Whole Foods’ Bryant Park-Area Lease Revised, Enlarged
By Lauren Elkies Schram November 21, 2014 4:15 pm
reprints
A week ago today, natural and organic foods grocery chain Whole Foods Market redid its lease, enlarging its footprint to 42,996 square feet, at a Bryant Park-area office tower, Commercial Observer has learned.
While Whole Foods signed a three-floor lease at the 42-story office building 1095 Avenue of the Americas about a year ago, last Friday’s hard contract added 6,000 square feet to the deal through a space reconfiguration, according to people with intimate knowledge of the deal.
“There ended up being a problem with delivering the space,” one of the sources said. The landlord, Equity Office, a wholly-owned entity of Blackstone (BX) Group, had planned to reconfigure the lobby, etc., and one of the neighboring tenants didn’t agree to the plan.
The original deal, sources said, was for 36,130 square feet: 10,520 square feet on the ground floor, 21,258 square feet on the second floor and 4,352 square feet on the lower level. In the revised deal, the store has 9,850 square feet on the ground floor, 20,458 square feet on the second floor and 12,688 square feet in the cellar.
Whole Foods has lost a bit of selling space as the increased square footage is on the non-selling lower level.
Whole Foods signed a 20-year deal at the building, also known as 3 Bryant Park, between West 41st and West 42nd Streets. Asking rents were $550 per square foot on the ground floor, $150 on the second floor and $100 on the lower level.
The Whole Foods deal finalization comes as an Ivanhoe Cambridge group is reportedly buying the building for $2.25 billion.
Equity Office will deliver the space to Whole Foods in about six months, one of the sources said.
The property is one of three neighboring buildings owned by Equity Office that together have 160,000 square feet of retail space. All of the spaces, including Whole Foods, will be open within 12 to 18 months. The other two buildings are 120 West 42nd Street and 1065 Avenue of the Americas, a.k.a. 5 Bryant Park.
Catering to the office crowd, the Bryant Park Whole Foods will play up the café and food hall aspects and play down the grocery store part.
SCG Retail’s Chase Welles and Jacqueline Klinger represented Whole Foods in the deal. SRS Real Estate Partners’ Patrick A. Smith represented the landlord, working with Equity Office’s Michael Goldban. Messrs. Welles, Smith and Goldban didn’t respond to a request for comment. Whole Foods didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
