In 2024 the city’s retail market had its best year in almost a decade — and certainly since the pandemic threw a wrench in the industry nearly five years ago — according to data from JLL.
The amount of available retail space in Manhattan fell to 15.1% in 2024, its lowest level since the brokerage firm started keeping track in 2017 and a whopping two-digit drop since the peak of 28% in 2021.
Its success was buoyed in part by some major leases signed last year, such as Wegmans taking 58,874 square feet at 1932 Broadway on the Upper West Side and the hospitality firm Convene taking about 75,000 square feet at 30 Hudson Yards.
The overall average availability rate was 15% for the last quarter of 2024, below not just the first quarter of the year, when it hit 15.4%, but also the average rate of 21% in 2019, even before the pandemic, according to JLL. The numbers highlight the industry’s continued rebound since the initial wave of store closures and bankruptcies during the onset of Covid.
Madison Avenue saw the lowest retail vacancy rate during the last quarter of 2024, at 7%, the report shows, and also had the largest increase in asking rent — jumping 17% from the previous quarter to $892 per square foot for ground-floor space.
Outpacing even Madison Avenue, however, for the highest asking rent in 2024 was Times Square, where ground-floor storefronts went for $1,514 per square foot — still a little over 8% less than the previous quarter — according to the data. The availability rate in the neighborhood hit 25%, but both brokers and some developers believe it’s making a comeback.
“So many lifestyle amenities, like private clubs, dining and wellness clubs, have moved into the Midtown area. Midtown has really become a lot more attractive for not just New Yorkers but international residents looking for pieds-à-terre,” McKenzie Ryan of Douglas Elliman told Crain’s last week, referring to plans to convert offices at 5 Times Square into apartments.
The highest retail availability rate in the city last year was in the neighborhood surrounding Herald Square, which reached 35.2% during the fourth quarter of 2024, the report shows.
And like the city’s retail industry, the office market also boasted a strong finish to the year, Crain’s reported. Firms leased about 10.2 million square feet of space during the fourth quarter in Manhattan, for its strongest fourth quarter since 2019.
