High-End Retailers Eyeing Brooklyn

It was big news for Brooklyn when it was announced last month that Barney’s Co-op would be leasing a 10,465-square-foot storefront space at the Two Trees-owned 194 Atlantic Avenue, and now it appears that the move has spurred other high-end retailers to consider a move to the County of Kings. According to The Times this morning, Swarovski Crystal, Anthropologie and North Face, among others, have all begun checking out potential locations. Someone needed to be first, and now that Barneys Co-op has done it, others will follow, said Karen Bellantoni, an executive vice president for the retail brokerage firm Robert K. Futterman & Associates. Brooklyn has the demographics to support this kind of retail, but until now, no national store was willing to take the chance, said Joanne Podell, the executive director of retail services at Cushman & Wakefield. Evidently, many of these potential tenants, like Barney’s Co-op, are targeting Cobble Hill: The economics of Cobble Hill are as good as the Upper East Side or Upper West Side, said Noel Caban, a vice president for retail at CB Richard Ellis. The neighborhood has great demographics and rents are roughly a quarter of what they are in Manhattan hot spots like Soho. One obvious location for a national retailer would be the space at Smith and Atlantic (underneath The Smith) that’s sat empty for the last three years.
High-End Retailers Are Scouting Sites in Brooklyn [NY Times]