Walgreens moves up at Empire State Building

Anthony Malkin and the Walgreens space at the Empire State Building

Walgreens has swapped its 10,000 square-foot store on the ground-floor concourse of the Empire State Building for the same amount of space on the second floor, the New York Post reported. The new space will have a dedicated entrance for visitors to the building’s observatory, who can pop in on their way back to street level.

Malkin Holdings, which has been attempting to bring New York’s most iconic tower back to its glory days since 2006, will convert the former former drugstore space into a fitness center exclusively for building tenants.

“I talked to Walgreens over 18 months ago. I told them, ‘There’s a vacant Chase bank branch right above you, and 4 million people a year from the observatory walk right by it,” said President Anthony Malkin. “Now the Walgreens people are really pumped up about it.” 

Meanwhile, Malkin said there is still 500,000 square feet available at the tower, much of it in a single block of 250,000 square feet. [Post, 2nd item]