Sports retailing giant Nike is ready to leave its “Niketown” Midtown location and is exploring opportunities in the more tourist friendly parts of Fifth Avenue, where it is likely to move to H&M’s 40,756 square-foot digs at 640 Fifth, which is owned by Vornado Realty Trust.
The Beaverton, Ore., company, whose lease at 6 E. 57th St. is not up until the end of May 2017 — not including three five-year extensions — is nevertheless seeking to relocate out of its massive flagship location.
“Nike is big and they are slow, and they have been working on this for a long time and has a lease out for execution [with Vornado],” said one retail spy.
Whether Nike Chairman Phil Knight will actually okay signing the lease and pay Vornado chairman Steve Roth’s lofty price — about $3,500 per square foot for the ground floor — is yet to be determined. Roth typically gets his pricing, but his retailers do mammoth business.
“Their lease is coming due and they have extensions,” confirmed Donald J. Trump, who controls the current Niketown property. “If they extend fine, if not, we will lease it. It’s a great building.”
The extraordinary building was entirely redeveloped for a luxurious area between Tiffany’s, the IBM atrium and Trump Tower and has loading docks with a turntable elevator on West 56th Street.
It is also connected to Trump Tower on five of its atrium retail floors. And while some connections are open, Trump said they open additional connections for special events.
“It’s a great piece of land. I used the air rights for Trump Tower,” said Trump, who knocked down a part of the former Bonwit Teller department store for that development.
Trump first leased the 57th Street portion to the French store Galleries Printemps before its complete reinvention into Niketown.
Nike built it at a time in the mid-1990s when retailers like Warner Bros. were still exhausting shoppers by bringing them up and down numerous tiny floors. Nowadays, most retailers know people won’t venture up or down more than one or two levels from the street.
Nike also carved out all the floors, thus creating U-shaped spaces that all look down on a tremendous atrium. But in this city, sales-floor area is almost priceless. Any new retailer or even an upper-floor loft office user may decide to extend out all or some of the floors.
With ground floor retail running $2,500 a square foot and up in the area, Trump also isn’t worried.
H&M meanwhile will soon be vacating its 640 Fifth space for 57,000 square feet of slightly cheaper digs at 589 Fifth.
Spaces above 49th Street are mostly asking $3,000 a square foot, while those below have a $1,500-a-square-foot ground-floor asking price.
“H&M signed [at 589 Fifth] and they are racing to get their new store open and it will be a catalyst for the market,” said Haim Chera of Crown Acquisitions, whose company is the leasing agent at 530 Fifth and Olympic Tower at 645 Fifth, where 200,000 square feet will be available in small divisions in the future.
Nike is also still looking for another spot, in SoHo, where sources said they had been targeting a new building being developed by Jeff Sutton and partners at 529 Broadway that is among the best available.
Nike’s broker, Joanne Podell, vice chairman at Cushman & Wakefield, declined to comment on their plans, while a Vornado rep also declined comment and Sutton did not return calls for comment.
In Times Square, Radio Shack has quietly opened at Jeff Sutton’s former Roxy Deli building at 1565 Broadway.
That four-story, 21-foot wide by roughly 70-foot deep property of 5,159 square feet is also almost totally covered with valuable signage.
Next door to the south, Laura Pomerantz of Laura Pomerantz Co., was just hired to lease out 21,292 square feet at 1557 Broadway that is just north of American Eagle.
“It will enable people who want smaller space to enter Times Square,” said Pomerantz. “It has 70 feet of frontage, so we can divide it in several different ways.”
There is a lower level and two upper levels along with the ground floor.
Asking rents in the Bow-tie area are running $2,500 a square foot and up on the ground floors.
Both buildings are directly opposite Times Square’s iconic ruby red staircase.
Now that PVH Corp. owns The Warnaco Group, the licensee of Calvin Klein and other brands, the company has recast a former Warnaco lease and expanded from 200,000 to 225,000 square feet at 501 7th Ave.
The company renewed floors 10 to 15, parts of 3 and 5 and will expand onto 9.
Mitchell Konsker and Matt Astrachan of Jones Lang LaSalle along with and Steven Bauer of Cushman & Wakefield represented PVH, which was historically known as Phillips-Van Heusen.
“We looked in the market for a larger floor plate in close proximity to the Calvin Klein headquarters at 205 W. 39th and determined that 501 suited their needs best,” said Astrachan. “The plan is to extensively upgrade the space. They will also get new signage.”
Harry Blair and Sean Kearns of Cushman & Wakefield represented ESRT in the transaction that had an asking rent of $50 per square foot.
Manhattan city slickers will soon be able to embrace the beloved suburban Dairy Queen. The soft ice cream and fast-food shop signed a lease for 2,500 square feet at 54 W. 14th St., where they will open in the spring on the ground and mezzanine previously inhabited by Fabco Shoes.
Dairy Queen was represented by Jeremy Modest of Ripco Real Estate. The West Village- and Union Square-area building owner had an asking rent of $165 per square foot and was represented by Adam Langer, of Zelnik & Co.
The Lafayette Smoke Shop at 63 Spring Street will be closing now that Jack Terzi of JTRE and JNS Realty Partners, are in contract to buy what they call “a jewel box” on the corner of Lafayette Avenue.
“The building will be delivered vacant and that’s why we jumped on it,” said Terzi. “We will lease the entire building to one tenant with a flagship and office above or lease the ground for retail and the upper floors for residential.”
Jeffrey Fishman and Marc Finkel of RKF marketed the building for the sellers, who cut deals with tenants to free up the entire property