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Century 21, the discount fashion department store, slimmed down from 250,000 square feet to 100,000 square feet when it reopened in May 2023 after more than two years of pandemic closure.
But the ASG Equities, the real estate arm of the store’s owners, the Gindi family, went right to work finding new tenants and uses for the rest of the space on the vital Broadway block that’s often regarded as the gateway to the Wall Street district.
ASG owns the entire retail portion of the block bounded by Broadway and Church Street and by Cortlandt and Dey streets.
Last year, in a joint venture with the Cayre family and designer Roy Nachum, it brought the Mercer Labs Museum of Art & Technology, an “immersive” exhibition space, to 36,000 square feet on the block’s western side, formerly home to the clothing store’s men’s suit department. It opened last winter to widespread acclaim.
Now, as an incipient retail-leasing boom along lower Broadway gathers steam, ASG has scored two major new, not previously reported retail tenants.
Sephora signed a lease for a 5,000 square-foot store on the Broadway side, where it will open this week with 50 feet of sidewalk frontage.
Coming in early 2025 is Barcade, the nation’s largest operator of arcade bars, will launch in 15,000 square feet at 10-12 Cortlandt Street. It will be the fourth Barcade in Manhattan. Each location has video games and pinball machines “mostly from the classic period of the 1980s,” its Web site says, and a bar for draft beer, cocktails and pub food.
George Karnoupakis, the head of asset management for ASG Equities, said, “It will be Barcade’s downtown flagship. It’s a fun place that will bring the area some much-needed nightlife.”
He said of the Gindis’ overall strategy, “After we closed Century in December of 2020, we decided to bring it back in a smaller footprint and to curate other tenancies on the block that feed off each other.
“We’ve been very intentional in activating the streetscape with a blend of experiential offerings and traditional retailers,” Karnoupakis said.
What most people think of as the “Century 21 block” stands between the World Trade Center to the west and the Fulton Transit Center to the east.
ASG previously signed smaller retail leases there as well to replace shops that closed during the lockdown. Norma’s Pizza replaced the former Majestic and, “We relocated Dunkin Donuts and gave it a bigger footprint,” Karnoupakis said.
With the Sephora and Barcade leases signed, the only retail space left is the 1,000 square-foot corner of Broadway and Cortlandt Street.
Cushman & Wakefield’s Steven Soutendijk and Sean Moran of Cushman & Wakefield represented ASG in both of the transactions. Barcade was represented by Jason Pennington of RIPCO. Sephora was represented by Virginia Pittarelli and Christine Jorge of Mona.
Meanwhile, Brooks Brothers will soon launch a nearly 10,000 square-foot flagship store at L&L Holding Co.’s 195 Broadway on the block immediately south of Century 21. It will join Anthropologie on the ground floor and in part of the basement. Famed restaurant Nobu is on the Fulton Street side.
While the biggest Lower Broadway retail coup is of course for the 60,000 square-foot Printemps at One Wall Street in a few months, the corridor also boasts Zara, Urban Outfitters and Miniso USA.
New York City’s real estate power players roamed the throbbing floor at the Fried Frank real estate department’s holiday party at Cipriani 42nd Street.
Jeff Sutton was all smiles over his $1.5 billion Fifth Avenue retail building sales. CBRE’s Mary Ann Tighe drew a crowd over her recent claim that Manhattan was running out of prime office space. Park Tower’s George and Marian Klein reminisced with host Jonathan Mechanic how two years ago at the party, they signed the lease to move Fried Frank’s conference center into their 535 Madison Ave.
Institutional celebrants included Blackstone’s Michael Eglit and Michael Lascher, Brookfield’s Ben Brown, Goldman Sachs’ Andrew Jonas and Morgan Stanley’s Seth Weintrob. Family members mingling under the vaulted ceiling included Bill and son Michael Rudin, Aby Rosen and sons Gaby and Charlie, Scott and Jonathan Resnick, and proud host Mechanic’s sons, Meadow Partners’ Marc Mechanic and hot tech startup Maybern’s Ross Mechanic.
Also there: US ambassador to France nominee Charles Kushner, Eli Gindi, Stephen B. Siegel, Mitch Konsker, John Cefaly, Darcy Stacom, Brian Waterman and Jimmy Kuhn.
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