A rendering of the planned Whole Foods at One Wall Street in the Financial District. Rendering: Macklowe Properties
Grocery stores aren’t the most profitable or trendy retail tenants in New York City. But they do tend to be stable businesses with good credit, and developers are starting to turn back to supermarkets as anchor tenants for new buildings in both affluent and underserved neighborhoods.
For example, Whole Foods will anchor the pricey redevelopment of One Wall Street, a former corporate office building that developer Harry Macklowe is converting to 566 condominiums. The upscale grocer will occupy 44,000 square feet in the basement, first and second floors of the 50-story Art Deco skyscraper between Broadway, Wall Street and Exchange Place.
“I can’t emphasize how much of a game changer Whole Foods will be for the Wall Street area,” said Peter Whitenack of RKF, who brokered the lease for Whole Foods in 2016. He said that Macklowe originally wanted to put a food hall on the ground floor of the building, which will have 175,000 square feet of retail. But most food hall tenants don’t have good credit, so Macklowe opted for a different kind of food amenity.
The Wall Street Whole Foods will feature a bar on the Exchange Place side of the store and a coffee shop and cafe by the Broadway entrance in addition to regular grocery options.
The Amazon-owned grocery chain has also claimed 60,000 square feet at Manhattan West, Brookfield Properties’ multi-building megaproject near Penn Station. […]
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