Three new tenants inked lease deals in an Upper West retail property amid a citywide uptick in retail rents.
Spear physical therapy, Grape Stomper Cannabis House and Wells Fargo signed leases at 2273-2279 Broadway for a total 13,600 square feet, the entire retail portion of the building. Asking rent was $375 per square foot and the leases are for 10 to 12 years, according to the landlord’s broker, Retail by Mona.
The new tenants will replace Nexa Fitness, Mattress Firm and Santander Bank on the corner of 82nd Street.
Retail by MONA’s Brandon Singer and Matthew Ball represented landlord Adam Katz. Spear was represented by Atlantic Retail’s Evan Clements and Amanda Keller and the cannabis retailer was represented by RJB Real Estate’s Richard Bailey.
Retail asking rents are on the rise in Manhattan, but there’s still a ways to go before they return to pre-pandemic levels.
The average asking rent increased year-over-year in 2023’s second half across 12 of the 17 corridors tracked by the Real Estate Board of New York. Sustained activity was a welcome development for the sector, but the average asking rent remains below pre-Covid levels in most areas.
In almost every corridor, average asking rent is 20 to 30 percent lower than it was four years ago. Some corridors are seeing plenty of competition for leases, including Soho, Madison Avenue and Flatiron. Activity is also on the rise in Times Square, Upper Fifth Avenue and Midtown East.
At the start of the first quarter, Manhattan’s retail availability rate was 14.1 percent, the lowest it’s been in nearly a decade, according to a Cushman & Wakefield report. Demand for top-tier locations remained strong into the start of the year, particularly in the SoHo and Madison Avenue submarkets, the report says.