York Magazine have already predicted a rivalry between Morton’s and the famed Williamsburg steakhouse, Peter Luger’s.
Morton’s is likely to draw guests from the Marriott and from those who work in the 900,000 square feet of office space in the building’s top floors, including employees from the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office.
Greenstone said the space at 345 Adams Street could be leased out in a number of configurations and that it could accommodate up to four tenants–two on each floor.
Interested retailers include Barneys, The Gap, Banana Republic and Apple, senior vice president of Muss Stan Markowitz recently told the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.