In a giant breakthrough for the FiDi shopping scene, Spanish sportswear and accessories chai🦩n Zara is opening a three-level store at 222 Broadway, across the street from St. Paul’s Chapel and the new Fulton Transit Center.
Zara signed a 15-year lease for 30,000 square feet at♉ the 750,000 square-foot office building owned by an affiliate of David W. Levinson’s L&L Holding Co. and Beacon Capital.
The landlords are creating a new faç♎ade for the storefront to line up with the Broad𒈔way “street wall.”
They werꦯe previously deeply recessed under an overhang and nearly invisible to passersby. Zara will enjoy a wraparound storefront comprising 264 feet of total frontage.
Cushman & Wakefield’s Bradley Mendelson and Alan Schmerzler were the landlo༺rd’s agents. L&L leasing director David Berkey also acted fꦡor the ownership.
Zara’s move downtown represents another gi൲ant step for the Wall Street/World Trade Center-area retail scene. Among numerous recent advances, Brookfield Office Properties has already sig🎀ned a slew of high-end store tenants for its Brookfield Place in Battery Park City, and Urban Outfitters is building a large store two blocks south of 222 Broadway.
But Mendelson said, “We believed Zara’s flagship store format would be better suited to a st🐻rong Broadway street location, as opposed to the more mall-like environments of Brookfield Place or the World Trade Center retail.
Schmerzler noted the “incredible foot traffic on Broadway, proxiღmity to the transit hub, and of course the large block of space we were able to assemble for them.” Asking rents for 222 Broadway’s retail were $500 per square fooꩵt on the ground, $125 a foot on the second floor and $50 a foot in the basement.
Zara already has several locations in Manhattan but none nearly as far down⭕town. The new store, to carry the full line of women’s, men’s and children’s apparel, will open in late 2014 or early 2015.