RETAIL

TIFFANY & CO. TO OPEN LOWER MANHATTAN STORE Tiffany & Co. will open a store at 37 Wall St. in fall 2007, the jewelry company announced yesterday. The new store will occupy approximately 7, 700 square feet on the ground floor of the 25-story building, which was designed in 1906-07. Skyline Developers is currently restoring the skyscraper to turn it into a rental building with 373 luxury apartments. The new Tiffany store is part of the retail revival of Lower Manhattan; in January 2006, the luxury retailer Hermes said it would open a store on the ground floor of the luxury condominium building at 15 Broad St. The vice president of Tiffany & Co., Beth Canavan, said 37 Wall St. is the “perfect site” for the first Tiffany store to open in New York in the last 60 years. The company is “very pleased to support” the Lower Manhattan redevelopment project, she said.

– Special to the Sun

REAL ESTATE

HOUSING STARTS RISE MORE THAN EXPECTED American home construction rebounded in May from a 13-month low as builders worked on backlogged orders and used incentives such as free car leases to win new business. Housing starts rose a greater-than-expected 5% to an annual rate of 1.957 million, the Commerce Department said yesterday in Washington. Building permits, a sign of future construction, fell 2.1% to an annual pace of 1.932 million, the lowest since November 2003. While the increase in starts doesn’t change the outlook for a cooling housing market, the number may reassure investors and Federal Reserve policy makers that the slowdown won’t become a rout.

– Bloomberg News