The people opening a new casual eatery at 100 W. 124th St. — right across from Jeff Sutton’s mega-retail complex, which breaks ground this spring — picked the luckiest name, and maybe location, in the world.
Six months ago, owner Jelena Pasic and her partners decided to call their burgers-and-shakes place Harlem Shake. It was serendipitous, “never having in the back of our minds this whole phenomenon,” she said of the neighborhood-born dance, which erupted in the past few weeks when YouTube videos inspired by Brooklyn DJ Baauer’s “Harlem Shake” went viral.
But once the uproar over what constituted the “authentic” Harlem Shake made headlines, Pasic tapped local graffiti artist Kindo Harper to paint the name on the plywood. And everybody’s calling her about it.
Harlem Shake, opening in a few months, will fill the southwest corner of resurgent Lenox Avenue at 124th Street. It’s just south of Sutton’s 190,000 square-foot, six-story retail development on a full-block vacant lot.
My colleague Lois Weiss — who’s broken every story about the project, from the original plan to last week’s signing of American Eagle — also first reported on Sutton’s much larger leases with Burlington Coat Factory and Whole Foods.
Across the avenue from Harlem Shake is the former site of Lenox Lounge, which is moving a few blocks north; the old location has been taken over by Nobu wizard Richie Notar for a new music venue.
Pasic hopes to have a 65-seat sidewalk cafe outside Harlem Shake, which a rep said would be “retro but not in a kitschy way.” It would bring to five the number of Lenox Avenue restaurants with sidewalk seating within a few short blocks — most notably Marcus Samuelsson’s Red Rooster between 125th and 126th streets.
It’s difficult to keep track of everything that’s happening on Lenox Avenue, especially in the near-mile between 116th and 135th streets.
Sutton’s venture — especially in combination with the Marshalls-anchored mall at 317 Lenox between 125th and 126th streets — promises to forever alter the neighborhood’s chemistry.
Energy and investment are visible everywhere on Lenox: new apartment buildings and handsomely refurbished old ones, building permits by the dozen, new supermarkets, boutiques, wine shops and cafes. The latter include Malcolm X Cafe and Latte, Corner Social, Les Ambassades and Astor Row Cafe.
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Charles S. Cohen is ramping up his retail marketing campaign on East 57th Street, where he’s got two large vacancies on the north side of the block between Lexington and Park avenues.
At 135 E. 57th, the office tower at the Lexington corner, more than 74,000 square feet are up for grabs on several levels. Although Cohen had tapped several leading outside brokers to find tenants — including Douglas Elliman’s Faith Hope Consolo and Cushman & Wakefield’s Bradley Mendelson — he’s now decided to go it alone, but advised by Gilbert Harrison, the founder/chairman of Financo Inc., an investment bank specializing in the retail and apparel sectors.
As Cohen sees it, a big impediment to successfully marketing the space had been Daffy’s, which filled what was once the failed Place des Antiquaires mall. In addition to hogging the tower’s retail footage, the presence of a discount store deterred luxury stores from moving in next door.
Although Daffy’s collapsed and moved out some months ago, Cohen was only able to get control of the space in the past few weeks — creating the possibility of a single big retail block for one high-end user.
He’s looking for $6 million a year for Daffy’s 56,000 square feet on three levels, or $9.7 million a year for the tower’s entire remaining 74,308 square feet of retail, which also includes the former Lather Spa, Pierre Michel and Alice Kwartler spaces.
Meanwhile, at 465 Park Ave., the Ritz Tower co-op apartment building where he controls the 39,000 square-foot retail condominium, Cohen just made his first deal. The Surgery Center of Manhattan took the whole concourse with about 13,315 square feet, and will have its own entrance at 111 E. 57th St.
The new facility is a combined effort by New York Eye and Ear, Regent Surgical Health and a group of 15 doctors. It will serve as a state-of-the-art ENT ambulatory surgery center.
The medical lease leaves available 25,841 square feet on three levels, including 6,444 feet at ground level. The blended space was vacated by Borders Books in February 2011. It’s on the market for $4.25 million a year.