The New York Observer » Retail

Apple Juices Grand Central: Sales Spill Over Into Surrounding Shops

The new Apple store in Grand Central Terminal is a lovely, understated project in one of the city's premier public spaces.

All the same, some sour apples have been complaining that the Cult of Steve has been paying below market rents for its space, leading to an investigation by the state. The M.T.A. counters that Apple is still paying more than the previous tenant, and its arrival means bigger revenues across Grand Central, given Apple's appeal. This latter bet appears to be paying off. Read More

Big Real Estate Could Not Knock Down the Downtown Brooklyn Skyscraper District

Downtown Brooklyn developers and cooperators, with a hefty helping hand from the real estate lobby, threw everything they could at the Borough Hall Skyscraper Historic District, a new landmarking effort aimed at saving the area's historic highrises. In the end, the preservationists won out, as a City Council subcommittee voted unanimously yesterday to approve the historic district, all but ensuring its passage by the full council on February 1. Read More

iQueens: Second Outer Borough Apple Store Won’t Be in Brooklyn?

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz has been stamping his feet for years over his desire to land the holy grail of retailers: an Apple Store. After all, the M.T.A. bent over backwards to bringing a glowing Temple of Jobs into Grand Central. But it looks like Marty can forget about it, as Apple may be opening its next outer borough outlet in Queens County, not Kings County. Read More

UWS Fights Back Against Chain Stores

Maybe the Fulton Mall just needs some zoning changes to save its mom and pop shops. That's what they're doing on the Upper West Side, tired of all the giant Duane Reades and Chases. New zoning requirements would limit the size of stores on Columbus and Amsterdam avenues, protecting the character of the neighborhood and possibly discouraging national retailers, who tend to prefer bigger spaces.

Not surprisingly, landlords are not happy about the proposal, according to The Journal. Read More

Detail-Oriented Retail: Fixing the Fulton Mall Up

It is getting hard to catalog all the new changes on the Fulton Mall in recent years. There is the new benches and sidewalks, rebuilt after decades of neglect. The rezoning and the thousands of new apartments borne in on the tides of its land rush. A new mall, CityPoint, maybe with a Target inside, as well as the national retailers finally flooding into the old department stores alongside Macy's: Aeropostale, Express, H&M, TJ Maxx. And who could forget the crown jewel, Shake Shack.

While people worry about the future of the mall and who might shop there—indeed, it is the subject of a feature in tomorrow's paper—it still has much of the polyglot look it has had for decades, even more so given the new mix of national shops among the mom and pops with their riotous signs.

Just as it worked for the rezoning in 2005 and the streetscaping a year later, the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership is in the early stages of creating new standards for the storefronts on Fulton Mall, according to people involved with the project. While still very much preliminary, some form of new regulations is being developed by the local business improvement district in partnership with the Department of City Planning to spruce up the walls of the Fulton Mull. Read More

Giant Gambian Pouched Rat Allegedly Found in Bronx Footlocker Definitely Not a Sewer Rat, Says Expert

As if child slave labor in China wasn't bad enough, Footlocker's reputation took another hit recently when a Twitter used named @Thegoodfella_ tweeted a photo of a five foot rat went viral on the web. Don't worry though: an animal curator quoted by The Huffington Post, the creature, allegedly found in a Bronx store earlier this year (the photo was uploaded on Facebook earlier this year before it made the Twitter rounds) promised that "no way it's a common sewer rat."
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Watch Your Back! Rolex Sues Fort Greene Deli

The 1% percent are at it again! No, today it's not a solitary fat cat out to get the masses, but the company behind the blue bloods' consummate accoutrement: Rolex.

You'd think they'd be busy enough in the holiday season polishing their glimmering time pieces, but no! Instead they're taking on the little guy as embodied in a small Brooklyn delicatessen, the Post reports. Read More

Times Square Comes to East New York: Pedestrian Plazas Aren’t Just for Midtown

It is a 50 minute ride on the 3-Train from Times Square to the end of the line in New Lots, Brooklyn.

The blaring lights, the towering canyons, the masses of tourists, all disappear as the subway leaves Manhattan far behind, rising above ground after Utica Avenue in Crown Heights. The steel and glass skyscrapers have been replaced by rowhouses of siding and stone and the occasional redbrick cluster of public housing.

Yet stepping off the stairs at the elevated station in East New York, Times Square and New Lots are not that different. The crowds are still there, darting across the busy streets to board buses and cabs that carry them beyond the reach of the subway tracks. Shops—Piggy’s, York Chan Chinese, Kicks & More, numerous bodegas—line the triangle formed by Livonia and New Lots avenues. It is a hive of activity in the heart of the neighborhood.

And starting a few weeks ago, just as in Times Square, travelers and locals have been greeted by a generous pedestrian plaza hugging the middle of that triangle.

“We wanted to create a space that was safe, we wanted to create a space that was inviting, we wanted to create a space for the neighborhood,” Eddie Di Benedetto, head of the local merchants association and a champion of the project, said on Friday, during a tour of the space. Read More

Were We Wrong Just Because the Gap Is Closing Even More Stores?

Last month, The Observer revealed the The Gap was poised to close one-quarter of its stores in New York. A spokesperson denied this at the time, calling the claim "extremely exaggerated." But yesterday, the company announced it is actually close one-third of its stores. Read More

The Gap: Store Closure Claims ‘Extremely Exaggerated’

It looks like New York may not be closing the Gap after all, at least not all the way.

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Closing the Gap: Retailer Will Shutter 1-in-4 Stores in New York City

For decades, the Gap represented the sort of blasé casualness most Americans brought to their fashion. From men’s closets stuffed with baggy khaki cargos to high school girls repurposing those iconic navy-and-white shopping bags as backpacks, the Gap was America’s premier clothier. Even in fashion-forward New York, the company managed to open a few dozen stores.

Now, with changing tastes and intense competition from cheap-chic rivals like H&M and Uniqlo, the world’s second largest clothing retailer plans to shutter roughly a quarter of its stores in New York City. According to a real estate executive with knowledge of the plans, between 12 and 15 stores will close in the next few years, a consolidation that will greatly reduce the 35 Gap stores and 17 Banana Republics in the five boroughs.

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High-End Coffee Outfit Signs with Harbor

Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, which is a purveyor of bowling balls (seriously, though, they sell coffee), has signed a 1,500-square-foot retail lease on the ground floor of 1412 Broadway.

The deal at the base of the 24-story, Harbor Group International-owned building brings occupancy to 95 percent occupancy, brokers told The Commercial Observer. The company, which operates at 750 locations worldwide, has, until now, not peddled its iced coffee, green teas or signature brews from a Manhattan store. Read More

Century 21, Tourist Horde’s Favorite Department Store, Expanding Just in Time for Ground Zero Crowds

It may be the worst shopping experience after the Trader Joe’s in Union Square. Still, when Century 21 is good, it’s really good. Dress shoes, bow ties, and some of the best clearance deals in town—if you can stand slapdash shelves and crammed clothes racks, the flood of tourists fighting for clothes and the woefully indifferent staff, the store can be a goldmine.

These problems could be disappearing as Century 21 plans to expand its downtown flagship in the coming months, according to Crain’s. Well, everything except for the rudeniks behind those red aprons. Read More

Upscale Footwear Walks Into 807 Washington

Fashionable club-goers and maybe even a few hog butchers will be able to navigate the brick roads of the meatpacking district in style now that Nicholas Kirkwood, the upscale designer footwear brand has inked a 1,572-square-foot retail deal at 807 Washington Street.

Located between Gansevoort and Horatio streets, the ground-floor boutique is scheduled to open by winter of 2012, broker said. As with most space—office and retail alike—asking prices have risen in the area since the High Line park opened two years ago, although specific prices at 807 Washington Street were not immediately available. Read More

W&H Fills Last Retail Space at 1350 Broadway

For caffeine guzzlers unable to find one of the 17,000 Starbucks currently operating on, oh, every other block across 50 countries, the search just got a little easier.

Indeed, W&H Properties inked a 10-year, 1,189-square-foot lease for the Seattle-based coffee brewer in its last remaining retail space at 1350 Broadway, brokers told The Commercial Observer. Read More