A Louis Vuitton luxury leather goods store is to occupy the space on 57th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York where a Warner Bros. Studio store flourished briefly in the 1990s.
It signals the beginning of the end of movie-based retailing in the city. Warner Bros. and Disney have both closed their stores in the Times Square area, and brokers say it remains to be seen if Disney will hold onto its Fifth Avenue store in an area increasingly dominated by such luxury goods retailers as the recently expanded Asprey in Trump Tower and the DeBeers jewelry store scheduled to replace the existing Louis Vuitton store at 55th Street once the new one is open.
“The area just north of Saks [on Fifth Avenue between 49th and 50th streets] is one of the most desirable shopping areas in the country,” a New York retail broker told The New York Times. He said rents along the avenue in the blocks north of Saks ranged from $800 to $1200 per square foot a year, making them among the highest in the world.
Retailers are investing big money not only in rents but also in the construction of their stores. Asprey is said to have invested an unprecedented $2000 a square foot to build its store in Trump Tower to showcase its luxury goods. (Typical office installations are about $75 a square foot.)
Glamour retailing seems to spreading in that area. The new Louis Vuitton store will be in space once occupied by Manufacturers Hanover Bank before it was merged out of existence. A bank branch was almost as incongruous as Warner Brothers at an intersection whose other corners are occupied by Tiffany, Bulgari and Van Cleef & Arpels jewelry stores.
One of the more significant new stores on the avenue, American Girl Place, took the space of a Korean Airlines ticket office at the southeast corner of 49th Street. In addition to the coming DeBeers store, a Zara store is scheduled to open at the northeast corner of 54th Street. The store will be carefully positioned between expensive designer stores and those with more mass market appeal.
“It is for the woman who cannot afford Chanel, but who wants a designer look,” a broker told The Times. She said Zara sought the location because of the image it projected. “Most designers will not go below 52nd Street,” she said. “They want to be between 52nd Street and Bergdorf [at 58th Street]. And because there is only a finite number of retail space, it drives up the rent. One reason why true retailers have been replacing ticket offices is that service business cannot afford ground floor retail rents.”
DeBeers is taking not only the old Louis Vuitton space at 55th Street in the St. Regis Hotel but is adding the Godiva space next door to develop a 7000-square-foot store, he said.
Rising costs have also been forcing retailers to consider locations to the south of what had been considered prime on the street, brokers say. They note that both American Girl Place and Lacoste have their stores on the south side of 49th Street. These pressures and the large number of retail spaces already vacant or due to become available could change the nature of the avenue between 42nd and 49th Streets. The space at the southeast corner of 46th Street that housed the Wiz store was vacant and the HMV store across the street was due to become available. The Today's Man store at 44th Street is also on the market.