In a Thriving City, SoHo’s Soaring Rents Keep Storefronts Empty<br />Ms. Rosen said that SoHo landlords are more willing than ever to permit the short-term stores,<br />“if they can’t get the rents they want, and it’s a way for the tenant to get comfortable.”<br />After a successful run as a pop-up store on Spring Street, Aerie, a lingerie<br />and clothing chain developed by American Eagle, is looking for a more permanent spot in SoHo.<br />Pop-up stores — which take over a space temporarily, with a predetermined end date — offer landlords what Beth Rosen, a retail broker at RKF, a national firm, calls a “kind of a band-aid for the space,” bringing in revenue<br />but not foreclosing the possibility of a permanent rental paying the higher asking rate.<br />Between 2010 and 2014, rents for stores in the former industrial district in Lower Manhattan soared by 75 percent, to an annual $860 a square foot, or $4.3 million<br />a year for a 5,000-square-foot storefront, as national chains pushed into the neighborhood, willing to pay seemingly any price to get a piece of the action.<br />“No one’s taking space.”<br />Maybe not “no one”: T. J. Maxx, the discount department store chain more often found in suburban malls, has signed a deal for a large storefront on Broadway, according to real estate executives active in SoHo who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss the deal<br />and did not want to jeopardize their relationship with the building’s owner.<br />“Right now, it feels like retail is on pause,” said David LaPierre, a retail specialist and a vice chairman at CBRE, a real estate services company.
