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Brooklyn’s hot, but what about for retail?

7/20/2016

Cushman & Wakefield’s senior director for Brooklyn Joseph Cirone is incredibly bullish on the borough in which he lives and works.



“If you are a tenant in Manhattan with a lease expiring any time in the next 36 months, you need to come and kick the tires in Brooklyn,” Cirone told attendees at a presentation of the company’s mid-year commercial real estate outlook for Manhattan.



Current office space inventory will grow to 40 million sq. ft. from the current 28 million sq. ft. in just the next few years in Brooklyn, Cirone said, and cutting-edge new space that goes for $90 per square foot across the river in Manhattan can be had for under $60 in Brooklyn.



But will there be enough retail to satisfy the demands of all the wage-earners who will be flowing into Brooklyn? Most likely not, said Cushman’s head of North American retail services Gene Spiegelman.



“It’s really difficult to satisfy the demand by national retailers looking for traditional four-wall profitability. There’s Industry City [pictured above] and there’s the new City Point development where Century21 and Target will be opening. But special-purpose, special-built space for retail? It’s going to be a challenge because of land use costs,” Spiegelman said.



Those retailers willing to take the plunge could benefit in the long run. Spiegelman noted that the consumer base in Brooklyn is 2.5 million.



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