By Al Barbarino 2/04 1:36pm

Sales Beat

131-137 Spring Street

SL Green $122 M. Retail Purchase Highlights Metered Q4 Growth

City records confirm real estate powerhouse SL Green Realty’s acquisition of a six-story retail, office and residential building at 131-137 Spring Street for $122.3 million late last year.

The acquisition of the prime retail location, adjacent to Chanel‘s Soho Flagship store, capped off what company executives lauded as a stellar fourth quarter given the economic uncertainty that permeated the industry in 2012.

“It was an excellent, excellent quarter as a standalone, and particularly in light of the headwinds,” SL Green CEO Marc Holliday said during the firm’s fourth quarter earnings call, referring specifically to the impacts of Hurricane Sandy, the uncertain election and the fiscal cliff crisis. Read More

By Billy Gray 12/05/12 7:15am

ICSC2012

43 Mercer vintage

On 10th Anniversary of First NYC Pop-Up, Retailers Look Back

It was a Los Angeles-based company inspired by Japanese shopping habits that brought pop-up retail to America. During a trip to Tokyo in 1999, Russ Miller witnessed the lengths to which the city’s famously voracious consumers would go to buy rare and limited-edition products.

Mr. Miller brought that mind-set back to L.A. with Vacant, “a retail concept and exhibition store” that would open shops only to close them as soon as they ran out of goods.

Discount retailer Target once again positioned itself as the funky anti-Walmart when it took over a 220-foot-long boat at Chelsea Piers for a two-week stay on the Hudson River that coincided with Black Friday in November of 2002. Vacant arrived in New York in February 2003, working with Dr. Martens on a pop-up space at 43 Mercer Street. Read More