Nordstrom Close to Deal in Flushing, Queens: Report
By Al Barbarino December 9, 2013 11:52 am
reprintsNordstrom is reportedly close to signing a lease for a Nordstrom Rack at the Shops at SkyView Center in Flushing, Queens, which would give the company its first presence in the borough.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the discount division of the Seattle-based company is in “late-stage negotiations” to open a store at the 800,000-square-foot mall, following recent announcements for two Nordstrom Racks in Brooklyn – said to be up to 41,000 square feet each – and its first full-line Nordstrom store in Manhattan, at the base of Extell’s 217 West 57th Street.
“We see a lot of opportunity in New York City,” Colin Johnson, a spokesman for Nordstrom, told the Journal.
Long known for its ethnic foods and small businesses, the area has overtaken even Chinatown as a destination for Chinese immigrants, logging a 93 percent spike in its Chinese population between 2000 to 2010, which more recently has been accompanied by rising real-estate prices, a surge in development and growing demand for retail space, the Journal noted.
Rents for retail have reached more than $75 per square foot; top condos are fetching more than $1 million; and average home prices in Northeast Queens rose 5.7 percent to $475,179 in the third quarter of 2013 compared with same period last year.
SkyView, led by Onex Real Estate Partners, and which currently leases space to Marshalls, Target and Old Navy, is part of a $1 billion retail and condo development that rebounded since running into financial problems during the recession and the building completed sales earlier this year of the 448 units (with 800 more planned) at prices from $375,000 to $1.3 million, according to the report.
Development is also heating up in the area: TDC Development Corp. and the Rockefeller Group filed permits in October for Flushing Commons, a long-delayed, $850 million mixed-use property; and Related Companies and Sterling Equities plan a $3 billion mixed-use development at Willets Point.
Nordstrom opened its first New York City store, a Nordstrom Rack in Union Square, in 2010.
