neighborhood news

Retail Space on Bleecker Street Is More Expensive Than the Champs-Élysées

Bleecker Street is a chameleon, in a way. At its easternmost end, it’s quiet and gritty, butting up against Bowery staples like the Amato Opera and CBGB John Varvatos. In the middle, it’s NYU-central — on weekend nights, the street is so crowded with drunk students wandering home you can’t take a step without landing in someone’s barfed-up American Studies midterm. And yet, on the western end, it becomes something different entirely: a quiet boulevard of pricey boutiques, mostly owned by Marc Jacobs, punctuated by charmingly twee restaurants like August and Magnolia Bakery. Naturally, it’s the last part that makes Bleecker Street a record breaker. In the Daily News today, we learn that three properties were sold this week for $34 million, or $6,700 a square foot. That makes it one of the priciest streets in the city — third only to Madison and Fifth Avenues, and well above similar blocks in Soho and the meatpacking district. It also makes the commercial real estate there more expensive than Bond Street in London and the Champs-Élysées in Paris. So next time you’re walking past Faicco’s Pork Store, remember: That street is paved with gold.

Fifth Ave., Madison Ave. … and Bleecker St.? West Village corridor in blockbuster real estate deal [NYDN]

Retail Space on Bleecker Street Is More Expensive Than the Champs-Élysées