Whether New Yorkers will actually go to Duane Reade for their skin-care and teeth-whitening needs remains to be seen. But what the company does in its stores may be beside the point. In the end, it really does come down to real estate, and the blazing commercial market may be a boon to the savvy Cuti after all. With banks bidding up prime spaces by 50 percent or more, Duane Reade’s cheap leases have become the jewel of the company. Some 200 of them are locked in past 2008, taking the rents progressively below-market with each passing day. Jeffrey Roseman, a Newmark commercial-real-estate agent who’s leased spaces to Duane Reade, says that the company doesn’t really have to sell another toothbrush. “If the drugstore business were to collapse today,” he says, “they’d probably have one of the more successful real-estate businesses subleasing their stores.”

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