Bring on the Papadum Chips! Trader Joe’s in Talks for Sixth Avenue Spot
By Dana Rubinstein September 22, 2009 8:01 pm
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Ever since Trader Joe’s opened its first New York City store on 14th Street in 2006, the act of shopping for organic frozen raspberries and dark-chocolate-covered almonds has come to resemble less a civilized shopping experience and more a death match between grimacing bobos wielding narrow metal shopping carts.
If all goes according to plan, that will soon change. For the better.
Trader Joe’s is in discussions to open another low-priced, high-quality food store, complete with Hawaiian-shirt-wearing clerks, at the Mattel Building at 675 Sixth Avenue, between 21st and 22nd streets, according to industry sources. That’s just 11 blocks away from the original New York Trader Joe’s, between Irving Place and Third Avenue. And it might just mean that the shopping-while-somehow-keeping-one’s-place-in-line phenomenon will be replaced by a more laid-back experience.
This being the New York real estate industry, neither 675 Sixth Avenue landlord Israel Taub, nor Mr. Taub’s broker, Gary Alterman of Robert K. Futterman & Associates, nor Trader Joe’s, nor its broker, Cushman & Wakefield’s Gene Spiegelman, would comment for this story.
But, according to real estate database Costar, the asking rent on the approximately 40,000-square-foot retail space is about $200 a square foot.
drubinstein@observer.com
