A miracle is coming to East 57th Street — a large new store on a prime corner.
And no, it isn’t a short-term pop-up, but a prominent art gallery that’s likely to hold down its space for many years to come.
The Macklowe Gallery will open on Nov. 13 at 445 Park Ave. in 6,250 square feet on two levels — a glittering showcase for the distinguished gallery’s line of 20th-century French Art Nouveau furniture and objects, Tiffany lamps and glassware, and antique and estate jewelry.
It will be 900 square feet — larger than its former longtime home at 667 Madison Ave. a few blocks away, where it had been since 1987.
The new location’s 130 feet of wraparound sidewalk frontage will also make the gallery a lot more visible.
Unlike some rarefied dealers, Macklowe welcomes walk-ins to peruse offerings that range in price from a mere $1,000 up to the hundreds of thousands.
The prime shopping blocks of 57th Street between Lexington and Seventh avenues boast great stores such as Bergdorf Goodman and Bulgari, and restaurants including Nobu and the Russian Tea Room.
But they’re marred by proliferating vacant storefronts, tacky pop-ups, phony “antiques” dealers, bank branches, scaffolds, empty lots awaiting redevelopment, and stores that are supposed to debut but never quite reach opening day. Whatever happened to Koray Arts, which was “coming soon” at 43 W. 57th St.?
“I love bucking the tide,” said Macklowe gallery President Benjamin Macklowe, 46, whose dad, Lloyd Macklowe, is the brother of mega-developer Harry Macklowe — who happens to have a large block of retail space he’s trying to market down the block at 432 Park Ave. that’s so far signed only one tenant.
The “tide” means landlords’ and brokers’ plunging faith in retail.
Benjamin’s own cousin, developer Billy Macklowe, last May declared, “Retail is [bleeped], plain and simple.”
Galleries have moved either away from Midtown or within Midtown — but to cheaper quarters above street level.
But Benjamin told us, “For us, being on the ground floor has always been the most intimate way” to do business. “To move upstairs someplace, where only people with appointments would come, just didn’t seem right.”
He knew he had to move as the Madison Avenue location’s lease expiration neared.
The gallery’s problem wasn’t merely that landlord Hartz Mountain Industries wanted more than twice in rent what he will end up paying at 445 Park Ave., where he’ll have much more ground-floor space.
“The real estate finance world has lost touch with what retail space is really worth,” Benjamin said.
Hartz Mountain head Leonard Stern “made it clear he wanted the entire value of a [20-year] lease renewal guaranteed by a large public corporation” — an increasingly common demand that Benjamin said is “a crux” of the retail vacancy issue, in addition to the obvious weakness in brick-and-mortar stores.
The Madison Avenue situation “was a sign to me that the value of the store to the landlord had nothing to do with how much business we could do,” Benjamin said.
Retail-rent guarantees are important to a landlord wishing to refinance a property, and very high asking rents must be achieved to avoid having to refund investors who bought into a building on the expectation of them.
The new Macklowe Gallery is replacing a big Chase branch. How could Macklowe afford it, at a time when stores are so unable to afford such locations that landlord Charles S. Cohen actually had to buy two British menswear companies, Richard James and Harrys of London, to fill long-dark storefronts in his Ritz Tower across the street?
“The bank space wasn’t on the market,” Benjamin Macklowe said with a chuckle.
But a Chase insider tipped him off that one large Midtown branch would probably be dumped.
When Macklowe popped into 445 Park Ave., “In this 5,000-square-foot ground-floor space, all I saw were one teller and one private banker.”
He contacted his broker, Thor Retail Advisors’ Dan Harroch, who helped make the deal with landlord Circle Realty.
“Lovely people,” Macklowe said. And although the asking rent was reported at $500 a square foot, he said, “We paid considerably less.”
“I assure you, if more landlords were more reasonable, 57th Street would be fully rented.”