Retail landlord Jeff Sutton has tied a bow on a deal with the shoe shop Skechers to lease a prime corner on Broadway in Soho.
Sutton, president of Wharton Properties, signed a lease with the footwear firm which will take 2,300 square feet of the former Eastern Mountain Sports space at 530 Broadway on the corner of Spring Street, sources told The Real Deal.
Insiders said the rent was about $1,000 per square foot.
The location will put Skechers a short walk away from one of its major competitors. Nike is opening a store this fall across the street at 529 Broadway, a new, six-story building Sutton [TRDataCustom] co-developed with Aurora Capital Associates, Thor Equities and the Adjmi family.
In June, Skechers CEO Robert Greenberg said the company has 1,500 stores and is set to open another 500 locations worldwide through next year.
“Adidas has stores all over the world. Nike has stores all over the world,” he told Bloomberg News at the time. “The four or five major brands have stores all over the world and we’re doing the same thing.”
The company is taking the ground-floor portion of some 18,000 square feet the outdoor gear retailer EMS had leased on the first and second floors of 530 Broadway before packing things up earlier this year. The remaining second floor space will most likely be converted into office use.
Sutton currently has Skechers as a tenant at 509 Fifth Avenue, where the store has 3,500 square feet. Skechers’s corporate offices are also located at Sutton’s 717 Fifth Avenue.
Skechers opened a store at Westfield’s World Trade Center mall in August.
Meanwhile, Sutton is quietly looking for a buyer for the 11-story building and two adjacent properties totaling 194,500 square feet. The properties are being marketed with the option to buy either the retail or office portions individually.