By Billy Gray 6/12 11:38am

Awards

From left to right: David LaPierre, Jacqueline Klinger, Chase Welles

REBNY Gives Retail Deal of the Year Honors to David LaPierre, Jacqueline Klinger, Chase Welles

Brokers who brought big name chain retailers to a pair of Jeff Sutton properties won big last night at the Real Estate Board of New York‘s Retail Deal of the Year Awards at 101 Park Avenue.

David LaPierre of CBRE nabbed the prize for  “most ingenious and creative retail deal that demonstrates exceptional broker acumen” for a transaction that brought Express to 1552-1560 Broadway. Jacqueline Klinger and Chase Welles of SCG Retail‘s success in landing Whole Foods in Harlem (at 100 West 125th Street) were deemed the brokers behind “the retail deal which is most significant in its overall characteristics and importance to the New York City Retail Market” Read More

By Billy Gray 3/12 5:00am

Power Broker

Lori Shabtai (Credit: Sophie Mathewson)

The Grocer’s Daughter: Winick Realty’s Lori Shabtai on Manhattan’s Evolving Retail Landscape

What a difference five years makes. When Winick Realty Group Executive Vice President Lori Shabtai marketed a 13,000-square-foot retail space at 459 Broadway in 2008, she hinged part of the sell on the cachet of the intersection of Broadway and Grand Street.

“I called it the heart of Soho,” Ms. Shabtai, 52, said during an interview in her well-appointed (and well-heated) office. “I remember a broker calling me and saying, ‘That’s more like the colon of Soho.’”

That any doubts persisted so recently about the viability of that block attests to the dizzyingly fast rate of change in New York real estate. The interaction also attests to Ms. Shabtai’s prescience and her quick mastery of the steep learning curve in commercial real estate, a field she entered just eight years ago. Read More

By Billy Gray 3/05 2:15pm

Food & Drink

A clip from a video of Harlem residents watching a "Harlem Shake" video.

Harlem Shake Craze Could Boost Business At Harlem Shake Burger Joint

The owner of an upcoming Harlem burger joint must be hoping that a current YouTube meme has long legs. Jelena Pasic settled on the name Harlem Shake for her restaurant six months ago, well before a series of amateur videos riffing on Brooklyn d.j. Bauer‘s song of the same name went viral, quickly racking up hundreds of millions of views.

The New York Post‘s Steve Cuozzo writes today that the happy coincidence has prompted a big spike in neighborhood interest in the humble eatery, with proprietors telling him they “never [had] in the back of our minds this whole phenomenon.” Ms. Pasic hopes that the enthusiasm lingers when Harlem Shake and its proposed 65-seat sidewalk cafe open in a few months on the corner of Lenox Avenue and 124th Street.  Read More

By Michael Ewing 3/01 4:00pm

Lease Beat

American Eagle

American Eagle Joins Whole Foods in Harlem

American Eagle will be expanding in Harlem.

The preppy teen retailer has signed a deal for an 8,500-square-foot lease at 100 West 125th Street, the brand’s most northern location in the city. American Eagle will join Burlington Coat Factory and Whole Foods in the soon-to-be-built development on the corner of Malcolm X Boulevard and 125th Read More

By Al Barbarino 2/20 7:30am

Controversies

(Photo: The Real Deal)

Round 2: City Landlords Kick and Scream Back Following Allegations of Broker Leapfrogging

Some city landlords are kicking and screaming back after an article published in The Commercial Observer yesterday morning cited sources who allege that a new wave of city landlords are leapfrogging brokers to get at retail tenants directly—but many continue to claim that the landlords do just that.

Wharton Properties’ Jeff Sutton, who sources name among several landlords, sought to set the record straight yesterday, claiming that “95 percent of the deals I do have brokers” and calling the implication that he does otherwise “disgusting.”

“Some deals where I’ve had relationships [with] tenants for many years, who don’t have brokers, I do myself, but how could you put me in that category,” he said.  “I’ve never ever gone around anybody.” Read More

By Al Barbarino 2/14 7:45am

Sales Beat

39-53 Jay Street

Huge Retail Development in Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn to Complement Major Residential Expansion

An expansive development site at 39-53 Jay Street in Brooklyn has sold for $25 million and could bring in the big name retailers needed to anchor Vinegar Hill as the neighborhood undergoes a residential transformation.

The existing three-story manufacturing property, formerly used as a metal stamping and engraving facility, measures roughly 80,000 square feet, in addition to a partial basement and an annex building.

“This site has the largest footprint in Vinegar Hill, and possibly in all of the greater Downtown Brooklyn market,” said Massey Knakal Director of Sales Stephen Palmese, who exclusively handled the transaction.  “The ability to offer big box retail could really change the landscape.” Read More

By Billy Gray 1/24 7:15am

Lease Beat

250-warehoue

Film Equipment Company Eastern Effects Leases 72,000 Square Feet in Gowanus

Eastern Effects, a film and television equipment, studio and office space provider, signed a lease for a 72,000-square-foot warehouse location at 99 Ninth Street in Gowanus.

The company currently has a 68,000-square-foot studio space at nearby 270 Nevins Street in addition to an office space and equipment pickup location. The asking rent was $13 per square foot. Brian Kanarack, a principal at BKR Partners, represented the tenant. The landlord, C&F Second Avenue LLC, was represented in-house.  Read More

By Billy Gray 1/21 3:12pm

On the Market

A rendering of 185 Wythe Avenue

92,000-Square-Foot Retail Space Hits Williamsburg Market

Two floors encompassing 92,000 square feet of retail space at the luxury residential conversion 185 Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg are on the market.

The leasing agency, TerraCRG, claims in the listing that this is the largest contiguous available retail block in the north Brooklyn neighborhood. Asking rents are at $50 per square foot for minimal divisible lot sizes of 5,000 square feet.  Read More

By Michael Ewing 10/22/12 9:30am

Lease Beat

Courtesy of Whole Foods

Whole Foods Inks Upper East Side Deal

Whole Foods is set to open a new location on the Upper East Side.

The natural and organic supermarket has inked a long-term deal for a 39,000-square-foot space at 1551 Third Avenue. The store will span three stories that consist of a lower level, first and second floor.

“We’ve been looking for the right store Read More

By Daniel Geiger 9/04/12 7:15am

Power Broker

Chase Welles.

Chasing Manhattan: Westchester’s Own Chase Welles on Big Plans for Big Apple

Chase Welles never needed a Manhattan office address to execute big deals. But now he has one, and a new firm too.

For years, Mr. Welles has been one of the city’s top retail brokers despite being based in White Plains—an unusual headquarters for such a prolific and successful deal-maker in Manhattan, well-known for its clubby retail industry.

Recently, however, Mr. Welles relocated to an office overlooking Columbus Circle. Meanwhile, the firm where he is a principal, Northwest Atlantic, merged with the Shopping Center Group, a national retail services company in Atlanta. Read More

By Daniel Geiger 5/02/12 4:30pm

The Sit-Down

Patrick Smith.

Retail is Dead, Long Live Retail: Patrick Smith of SRS Real Estate on the Future of Brick-and-Mortar

Patrick Smith is an executive vice president and principal of the retail real estate services firm SRS Real Estate Partners, which was spun off from Staubach when that company was acquired by Jones Lang LaSalle. Mr. Smith is a busy leasing dealmaker not only in the city but nationally and represents a host of large retailers that have been active in the market both here and around the country, including Dick’s Sporting Goods, Party City and Disney. With ICSC, the biggest retail event of the year, only weeks away, Mr. Smith weighed in on the state of the retail market with The Commercial Observer and discussed what he has planned for this year’s conference in Las Vegas. Read More

By Janon Fisher 4/10/12 8:00am

Lower Manhattan

Downtown Manhattan.

Downtown Manhattan on the Up and Up

For much of the past decade the only hope for a broker looking to make money off of Downtown office space was to do a deal like 70 Pine Street: Take a lavish 62-story Art Deco headquarters that was once owned by a spectacularly failed financial firm like AIG and turn it into opulent apartments where bankers would rather live than work.

Deals like 70 Pine Street, which instantly wiped off one million square feet from Downtown’s commercial real estate inventory when it was sold for $200 million in 2011, have been propping up statistics for the neighborhood’s office space market for years. Ever since large banks and financial companies started fleeing offices in the financial district, an influx of young families and bankers wanting to live Downtown, rather than just work there, have kept the vacancy rate from tanking even further by reducing the math on the supply end.

Now, say the brokers who have long suffered the horrors of Downtown’s commercial market, those residential conversions are starting to also pay off on the demand side. A flurry of infrastructure and amenities building to keep up with the new residents in the neighborhood is also making the area more enticing for large corporations to move in.

“It’s a chicken-and-egg scenario,” said Mark Shapses, executive managing director at Studley. “Downtown is seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.” Read More

By Daniel Geiger 2/21/12 4:48pm

Lease Beat

ddd

Coffee Shop and Attractive Waiters Ink Renewal Deal at 27 Union Square West

The popular Union Square eatery The Coffee Shop has renewed its retail lease at its long time home at 27 Union Square West and also office space it has upstairs in the building.

The deal totals about 20,000 square feet and stretches for ten-years, according to Eric Gural, an executive at the real estate services firm Newmark Knight Frank who oversees leasing at the property and whose family owns the nearly 50,000-square-foot box-shaped, boutique building.
 Read More