Lease Rose Alongside Many Manhattan Retail Corridors in 2022

Manhattan’s major retail corridors had a better year in 2022 than they did in 2021 in terms of asking rents, with nearly half of its shopping strips seeing increases — sometimes significant ones — while the declines were modest compared to the year prior.

Harlem’s 125th Street was priced more than 24 percent higher per square foot than in 2021. Broadway between Battery Park and Chambers Street down in the Financial District had rises of more than 28 percent, while asking rents along the Midtown South section of Broadway, from 14th to 23rd streets, rose by nearly 29 percent, according to data released in December by the Real Estate Board of New York.

Even where there were declines, only one reached double digits — as opposed to six of the 17 retail corridors surveyed by REBNY in 2021. But that one was a biggie: Asking rents along Fifth Avenue between 42nd and 49th streets, part of perhaps the city’s most important retail strip, dropped by 13 percent year-over-year in the fall 2022 report.

The West Village’s Bleecker Street between Seventh Avenue South and Hudson Street saw average rents drop by 9.6 percent, and East 86th Street between Lexington Avenue and Second Avenue suffered a drop of just over 9 percent. 

Regardless of trends in average rents, the prices for retail space varied widely within individual shopping corridors. REBNY’s rent survey documents big gaps between the highs and lows paid along some strips.

On the Downtown stretch of Broadway running from Chambers Street down to Battery Park — where Harry Macklowe’s 1 Wall Street bagged Manhattan’s largest retail lease of 2022 — the spread is 344 percent, ranging from $135 to $600 per square foot.

The gap was even more pronounced in Midtown. Along the Herald Square corridor of West 34th Street between Fifth and Seventh avenues, asking rents per square foot ranged from $171 to $1,000. And in the shopping nexus of Broadway and Seventh Avenue between West 42nd and West 47th streets, retail space goes for anywhere from $300 to $2,300 per square foot.

The shopping corridor with the most consistent rent is also in Midtown, with a narrow range of 33 percent: Along Fifth Avenue between West 59nd and West 49th streets, asking rents were packed into a tight band at the upper reaches of $2,250 to $3,000 per square foot.