Park Avenue vacancy rate lower than before pandemic

It’s no secret that some Midtown office corridors are doing better than others. Even so, a new Savills survey contains a remarkable finding:

Park Avenue’s current availability rate of 8.9% not only compares favorably to Midtown’s overall 17.6%, but with Park Avenue vacancies in the prehistoric, pre-pandemic fourth quarter of 2019 — when it was 11%.

Park Avenue’s fortunes were bolstered by recent large deals we reported first, such as for Stonepeak Partners’ new lease at SL Green’s 245 Park, PJT Partners’ expansion at SLG’s 280 Park, and Sumitomo Corporation’s new lease at the Stahl Organization’s 277 Park.

Savills defines “midtown” as bounded by 61st Street on the north, and by 34th Street on the East Side and by 30th Street on the West Side. So its data might differ from the findings of other brokerages which consider Midtown to begin at 42nd Street.

But the Savills survey reminds us that Midtown’s 17.6% availability is anything but uniform across the district.

Broadway has the highest availability of 47.1%. But the weakness of Third Avenue, where the figure is 26.9%, is more meaningful because it has a much larger office inventory than Broadway.

Soho might be Manhattan’s healthiest retail district, where storefront occupancy is estimated to be 84% — higher than before the pandemic.

The latest fashion name in the mix is Jacquemus, the men’s and women’s ready-to-wear line founded in Paris by Simon Porte Jacquemus with a huge cult following. It just landed its first US location at 143 Spring St., across from Chanel at the corner of Wooster.

The boutique will have about 4,500 square feet on three levels behind a ground-to-ceiling glass facade. The currently vacant space was most recently occupied by Pinko.

Current Real Estate Advisors’ Brandon Charnas and Adam Henick represented Jacquemus. Landlord Buchbinder and Warren was repped in-house by Bill Abramson and Matt Olden.

Terms were not disclosed but sources said it was in the neighborhood of $2 million a year.