Rough Trade to Add New 4K-SF Record Shop in Rockefeller Center
By Mark Hallum January 23, 2025 1:11 pm
reprints
The return of vinyl records is clearly more than just a fad as record shop Rough Trade expands its retail footprint at Rockefeller Center.
Four years after relocating its flagship to the Tishman Speyer-owned development, the record store is leasing an additional 4,000 square feet at Rockefeller Center’s rink level in a spot facing the Rockefeller Center subway station, according to the landlord.
Tishman Speyer did not immediately disclose the length of the lease or the asking rent in the deal, but asking rent in the nearby retail corridor of Fifth Avenue between West 49th and 59th streets averaged $2,661 per square foot in the third quarter of 2024, according to a report from CBRE.
The new store will be located steps down from Rough Trade’s existing 2,000-square-foot flagship at 1250 Avenue of the Americas. Its current shop will be renamed Rough Trade Above and the new space will be dubbed Rough Trade Below when it opens in the spring.
“Creating an even larger mecca for the music lover is an exciting prospect, especially for our intimate live events, where the world’s most exciting artists perform in-store for the admission of purchasing their new album,” Stephen Godfroy, a co-owner of Rough Trade, said in a statement. “Creating a focus of counterculture in Midtown Manhattan has thankfully proved to be a wildly successful move, and we look forward to creating an even stronger creative community as the year progresses.”
Alissa Bersin and Reed Zukerman represented Tishman Speyer in-house in the deal.
Rough Trade Below will carry artist merchandise, audio hardware, a CD section, BluRay movies, collectibles and (of course) records, according to Tishman Speyer. Rough Trade Above will focus on new-release vinyl records and in-store musical performances.
Rough Trade started in the 1970s as a record label iof the same name in London before spinning off into a retail shop in 1978, the New York Times reported. It separated from the label in 1982 and took a trip across the pond to open its first U.S. location in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in 2013.
Mark Hallum can be reached at mhallum@commercialobserver.com.
