Retail on the Lower Upper West Side
The Real Deal [10/30/06]
The Time Warner Center pushed the comeback of the foot of the Upper West Side to a whole new level. The complex's mall-like shopping atrium is filled with an underground gourmet grocery, chic shops like Hugo Boss and Coach, and expense-account restaurants.The next test of retail at the foot of the Upper West Side on Broadway will be at 15 Central Park West, where condos are setting record prices and where the retail component could be similarly higher-end. The condo project will also replicate the vertical retail approach of the Time Warner Center, a departure from the single-floor shopping experience most New Yorkers are used to.Detractors have sometimes derided the "lower Upper West Side" as the Manhattan neighborhood that most resembles an outdoor strip mall, a reaction to the success of retail like Loews Lincoln Square Theater, the Gap, Barnes & Noble, Pottery Barn and Victoria's Secret located between 65th and 68th streets on Broadway. Most of those stores first moved there in the mid-1990s.Fifteen Central Park West looks likely to raise the bar a bit while also drawing some of the same types of retailers. The complex, currently under construction between 61st and 62nd streets, will include two towers -- a residential building on Central Park West and a larger tower along Broadway with 85,000 square foot of retail in addition to condos on top. Bragging rights include design by architect Robert A.M. Stern and limestone quarried from the same pits used for the Empire State Building. A condo sale there for $45 million broke the Manhattan record for a single-family residence.Gene Spiegelman, an executive director at Cushman & Wakefield who is brokering the retail space, expects it will partly house stores similar to the downsized big-boxes that flourish a few blocks north.Spread over four levels, two of them underground, prime space at 15 Central Park West will command $300-plus a square foot, with blended rents for the entire building reaching over $75, said Spiegelman. Lease negotiations will begin at year's end; completion is expected in fall 2007."It will have high ceilings that are well-designed for vertical retail; they're not boutique-sized spaces," said Spiegelman. "We're looking for hard goods, apparel and table-top merchandise that is not represented in the market."While vertical retail was seen as a gamble when the Time Warner Center opened several years ago -- because it was thought that harried New Yorkers wouldn't want to take elevators or escalators to do their shopping -- the apparent success of that project so far makes the multiple-floor retail at 15 Central Park West seem less risky."This is becoming an area with destination retail," says Steve Kohn, president of real estate banker Sonnenblick-Goldman's New York office, who helped arrange the sale of a partner interest in the retail component of 15 Central Park West to Madison Capital of Manhattan. "The financing on this was completed before it was built, mainly because this kind of space does not come around often."Paul Smadbeck, sales director at Massey Knakal, said the project will make the neighborhood more exclusive."
They've created a new micro-neighborhood that will become even more of a destination when 15 Central Park West is completed," he said. "Some nearby properties are also ripe for change."
Still, there are impediments to bringing higher-end retail to the neighborhood. The blocks north of 15 Central Park West include mammoth 1970s apartment buildings that offer limited and sometimes uninviting retail space. Some former storefronts have been converted into long-standing restaurants, others into bank branches.Other recent retail changes on Broadway indicate more in the way of big-box proliferation.At Broadway and 64th Street, the Grand Tier, a 30-story luxury rental building, opened in 2004. The first major retail tenant in the building, Bed, Bath & Beyond, does little to raise the neighborhood's hipness quotient. An office of Brown Harris Stevens opened in another retail space in the building last year, though two prime corner lots are empty.Across the street, at West 63rd and Broadway, the Chetrit Group is renovating the Empire Hotel into 125 condominiums. Jeff Winick, president and CEO of Winick Realty Group, who is offering the space, is asking over $300 a square foot for some ground-floor stores. The property is fully leased, he said, but he was not at liberty to divulge the new tenants.Reaching farther south, activity in the neighborhood includes the recent completion of Norman Foster's Hearst Tower at 57th Street and Eighth Avenue and the converted Sheffield rental building, which began selling its 600 condos last month.After a bitter landmark battle, 2 Columbus Circle is covered with netting and awaits its renewal. The overhaul of the Columbus Circle subway station slogs on, but the circle itself, along with the statue of Christopher Columbus and the fountains that surround it, received a makeover that improved traffic and pedestrian flow to boot.
The Time Warner Center pushed the comeback of the foot of the Upper West Side to a whole new level. The complex's mall-like shopping atrium is filled with an underground gourmet grocery, chic shops like Hugo Boss and Coach, and expense-account restaurants.The next test of retail at the foot of the Upper West Side on Broadway will be at 15 Central Park West, where condos are setting record prices and where the retail component could be similarly higher-end. The condo project will also replicate the vertical retail approach of the Time Warner Center, a departure from the single-floor shopping experience most New Yorkers are used to.Detractors have sometimes derided the "lower Upper West Side" as the Manhattan neighborhood that most resembles an outdoor strip mall, a reaction to the success of retail like Loews Lincoln Square Theater, the Gap, Barnes & Noble, Pottery Barn and Victoria's Secret located between 65th and 68th streets on Broadway. Most of those stores first moved there in the mid-1990s.Fifteen Central Park West looks likely to raise the bar a bit while also drawing some of the same types of retailers. The complex, currently under construction between 61st and 62nd streets, will include two towers -- a residential building on Central Park West and a larger tower along Broadway with 85,000 square foot of retail in addition to condos on top. Bragging rights include design by architect Robert A.M. Stern and limestone quarried from the same pits used for the Empire State Building. A condo sale there for $45 million broke the Manhattan record for a single-family residence.Gene Spiegelman, an executive director at Cushman & Wakefield who is brokering the retail space, expects it will partly house stores similar to the downsized big-boxes that flourish a few blocks north.Spread over four levels, two of them underground, prime space at 15 Central Park West will command $300-plus a square foot, with blended rents for the entire building reaching over $75, said Spiegelman. Lease negotiations will begin at year's end; completion is expected in fall 2007."It will have high ceilings that are well-designed for vertical retail; they're not boutique-sized spaces," said Spiegelman. "We're looking for hard goods, apparel and table-top merchandise that is not represented in the market."While vertical retail was seen as a gamble when the Time Warner Center opened several years ago -- because it was thought that harried New Yorkers wouldn't want to take elevators or escalators to do their shopping -- the apparent success of that project so far makes the multiple-floor retail at 15 Central Park West seem less risky."This is becoming an area with destination retail," says Steve Kohn, president of real estate banker Sonnenblick-Goldman's New York office, who helped arrange the sale of a partner interest in the retail component of 15 Central Park West to Madison Capital of Manhattan. "The financing on this was completed before it was built, mainly because this kind of space does not come around often."Paul Smadbeck, sales director at Massey Knakal, said the project will make the neighborhood more exclusive."
They've created a new micro-neighborhood that will become even more of a destination when 15 Central Park West is completed," he said. "Some nearby properties are also ripe for change."
Still, there are impediments to bringing higher-end retail to the neighborhood. The blocks north of 15 Central Park West include mammoth 1970s apartment buildings that offer limited and sometimes uninviting retail space. Some former storefronts have been converted into long-standing restaurants, others into bank branches.Other recent retail changes on Broadway indicate more in the way of big-box proliferation.At Broadway and 64th Street, the Grand Tier, a 30-story luxury rental building, opened in 2004. The first major retail tenant in the building, Bed, Bath & Beyond, does little to raise the neighborhood's hipness quotient. An office of Brown Harris Stevens opened in another retail space in the building last year, though two prime corner lots are empty.Across the street, at West 63rd and Broadway, the Chetrit Group is renovating the Empire Hotel into 125 condominiums. Jeff Winick, president and CEO of Winick Realty Group, who is offering the space, is asking over $300 a square foot for some ground-floor stores. The property is fully leased, he said, but he was not at liberty to divulge the new tenants.Reaching farther south, activity in the neighborhood includes the recent completion of Norman Foster's Hearst Tower at 57th Street and Eighth Avenue and the converted Sheffield rental building, which began selling its 600 condos last month.After a bitter landmark battle, 2 Columbus Circle is covered with netting and awaits its renewal. The overhaul of the Columbus Circle subway station slogs on, but the circle itself, along with the statue of Christopher Columbus and the fountains that surround it, received a makeover that improved traffic and pedestrian flow to boot.
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