NY Times
New Star in the Columbus Circle Orbit
A new building at 15 Central Park West, just north of the newly revitalized Columbus Circle, will contain a Best Buy outlet and other stores.
By ALISON GREGOR
October 18, 2006
In what is among the year’s biggest retail transactions in Manhattan, Best Buy has signed a lease for 46,000 square feet of space on a portion of Broadway just north of Columbus Circle that was a brick-strewn lot for many years.
The company, a consumer electronics retailer, recently signed a $75 million lease over 15 years in 15 Central Park West, a pricey limestone condominium building designed by Robert A. M. Stern that is going up on the site of the former Mayflower Hotel.
Best Buy took 6,200 square feet of ground-floor space on the southeast corner of Broadway and 62nd Street — including about 65 feet of frontage on Broadway. The remaining space is on two levels constructed below street grade.
Property marketers said about 40,000 square feet remained at the building and would most likely be configured into three or four smaller spaces for home furnishing or apparel shops, a bank or a sporting goods store.
Brokers said the retail space at 15 Central Park West, scheduled for occupancy a year from now, was the final slice that would complete a radical transformation of Columbus Circle over the last decade.
“This is definitely the last piece of the urban streetscape puzzle in that area,” said Gene Spiegelman, an executive director at Cushman & Wakefield, which is marketing the space. “It’s just so alive now. Think back 15 years ago — this was a dust bowl.”
Columbus Circle, which punctuates the southwest corner of Central Park, is a perilous roundabout once surrounded by uninspiring structures like the New York Coliseum. It has experienced significant redevelopment, beginning with creation of the monolithic Trump International Hotel and Tower in 1997.
The area’s transformation took hold with the opening of the slick, curvilinear Time Warner Center. That twin-towered complex, which has condominiums, a hotel and office space, houses the Shops at Columbus Circle, a collection of top-shelf retailers and restaurants including Sephora, Coach, Whole Foods and Tourneau, among others.
Its drawing power has made Columbus Circle a shopping destination for residents, office workers, transit riders and tourists, brokers said.
“It was never a proven theory that upscale retail could flourish on the Upper West Side, and Time Warner did that,” said Gary Trock, a senior vice president at the commercial brokerage CB Richard Ellis. “It’s my understanding that the retailers within the Time Warner Center have done exceptionally well there. That has enabled other retailers to see there’s opportunity here.”
Javid Jameer, the manager of Bose, an audio equipment store, which opened in February 2004, said that all the retailers seemed to be thriving. Bose’s sales are now about 15 percent ahead of projections for the year, with as many as 400 customers visiting on weekdays and 800 a day visiting on weekends.
The total number of sales in 2006 at the Time Warner Center is up 12 to 13 percent over last year, said Kenneth Himmel, president and chief executive of Related Urban Development, the developer of the Shops at Columbus Circle.
The developers of 15 Central Park West said they had serious discussions with Nordstrom about creating a department store, but the company needed more square footage. They also spoke with Bloomingdale’s. But the fact that another electronics retailer, Samsung, is thriving in the Time Warner Center inspired negotiations with Best Buy.
“Electronics to me are high-end for the new generation,” said Arthur Zeckendorf, who was the developer of 15 Central Park West, along with his brother, William Lie Zeckendorf. “The Samsung store in Time Warner Center has been a great success.”
Though some might debate whether Best Buy is high-end, Mr. Spiegelman said the lease with the electronics store brings in a stable tenant that is not currently in the Upper West Side market. The closest of the four Best Buy stores in Manhattan is at 529 Fifth Avenue at 44th Street.
The remaining space at 15 Central Park West has 170 feet of Broadway frontage. There is also a 25,000-square-foot second-floor space. The asking rate for the prime ground-floor space is more than $300 a square foot annually, while the average asking rate on the four retail levels is in excess of $100 a foot, Mr. Spiegelman said.
Those rates are high, but prices in Columbus Circle continue to be dwarfed by those at the southeastern corner of Central Park — 59th Street and Fifth Avenue — home of the Plaza Hotel, the distinctive new Apple Computer store and numerous high-end retailers.
“At about $1,350 a foot, Fifth Avenue has the highest retail rents in the world, and retailers and nonretailers feel it’s the best place to expose their brand,” Mr. Spiegelman said. “On the West Side, retailers come to do sales. They’re not necessarily here to brand.”
On another directional axis, the retailing at 15 Central Park West will help to link the now-thriving Columbus Circle with the Lincoln Center area and the West Side’s traditional retail stronghold at Broadway and 72nd Street, brokers said. Just north of 15 Central Park West, the Chetrit Group is converting the former Empire Hotel at Broadway and 63rd Street into condominiums and more than 40,000 square feet of retail space.
Starbucks has signed on for about 2,500 square feet, said Jeff Winick, the chief executive of Winick Realty Group, which is marketing the space. He said brokers expected to attract a spa and a 10,000-square-foot restaurant along with other shops.
“It’s becoming its own little city in that area,” he said. “Columbus Circle at 57th Street is finally connected to Broadway and 66th Street.”
Monica Blum, president of the Lincoln Center Business Improvement District, said the inclusion of a Best Buy in the West Side retail mix, which includes Gracious Home and Bed Bath & Beyond farther north on Broadway, made sense for a heavily residential neighborhood.
“It’s great to have retail that serves the residential population as well as the tourist population,” she said.
Other Columbus Circle improvements are under way, including a $72 million reconstruction of the subway station, scheduled for completion in June 2009, and the contentious overhaul of the Venetian gothic facade of 2 Columbus Circle, the home of the Museum of Arts and Design.
The refurbishment of the traffic circle around the monument to Christopher Columbus, erected in 1892, was completed in 2005, and it has also helped pick up the neighborhood. Planners redirected traffic so that it circles the plaza, which has been upgraded with trees, benches and fountains. Traffic patterns had not been circular since 1929.
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I love how much this building blends into the fabric of Central Park West. It's amazing how this tower which isn't neo- anything, but a 21st century design, blends so seamlessly into the skyline points north.
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