East Side, West Side, New York Rents are High

Retail rents in major corridors in Manhattan increased by as much as 32 percent compared to last year, according to The Fall Retail Report from the Real Estate Board of New York.

The Third Avenue corridor between 60th and 72nd streets led the way, with asking rents for ground-floor spaces surging by 32 percent, to $248-per-square-foot.

Broadway between Houston and Broome streets in SoHo jumped 27 percent, to $228 per square foot. On Hudson Street between Chambers and Canal, in TriBeCa, retail rents climbed 21 percent to $68 per-square-foot. And in the Broadway corridor between Battery Park and Chambers Street, rents jumped 12 percent to $125 per square foot.

“The current report shows that in the last six months, there has been continued demand for retail shops in SoHo, the Meatpacking District and on the 125th Street corridor [in Harlem], which are all tourist destinations,” said REBNY president Steven Spinola. “In addition, in the last five years, more than 50 retailers have established flagship stores in Manhattan, including Whole Foods, The Home Depot and American Eagle Outfitters, leasing almost a half-million square feet of space, and clearly demonstrating the bounce-back the retail market has made since 9/11.”

The city’s best known retail corridor, Fifth Avenue between 49th and 59th streets, had retail rents that were up 15 percent to $817-per-square-foot.