Members of the Battaglia family have sold The Fine Arts Building located at 232-236 East 59th Street for $34 million, the first sale of the building since the local investors purchased the building in the 1950′s, The Commercial Observer has learned.
The six-and-half-story building, located on the south side of 59th Street and between Second and Third avenues in Midtown East, features 75 feet of frontage along East 59th Street. Read More
Lush Cosmetics is set on expansion mode.
The Canadian-based cosmetics retailer has inked a deal at 783 Lexington Avenue on the Upper East Side. Lush Cosmetics will replace former tenant Jean Louis David in the three-story and 3,500-square-foot retail store. Read More
It turns out that patience is virtue for both Nordstrom and Extell Development. When the retailer announced Thursday that it would be opening a 285,000-square-foot, 7-story store at 225 West 57th Street some time in 2018, it represented the culmination of ten to 15 years of searching. Meanwhile, developer Gary Barnett had been quietly assembling the parcel where the store will open for almost a decade.
In the end, the deal was pulled off thanks to a team from Jones Lang LaSalle, the firm’s Derek Trulson telling The Commercial Observer that real estate expertise, not retail expertise, paved the way. Read More
The hip streetwear brand, Superdry USA, will be opening its fourth city shop at 716 Lexington Avenue, taking over the former Payless Shoe Source and Genesis locations. They have targeted August as the store opening.
Superdry USA also has locations on 718 Broadway, 729 7th Avenue, and 199 Water Street. Read More
It’s the great white whale of Manhattan retail.
Aside from Walmart, Nordstrom is the store every retail broker in the city dreams of harpooning and reeling into a new home. One prominent broker familiar with the store, the amount of space it needs and the rents it would probably be willing to pay estimates that the commission for handling its lease would be around $10 million.
But like a leviathan lurking beneath the waves, the department store has offered only fleeting glimpses around the city, most notably at several development sites and a few existing assets with the capacity to accommodate its sprawling footprint.
The scuttlebutt nowadays: Nordstrom is contemplating one of two leases, one at the West Side rail yards with the Related Companies or another at the base of Extell Development’s soaring new residential tower now rising at 157 West 57th Street. Read More
Self-proclaimed “girly” boutique Pookie & Sebastian inked a retail deal for more than 2,300 square feet at 794 Lexington Avenue, near 61st Street, a broker told The Commercial Observer yesterday.
Known for its pink awnings and pre-school sounding name, the “fun and flirty,” retailer will pay $17,000 per month in the ten-year deal, said Peter Braus of Sierra Realty, who represented landlord Arthur Weyhe. Asking rent was $20,000 per month. Previous tenant Cohen’s Optical vacated the space early last year. Read More
