Prime Prada purchase
Retailer latest to buy up 5th Ave. bldgs.
ALTHOUGH Fifth Avenue in Midtown reigns as the world’s priciest-to-rent shopping corridor with sidewalk-level stores charging $2,000 per square foot, according to Cushman & Wakefield, there soon might not be anywhere left to rent.
That’s because retailers are rapidly buying the buildings that are home to their glamorous stores. It happened again this week with news that Prada is grabbing a second building on the “world’s greatest shopping street” — 720 Fifth Ave. at East 56th Street, next door to 724 Fifth, which it announced last week it’s purchasing for $425 million.
The Italian fashion house’s latest buy, first reported by Bloomberg, is for $410 million. The transactions appear to represent the largest combined investment-sale purchases in the city this year. Eastdil Secured brokered both deals.
The seller in each case was billionaire retail developer-landlord Jeff Sutton, who’s under financial pressure at several of his other holdings. Ironically, Prada and Sutton were duking it out in court four years ago over renovations to 724 Fifth before peace broke out.
Prada joins a cavalcade of other marquee-name retailers who own their buildings on Fifth Avenue or immediately off it. Among them: Bergdorf Goodman, Chanel, LVMH (which owns Louis Vuitton and Tiffany), Rolex (which is developing an entirely new building above its store location), Burberry (temporarily on the Avenue while it renovates its flagship at 9 E. 57th St.), Harry Winston, and two incoming Japanese brands, confectioner Minamoto and Geshary coffee.
Minamoto has beautifully restored six-story 604 Fifth Ave., which was long home to a mood killing TGI Friday’s on the otherwise all-retail block between East 48th and East 49th Streets. It isn’t known when the new store will open, however.
Prada’s plans for its two buildings aren’t known, either. But a dealmaker familiar with the Fifth Avenue scene said, “It’s likely they’ll combine their current flagship boutique footprint at 724 with the vacant retail space at 720. It would be awesome.”
The precious 720 corner was previously home to an Abercrombie & Fitch, which moved a few blocks south. Sutton was asking $25 million a year in rent for the four-level store space before he decided to sell the property, according to a Midtown market source.
A Newmark brochure for the Abercrombie space called the location “an icon of global proportions” where Abercrombie saw $1 billion in sales over 15 years. However, Newmark is no longer involved at the site. Further illustrating the avenue’s upward trajectory, crystal house Swarovski just opened a glittering, 14,400-square-foot, three-level flagship at 680 Fifth Ave., where Gap was selling jeans until 2019. The star-studded launch drew Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashley Graham, and Cynthia Erivo “dripping in crystals,” WWD reported.
Up for grabs
In what might prove to be another breakthrough, a large bank branch at 785 Fifth at East 60th Street is up for grabs for the first time in 50 years.
Citibank still occupies the ground-floor corner of a prominent co-op building that’s home to luminaries such as Hollywood mogul David Geffen. Its lease is up in 2024. The 11,000-square-foot, twolevel space is being offered through a Newmark team including power broker Jeffrey Roseman.
A high-end store tenant at 785 Fifth would stretch the avenue’s prime retail corridor beyond its current northern endpoint, Cipriani in the Sherry-Netherland next door.