The Most Under-Retailed Area on the Planet?
With 15 million tourists a year and 70,000 mostly affluent residents, why doesn't Lower Manhattan have more retail? Speakers will debate that and more at our 5th Annual NYC Retail Summit at 90-100 Gansevoort in the Meatpacking District on Tuesday, May 12. Join us!
Cushman & Wakefield vice chairman Joanne Podell once had concerns about the Meatpacking District becoming a retail hub: “It was all restaurants and nightlife.” Now she’s leasing the 11k SF space at 860 Washington, set to become one of the area’s first flagship retail spaces. She tells us the trifecta of office, tourism and retail drives the area. Since 2.9M SF at nearby 111 Eighth Ave is apparently not enough, Google is reportedly working out terms for a major lease at RXR’s Pier 57 (aka the Super Pier) along the Hudson, just off of Meatpacking. And tomorrow’s opening of the Whitney, also in the neighborhood, will mean an influx of sophisticated visitors. (Or confused cotton gin lovers.)
Joanne says while there are fewer tenants lining up for space than she’s seen in the past, there has been a lot of interest in Soho, like a three-level, 30k SF space she's leasing at 503 Broadway. Westfield World Trade Center SVP Ron Bondy, who’ll also speak at our event, calls Lower Manhattan the most under-retailed area on the planet, citing the 500,000 workers coming in and out on a daily basis. Westfield will make a big dent in the dearth of retail downtown when it opens 370k SF at its World Trade Center space early next year.
It’ll have a retractable skylight, which Ron says will connect it to street life in a way conventional indoor malls can’t. He says the Financial District is in a unique position to become a retail hub for the design-conscious, not just for what’s already there and on the way, but also because of it's proximity to hipper parts of NJ like Hoboken, and to northwest Brooklyn. Ron expects those residents will make the trip to shop. We hope you'll make the trip to our Retail Summit at 90-100 Gansevoort, starting at 7:30am on May 12! Register here.
