Brooklyn Among Nation’s Priciest Retail And Other Fun Facts From CPEX’s Brooklyn Retail Report

Who would have thought Brooklyn would be in the same conversation as Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles and North Michigan Avenue in Chicago? That would have been hard to believe even as recently as 2007, the last peak of the real estate cycle, but that’s where the Brooklyn retail market stands today, according to CPEX’s 2016 Brooklyn Retail Report.

With our seventh annual study of Brooklyn retail, we found that Brooklyn is home to three of the top 10 retail corridors nationwide, more than any other city in the United States, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Miami, and Washington, DC. (Based on the average rent on a price per square foot basis, the comparison intentionally excludes New York, as an outlier in the national retail market in order to create more realistic comparables.)

This emergence on the national retail scene comes after nine Brooklyn corridors doubled in average retail rents in just five years (2009-2014), followed by an 80% increase in the borough’s retail density from 2013 to 2015.

Some other notable facts from the 2016 CPEX Brooklyn Retail Report:

 Much of that retail density falls in the less-than-three-square-mile area surrounding Downtown Brooklyn—28% of the borough’s notable retail corridors are concentrated in just 3.7% of Brooklyn’s land area.

 “The more things change, the more they stay the same”: Five Brooklyn neighborhoods that have undergone a surge in residential growth over the past decade have seen retail rents remain stable on the primary corridors. These neighborhoods include Greenpoint, Bedford Stuyvesant, South Slope, Cobble/Boerum Hill and Bushwick.

 The number of Michelin-starred restaurants in Brooklyn has tripled in the past two years.

 In 2015, Brooklyn welcomed such tenants as Wegmans, Nike, Jacadi and Rituals, as well as the first outer borough location for Saks OFF 5TH in a lease negotiated by the CPEX Brooklyn Retail Leasing Team. For more information on the Brooklyn retail market, contact the CPEX Retail Leasing Team or visit our website at www.cpexre.com for the full Brooklyn Retail Report.