Wholesale perfume, jewelry and beauty supply stores have long populated the stretch of Broadway between 29th and 30th streets, which until recently seemed immune to Manhattan’s retail boom. But that’s changing with the development of projects such as Virgin Hotel’s NoMad Center, which has landlords sensing an opportunity to bag pricier tenants.
Case in point: A jeweler is looking to lease 30,000 square feet of retail space at the base of four NoMad buildings at the corner of West 30th Street and Broadway. Douglas Elliman’s Greg Cohen and Sean Copello are marketing the space — at 1204-1210 Broadway, 1212 Broadway, 1214-1216 Broadway and 28 West 30th Street — as a combined space for a single tenant or for as many as six tenants. The brokers said they would offer incentivized rents in the first two to three years to major brands that sign a lease.
Rendering of Virgin Hotel’s NoMad Center (credit: VOA Architects)
The buildings’ owner is jeweler Raizada Vaid, affiliated with Fantasia World LLC and Pinky Realty LLC, records show. The current retail tenants are largely small businesses such as Liberty Shipping, but are on month-to-month leases.
Retail asking rents in the area range from $150 to more than $500 per square foot, brokers said. The NoMad Center, a 100,000-square-foot retail block in the Sir Richard Branson-branded, 38-story glass tower, is expected to open in 2017.
“The neighborhood is changing rapidly and when the Virgin Hotel’s NoMad Center comes to market it’s going to have a substantial impact on the surrounding retail and we expect a significant spike asking prices,” said Copello.
Last week, a hotel-and-retail building at 893 Broadway and its hotel leasehold interest sold for a total of $2,000 per square feet, one of the priciest property deals ever along that Broadway strip, as TRD reported.