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Shopping Centers Today -> May 2003
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VORNADO BRINGING RETAIL TO MANHATTAN’S 34TH ST.
BY DONNA MITCHELL
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| The developer is installing stores along four highly traveled city blocks. |
Vornado Realty Trust is looking to stop some foot traffic on Manhattan’s Seventh Avenue.
Under an ambitious plan launched in 2001, Vornado is bringing to life four blocks on Seventh Avenue from 31st to 35th streets with trendy retail shops and large graphic signage similar to that in nearby Times Square.
Currently, the plan’s retail focus is on Seventh Avenue and 34th Street, where H&M opened its second 34th Street store in early November and where two weeks later athletic shoe retailer FootAction launched a glass-walled store on the opposite corner.
The idea, say those familiar with the project, is to capitalize on the masses streaming through Macy’s, Madison Square Garden and Penn Station, and enhance the area’s somewhat dull commercial property profile. Vornado, a New York City-based REIT that owns four office buildings in the Penn Plaza District plus the Hotel Pennsylvania, plans to use the retail to bring the place to life. Details of the plan remain sketchy (Vornado declined to comment on the project) but Gary Boston, an office REIT analyst at Salomon Smith Barney, said the company’s decision to convert some space in these buildings to either retail or office will depend on how the retail and office markets move.
Some observers express enthusiasm about the area’s being jazzed up a bit.
“They want to make the neighborhood more than just [Madison Square] Garden and improve the office tenants,” said Faith Hope Consolo, vice chairman of Garrick-Aug Associates, a New York City retail real estate brokerage. “They’re talking about creating a special identity for the area.”
At present the neighborhood offers the surrounding office tenants few attractive shopping and dining options, Consolo said, which is why Vornado is reportedly in talks with such restaurateurs as California Pizza Kitchen, The Cheesecake Factory and Morton’s.
The 35,000-square-foot H&M store is the Stockholm, Sweden-based retailer’s fifth full-concept store in Manhattan. This seller of up-to-the-minute fashions for men, women and children made its U.S. debut in Manhattan in March 2000 with a three-level store at 51st Street and Fifth Avenue. It now operates a store in SoHo and one in Harlem, besides the two on 34th Street. And Vornado has yet another store under construction for H&M at the former site of Alexander’s department store on 59th Street and Lexington Avenue.
Company officials say they are not the least bit bothered that there’s another H&M just up the block, between Fifth and Sixth avenues.
“If you look at this area, it is very diverse,” said spokeswoman Karen Belva. “It’s a huge market.” Swarms of subway riders and commuters come through Penn Station every day, and other passersby shop at Macy’s and visit Madison Square Garden.
“There [are] a lot of untapped spending dollars,” said Consolo. “It’s not just about a slice of pizza and a pair of sneakers.”
Meanwhile, the FootAction flagship offers nearly 20,000 square feet of shoes in an area already well served for footwear.
“To our knowledge, there is more athletic shoe volume in that square mile than anywhere else in the world,” said Alan Jones, CLS, senior vice president of real estate and development at FootAction. And “that corner is the epicenter of that square mile.”
The store is FootAction’s second in Manhattan. (The other is on 125th Street in Harlem.) In a nod to the Garden, a short walk down Seventh Avenue, the store features a disc jockey booth on a mezzanine level over the selling floor, said Jones. The booth will augment company plans to make the store a focal point for regular appearances by sports, music and entertainment celebrities.
FootAction customers are diverse, urban and fashion-forward, said Jones, and “they have a great love of music.”
Vornado, one of the largest real estate owners in New York City, owns about 75 million square feet of office, retail and other property, including nearly 60 shopping centers in six Northeastern states and Puerto Rico, and the 3.4 million-square-foot Merchandise Mart in Chicago.
 | Current Issue November 2008 |