When Albert Laboz visited Fulton Road together with his mom within the Nineteen Sixties, Downtown Brooklyn was nonetheless a retail mecca, drawing consumers from throughout the borough. The well-known division retailer Abraham & Straus anchored the hall, although its conventional middle-class clientele was already starting to decamp to the suburbs.
In the present day, the getting older midrises alongside Fulton are house to sneaker outlets, {discount} retailers, cellphone shops and fast-food joints, many tucked behind dirty facades.
However Laboz’s recollections of the previous Fulton Road aren’t all nostalgic.
“I hated going there,” stated Laboz, who based United American Land together with his brothers and is now one in all New York’s greatest retail landlords. “Who desires to buy groceries with their mom?”
A&S later turned Macy’s, which remained a retail anchor on Fulton Road for many years. However the retailer shuttered final yr, leaving a hulking division store-shaped gap on the middle of the hall. Laboz, a longtime believer in Fulton Road’s revival, sees that gap as a gap.
With the Chehebar household’s Jackson Group, he’s turning the previous Macy’s into BKX, a 440,000-square-foot retail and leisure complicated designed by the agency behind the inside of the Las Vegas Sphere, with eating places, wellness ideas and experiential points of interest.
The hope is that BKX can flip Downtown Brooklyn’s built-in benefits into an precise retail vacation spot. The neighborhood sits atop one of many metropolis’s busiest transit hubs and inside strolling distance of a few of Brooklyn’s wealthiest brownstone neighborhoods. Luxurious house towers have remodeled the skyline, delivering tens of hundreds of recent residents. The individuals have arrived. The retail hasn’t caught up.
“There’s a lot improvement occurring and retail has had some vivid spots, nevertheless it additionally hasn’t actually all come collectively, and Macy’s is on the coronary heart of all of it,” stated Dan Marks of Brooklyn industrial brokerage TerraCRG. “I believe the Fulton Mall has all the time been this thriller — like, why can’t the Fulton Mall be the prime retail driver that it ought to be?”
For Laboz, BKX is a take a look at of whether or not Fulton Road can lastly reclaim its title because the borough’s retail and leisure hub, Brooklyn’s reply to Instances Sq..
“We really feel an incredible accountability as a result of all eyes are on us,” Laboz stated. “I believe no matter we’re gonna do will set the tone for the entire Downtown Brooklyn and Fulton Road.”
Then and now
A&S, at 422 Fulton Road, anchored the hall by way of the post-World Conflict II growth. However by the Nineteen Sixties, malls have been struggling to compete with lower-priced retailers, and Brooklynites have been transferring to the suburbs. Fulton Road slowly developed right into a chaotic hall of {discount} outlets.
However A&S held on. Its mum or dad firm Federated Division Shops purchased Macy’s in 1995 and rebranded the Fulton Road retailer with the brand new identify. In 2015, Tishman Speyer bought the highest 5 flooring of the constructing for $270 million and erected 10 flooring of workplaces on prime of the unique division retailer.
“I hated going there. Who desires to buy groceries with their mom?”
Macy’s continued to occupy the primary 4 flooring till final yr, when it shuttered the placement as a part of a broader restructuring, leaving the decrease portion of the cast-iron constructing vacant for the primary time since its 1930 grand opening. Simply earlier than the ultimate bell, Isaac Chera of Crown Acquisitions swooped in to purchase the property from Macy’s for $23 million, then flipped it to the Labozes and Chehebars. (The New York Submit reported they paid $36 million, however Laboz declined to verify the quantity.)
The deliberate BKX may have a roughly 90-foot-high central atrium, with LED screens and an escalator connecting the flooring. There can be eight to 10 tenants, and the possible lineup contains a big wellness and health idea, eating places, a market, toy manufacturers and an leisure idea with bowling, an arcade and meals and beverage. The ambition is someplace between a shopping mall and an indoor amusement park.
“We wish to actually create one thing particular, a way of place the place individuals might come and have Instagram moments,” stated Laboz. “And the tenants that we’re chatting with are shopping for into it.”
The constructing’s scale is among the causes Laboz and his companions suppose they will discover the excellence smaller landlords alongside Fulton can’t. Its 60,000- to 70,000-square-foot floorplates present sufficient contiguous house to attraction to main manufacturers.
Laboz compares the idea to American Dream, the sprawling leisure complicated in New Jersey. He and his companions walked by way of the Ghermezians’ 3-million-square-foot megamall as a part of the planning course of and got here away with an concept to create one thing comparable, solely smaller and extra Brooklyn.
“Individuals have a detrimental connotation of malls and suburban malls and we’re gonna have our personal spin to it,” Laboz stated. “However the place do families go in Brooklyn when it’s a nasty afternoon and it’s raining? There isn’t a place.”
Laboz has additionally spent $107 million to amass an 18-lot assemblage during the last three a long time on the block bounded by Jay, Fulton, Lawrence and Willoughby streets, which he stated will ultimately be “an amazing residential improvement” and whose future inhabitants would possibly someday frequent BKX.
The Metropolis Level experiment
The 1.8-million-square-foot mixed-use improvement Metropolis Level has emerged as one take a look at case for the neighborhood’s retail market. The procuring complicated opened in 2016 and backs as much as Fulton Road, with anchor tenant Primark opening immediately onto Albee Sq..
The Dealer Joe’s, Goal and Alamo Drafthouse at Metropolis Level have change into main attracts for close by residents, and the DeKalb Market Corridor has established itself as an informal eating vacation spot that generates greater than $30 million a yr in income.
Paul Travis, founder and president of Washington Sq. Companions, a companion in Metropolis Level alongside Acadia Realty Belief, was concerned within the mission from its earliest days. The unique concept was to create a vacation spot for the individuals residing in Brooklyn’s brownstone neighborhoods, who had traditionally handled Downtown Brooklyn as a spot they handed by way of on the way in which to Manhattan.
The subsequent step was to steer retailers.
“It was insanely exhausting,” Travis stated. “You might have a giant model and Downtown Brooklyn is terra incognita for them.”
One of many first to signal on was Alamo Drafthouse, which Travis helped carry to Brooklyn at a time when film theaters have been closing. Goal and Dealer Joe’s inked giant leases at about the identical time. The end result was a spot to do errands, but additionally to collect.
Then one thing occurred that the builders hadn’t anticipated. The 2004 rezoning of the neighborhood set off a wave of high-density improvement that has since introduced greater than 28,000 new housing models, in keeping with the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. The neighborhood is house to a few of Brooklyn’s greatest redevelopment initiatives, together with Silverstein Properties’ Brooklyn Tower and The Brook, a 52-story luxurious residential constructing constructed by Witkoff Group and Apollo International Administration at 567 Fulton Road.
Metropolis Level’s gross sales have elevated by a median of about 10 p.c a yr, Travis stated, and Saturday mornings are “stroller heaven.” Workplace staff, a serious lunchtime constituency earlier than the pandemic, are slowly returning.
Metropolis Level has given landlords motive to consider Downtown Brooklyn can transfer past its discount-store popularity. Lululemon and Sephora have each lately opened, although the neighborhood should be just a few steps away from the Chanel Magnificence that arrived in Williamsburg in 2023.
“I don’t see Chanel in Downtown Brooklyn anytime quickly, however I believe these retailers who can hit extra of a middle- to higher middle-market, you’ll find yourself seeing,” Travis stated. “Now we have a few of these already and I actually suppose there can be many, many extra of them.”
Signs of change
The retail market is already starting to shift. Final yr, the wildly common Taiwanese restaurant chain Din Tai Fung leased 20,000 sq. ft at The Brook, a serious win for the neighborhood. Muji lately signed a ten,000-square-foot lease at Alloy Improvement’s 100 Flatbush Avenue, a part of a five-building complicated on the nook of Fulton Road. And Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop Kitchen is opening its fourth New York Metropolis location at 383 Bridge Road, simply off Fulton, an indication that even the trendiest of trendsetters are beginning to see one thing in Downtown Brooklyn.
However the economics have but to meet up with the hype. Asking rents for older storefronts are usually under $200 per sq. foot, in keeping with the Actual Property Board of New York, whereas some newer developments are in search of $300 to $400. That’s an bold ask for a neighborhood that has but to totally flip the nook.
Fulton Mall foot visitors was up 4 p.c yr over yr in 2025, in keeping with the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, though the neighborhood’s retail emptiness charge hit 21 p.c, placing it among the many emptiest industrial corridors within the metropolis. There are different optimistic indicators: 151 storefronts opened between 2023 and 2025, whereas 88 closed, for a web achieve of 63.
“The Fulton Mall has all the time been this thriller — like, why can’t the Fulton Mall be the prime retail driver that it ought to be?”
“My view on Fulton Road generally is that it’s not an if, it’s a when,” stated dealer Chris DeCrosta of GoodSpace. He photos extra mass-market shops that cater to Brooklyn varieties. “In case you have a look at all of the procuring streets in Brooklyn, there’s an entire world between Goal and Chanel Magnificence,” he stated.
Traders, too, could also be beginning to place bets on that center floor. Properties alongside Fulton Road are starting to commerce palms. David Tabak’s Borough Builders simply snapped up a 33,000-square-foot mixed-use improvement website proper throughout from BKX for $83.5 million, and is planning a four-building residential mission with ground-floor retail house.
Bloomingdale Properties purchased 446 Fulton Road for $17 million in July, whereas Midwood Funding and Improvement paid $9.5 million for 423 Fulton Road in August. Each had been owned by longtime landlord Ralph Braha.
The result’s a hall that’s beginning to look higher on paper however remains to be struggling on the bottom.
That makes BKX unusually consequential. The mission is anticipated to start delivering house to tenants within the second quarter of 2027, with a gap focused for the primary quarter of 2028.
JLL’s Joshua Strauss, the dealer for BKX, stated the mission has been in the marketplace for six months and is in superior talks with two main points of interest, together with ideas from a number one film studio and a toy firm. He declined to debate asking rents.
“Now we have this distinctive alternative to create an ecosystem, an actual vacation spot, all below one roof,” Strauss stated. “The hope with BKX, which is remodeling this Macy’s field, is that it will likely be the shot within the arm for Fulton Road that all of us consider it will likely be.”
