Best Buy Co. Inc.

Sorry, Best Buy. Big-box domestics behemoth Bed, Bath & Beyond now has dibs on 33,500 square feet of the remaining retail space at Tribeca's forthcoming 101 Warren Street complex.

Brokerage Robert K. Futterman & Associates described the deal Thursday as a " testament" to the historic neighborhood's rebirth as, um, a shopping mall.

"Lower Manhattan and TriBeCa in particular are quickly becoming a seven-day retail market, popular with New Yorkers and tourists alike. Bed Bath & Beyond's decision to establish a downtown flagship at 101 Warren, further reinforces the area's retail resurgence," RFK Managing Director Ariel Schuster stated in a press release.

With Whole Foods Market and Barnes & Noble already taking up another 100,000 square feet of the Owings & Merrill-designed building (aka 270 Greenwich Street), there's only enough room left for, say, a Gap or two.

"RFK will be marketing the balance of the 4,294 square feet of retail space to upscale fashion retailers and to luxury home furnishing stores," according to the release.

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- Chris Shott

In its application for another $7 million in tax breaks from the Industrial Development Agency (this time an exemption to the mortgage recording tax), the Related Companies lists some "projected tenants" at Bronx Terminal Market: BJ's, Home Depot, Target, Best Buy, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Marshall's. BJ's, you may recall, had long been rumoured, and its bite was softened by Related's pledge that any warehouse club it took on as a tenant would honor food stamps and W.I.C. -Matthew Schuerman

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A rhetorical question: Is it possible for us in the media to report on gentrification without either cheerleading or, worse (though we’ll be more readily accused of this), coming off as the reverse-snob snobs that want everyone else to leave Williamsburg except for us and our friends? Witness The Times thanking Jehovah Wednesday for getting rid of the “airline ticket offices, fast-food outlets, stores selling faux antiques and cheesy souvenir shops” along Fifth Avenue and bringing instead Best Buy! No offense to the perceptive staff at Square Feet, but isn’t it a value judgment to declare that as a result of this retail change, the stretch between 42nd Street and Saks “seems to be perking up”? And since when does a neighborhood achieve self-actualization only when a lot of restaurants open up? The headline for the December Times profile on Prospect Heights— “A Neighborhood Comes Into Its Own”—was paradoxical because of how many elements that the article celebrated about ProHo have been around for decades, if not centuries: the Brooklyn Museum, Prospect Park and Tom’s Restaurant.

On the other had, we don’t really have anything against real estate hype. It is good for the economy--particularly our economy.

-Matthew Schuerman

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The holiday shopping season may be off to a sluggish start … but the holiday shoplifting season is  read more »