Saks Fifth Avenue opened its Downtown location at Brookfield Place last year, featuring its women’s selection, and opened a dedicated men’s store at the upscale shopping center this week.
BY DENNIS LYNCH
Even more big-name retailers are moving to Downtown this year, continuing the neighborhood’s meteoric rise as a premier shopping district. Many stores are taking up spaces around the area’s three shopping hubs — Brookfield Place, Westfield World Trade Center, and the Seaport District — but other stores are venturing out to lease space at the other retail areas popping up all around the neighborhood.
Several new stores are opening in and around the World Trade Center complex in 2017. Sak’s Fifth Avenue set foot in Downtown last year when they opened at Brookfield Place and they added a dedicated men’s store there on Feb. 23. The store includes a barber, coffee bar, a “tech bar” featuring cool gadgets, and a “leather spa” dedicated to footwear. You can also design your own custom suits with “fabrics, linings, buttons, details and more” at digital interfaces at the store. Swank shoemaker Allen Edmonds and Suit Supply will also open this year at Brookfield.
Carmaker Ford opened its first FordHub “experiential” store at Westfield World Trade earlier this year. FordHub doesn’t actually sell cars, but you can create a custom 3D model of your dream car, play some racing video games, take a selfie with a car’s lidar system (which uses light the way radar uses radio waves), and check out some of Ford’s big new ideas such as self-driving cars and regenerative braking.
A bit further afield, Saks Fifth Avenue will also open a 55,000-square-foot discount Sak’s Off Fifth store this year at One Liberty Plaza, just a few blocks from the mall.
Hip women’s fashion retailer Anthropologie will open a 20,000-square-foot store at 195 Broadway and the equally hip Japanese retailer Uniqlo is rumored to be in talks for 100,000 square feet at the landmarked 23 Wall Street building across from the New York Stock Exchange building. Uniqlo is one of three retailers reportedly looking at the five-floor, 160,000-square-foot space, according to the Real Deal.
TJX, the parent company of Target, T.J. Maxx, and Marshall’s signed a lease for a 68,400-square-foot space at 140 West St. earlier this year. The store will take up portions of the ground floor and lower levels of the landmarked skyscraper, which was known for years as the Verizon Building. TJX reportedly paid $350 and $100 per square-foot on each level, respectively, according to a recent ABS Partners Real Estate report. Nike and Under Armour were reportedly looking at space there over the summer as well.
Nearby at the Seaport District, high-end Italian retailer 10 Corso Como is opening it’s fist and only U.S. location in the Fulton Market Building this year. And trendy Dutch clothing retailer Scotch & Soda will set up shop not far from there along Schermerhorn Row this year.
Property owners are looking to build and expand retail space in their buildings to capitalize on the boom in demand. Macklowe Properties will include 100,000 square-feet of retail as part of its residential conversion at One Wall Street. Fosun Property Holdings also looks to create twice that square-footage of retail space below the plaza at 28 Liberty Street — a prime location just a few blocks from the Seaport.
