City Outfitters wished to shrink its Fifth Avenue footprint and wanted to discover a house that may nonetheless work with its multi-level retailer structure.
The answer — a 15,000-square-foot lease at 575 Fifth Avenue — earned Cushman & Wakefield’s Sean Moran, Patrick O’Rourke, Catherine Merck and Steven Soutendijk the Most Ingenious Retail Deal of the Year award on Wednesday at REBNY’s 2025 Retail Deal of the 12 months Awards at Vornado’s 2 Penn Plaza, the place dealmakers gathered to rejoice.
The brokers masterminded a transfer from City Outfitters’ 23,000-square-foot, two-level nook retailer at 521 Fifth Avenue into the smaller house on the nook of forty seventh Avenue. With a purpose to seal the deal, they promised to construct a brand new escalator connecting the decrease degree of the retail apartment to the road degree.
The house, which beforehand served as a part of L’Oréal’s headquarters, was solely linked to the constructing’s atrium, a standard space topic to a thicket of zoning and city-planning necessities.
“To change these areas will be time-consuming and dear and difficult,” Moran mentioned. “That’s one thing in retail we don’t usually get entangled with.”
The Cushman staff spent virtually two years securing approvals to take away the escalators connecting the atrium to the decrease degree. In addition they gained approval to open an elevator door on the other aspect of an present one, permitting it to entry the shop instantly and function City Outfitters’ ADA-compliant elevator.
The brokers negotiated a one-year extension at City Outfitters’ present Fifth Avenue retailer, giving them time to complete development.
Then they encountered one other complication. The constructing was being offered because the lease was being negotiated. Actual property funding companies Sovereign Companions and HudsonPoint Capital bought the property from Beacon Capital Companions and MetLife for $378 million in April.
That left the City Outfitters deal in jeopardy if the brand new proprietor determined it wished the retail house delivered vacant. (They finally determined to honor the lease.)
“That was one other layer of approval that we not often, not often see,” Moran mentioned.
Newmark’s Jeffrey Roseman and Drew Weiss took house the Most Impactful Retail Deal of the 12 months award for brokering luxurious watchmaker Audemars Piguet’s 12,000-square-foot flagship at 785 Fifth Avenue. And Daija US COO Jeffrey Kleiner gained the Retail Growth/Venture of the 12 months award for his work on the Waldorf Astoria New York redevelopment.
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