Audemars Piguet Clocks 12K SF Lease at 785 Fifth Avenue

It was time for a retail tenant to shack up at one of Fifth Avenue’s remaining vacant retail spaces.

Luxury watchmaker Audemars Piguet signed a lease for 12,000 square feet at 785 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan’s Lenox Hill neighborhood, the New York Post reported. The lease spans the entire corner site at East 60th Street.

At one time, a Citibank branch occupied a portion of the ground-floor corner space of the property, which is also home to the Parc Cinq luxury building. In 2023, the building’s co-op board — which controls the retail space — retained Newmark to market the site on Fifth Avenue’s famed retail corridor.

The asking rent for the two-floor space was $4.8 million per year. The duration of the lease was not disclosed.

A Newmark team including Jeffrey Roseman, Caleb Petersen and Drew Weiss represented the co-op board. CBRE’s Jonathan Schley and GoodSpace’s Chris DeCrosta represented the tenant.

The retail space used to have narrow windows befitting a bank, which have since been expanded. The alterations needed to go through the Landmarks Preservation Commission because the property is in a historic district.

This will be the global watchmaker’s third spot in Manhattan. The Swiss company also has a sales boutique at 66 East 57th Street and a service center at 52-58 Gansevoort Street.

It’s upping the ante with space on Fifth Avenue, long considered international shopping destination. It’s set to undergo a seismic change after the city reached a deal with the merchants to redesign the street, Gothamist reported in the fall, which will see more space opened for pedestrians by doubling the width of the sidewalks between Bryant Park and Central Park.

City officials have estimated the redesign would cost $350 million, excluding the price of relocating underground utilities and sewers.

— Holden Walter-Warner