Get out your credit card, Eloise.
Manhattan’s iconic Plaza hotel is hoping to draw the attention – and cash – of Fifth Avenue shoppers with a sprawling new retail concourse featuring high-end design and luxury merchandise at dozens of elegant boutique spaces.
“The person who is shopping at Barney’s and shopping at Bergdorf’s – we’re looking to become part of that circuit,” said Plaza General Manager Tony Nicola yesterday about the new 60,000- square-foot Grand Concourse retail space. “We’re in the crossroads of luxury shopping, on Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue.”
Before the 101-year-old Plaza underwent a $400 million renovation that turned it into a combination of hotel rooms and condos, the downstairs concourse area housed decidedly unglamorous utility, kitchen and laundry spaces.
All that changed as part of a makeover that transformed the concourse into a key element of the hotel’s Plaza Retail Collection – 160,000 square feet of exclusive boutiques and food purveyors spread over several floors.
Nicola said The Plaza, which sits at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Central Park South, sought out high-end international brands and emerging New York brands to fill the space.
“We’re thrilled to be here,” said David Todd, art consultant at new concourse tenant Peter Lik Fine Art Photography, which sells large, striking landscape images shot by its eponymous Australian photographer/owner. “It’s a great venue, it’s the address, it’s all the great shopping that’s around us, the history of the hotel, the clientele The Plaza has.”
Warren-Tricomi, which already has a large hair and beauty salon on the hotel’s second floor, next month will begin operating The Plaza Beauty by Warren-Tricomi on the concourse level. Warren-Tricomi owner Joel Warren said The Plaza was “the most luxurious spot. What it means to me is style, taste and service. We couldn’t have found a better location.”
Eight boutiques are already open at The Plaza’s Grand Concourse, and another 12 are expected to open within the next two weeks. Plaza GM Nicola said that 92 percent of the concourse space was already leased and that there eventually be up to 35 boutiques there, including a large fitness center and food area.
Nicola also said that although The Plaza’s hotel customers and residents were projected to make up about 35 percent of the boutiques’ clientele, “we’re really looking to the New York shopper and visitor” to come in from off the street and provide the bulk of purchases.