Retail Turnover Shakes Up St. Marks Place

One of the fastest retail turnover rates in the city is shaking up St. Marks Place.Over the past several months, more than eight new retail tenants have moved in, and at least three new food vendors are expected to relocate there soon, brokers said.Some of the most notable changes are occurring on the St. Marks block between Second and Third avenues. At no. 24, Pinkberry will open its seventh frozen yogurt outlet in the city, while at no. 6, the famed video and music emporium Mondo Kim’s will close to make way for a food-related tenant, brokers said.Two factors behind the revolving door of retailers on the street are high rents and a demographic of younger shoppers who do not have deep pockets. And despite the fact that foot traffic on St. Marks is usually heavy from the early morning to the late evening, this “gateway to the East Village” lacks luxury residential developments that could help anchor the retailers.“They are constantly changing the places up,” the vice president of commercial sales and leasing at Corcoran, Anita Grossberg, said. “You still have a lot of the old head shops and street vendors, and there is no major development happening to make an impact on it.”In addition, average prices per square foot are rising, pushing unsuccessful ventures out quickly. The owner of a ground-floor space at 13 St. Marks Place, for example, is asking $150 a square foot, while Pinkberry leased its new space for $184 a square foot, an associate director at the brokerage firm Lansco, Jonathan Callegari, said.“I’ve seen places open and you know right away they weren’t going to last,” a St. Marks veteran and owner of two buildings, Charles Fitzgerald, said. “They didn’t have the right flavor for the street. … When you have a restaurant with a rent of $1,000 a day, you can’t fool around.”A number of new stores have opened in recent months, including an Australian candle and body products shop, Iron Fairies, as well as a David Z sneaker outlet, a bubble tea café, a Korean restaurant, a hole-in-the-wall hot dog vendor, and a barbecue chicken eatery. A few of the old stores have stuck around, too, including the Afghan restaurant Khyber Pass and a sock vendor, the Sock Man. A white-tablecloth Italian restaurant, however, closed nearly as quickly as it opened.The owner of Mondo Kim’s, Youngman Kim, had put 6 St. Marks Place on the market for $19 million, but he recently decided instead to lease the five-story, 15,000-square-foot building for about $1 million a year, his broker, Steven Rappaport, said. Mr. Kim is “in serious negotiations” with a food vendor, the broker said, but he would not disclose the company’s name. The store, which has been at no. 6 for 20 years, will move to another space in the East Village, Mr. Rappaport said. Mr. Kim declined to comment.Ashley Sutton, a director of the company that owns Iron Fairies,Wild Blue Holdings, said he settled on St. Marks Place after researching locations in the city for a year and a half.“We were looking at six locations in Manhattan, but we ended up here,” Mr. Sutton said. “The trash is moving out of the neighborhood. It’s trendy and has a lot of Asian influence, as well.”Describing Iron Fairies as a “darker” version of the Britain-based Body Shop, he said the street was the best fit for the store’s entrance to the American market.Major thoroughfares with high levels of foot traffic usually draw the interest of national chains, but not all of them have been able to survive on St. Marks Place. Supercuts and Chipotle have managed to stay on the street but Quizno’s and Subway recently shut their doors. A Gap store on the corner of Second Avenue closed down several years ago.“A lot of the national tenants look at St. Marks Place and say it is a little grimy,” a senior managing director at Robert K. Futterman & Associates, Ariel Shuster, said.The large student population from nearby New York University, the New School, and Cooper Union is seeking out stores they cannot find anywhere else, the president of the NoHo Block Association, Zella Jones, said.“Nobody is looking for a chain,” she said. “They are looking for the eclectic.”With apartment rental rates on the rise in the neighborhood, and several new hotels, as well as the New Museum on the Bowery, higher-end retail forces could soon begin exerting pressure on St. Marks Place, the chief operating officer of the Real Estate Group of New York, Daniel Baum, said.“St. Marks has a huge advantage because of its location,” Mr. Baum said. “It’s going to keep changing along with the neighborhood.”

Retail Turnover Shakes Up St. Marks Place

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