By Taylor Williams Across Manhattan’s major retail corridors and pockets, leasing agents, operators and owners are all gaining greater clarity on what levels of rent various submarkets can bear and, by extension, how much spaces are truly worth. After three years of disruptions of the public health and financial variety — each devastating in its own right — a reset of sorts is a major windfall for the country’s largest and arguably most dynamic retail market. Closing deals is challenging enough when all parties are on the same page and the economy is stable. When markets are going through tumultuous phases of discovery in which perceived valuations of spaces fluctuate wildly, negotiations tend to flame out even more quickly — if they even get going at all. “A year ago in Manhattan, you could have two adjacent stores, and one might have been asking for $120 per square foot while the other wanted $220 per square foot,” says Chase Welles, partner at TSCG, an Atlanta-based brokerage and consulting firm that is active in New York City. “There’s certainly more definition relative to last year, and the range of asking rents in each submarket has narrowed.” “The market has become more …
