Whole Foods' New York City flagship will be located on concourse one, within the complex's Shops at Columbus Circle retail center. The store is sure to be a welcome addition to the area, where supermarkets are few and far between.
Chase Welles, a vice president and regional director at Seattle-based Northwest Atlantic Real Estate Services' East Coast office in White Plains, brokered for Whole Foods. (Northwest's roster of national tenants includes Washington Mutual, Starbucks and Hollywood Video.) The ownership was self-represented. While terms of the deal have not been released, Whole Foods leases typically run 40 years.
"The key is that this is really the front door to the [AOL Time Warner Center] project," Welles told GlobeSt.com in an interview last night. "We took the whole concourse level."
Welles noted that the transaction, which closed "less than 180 days from the first time that Whole Food first saw the deal," will bring a world-class supermarket to Columbus Circle. "This will be the Harrods of the US," he said, referring to the legendary London department store's fabled food halls. "Whole Foods is going to build the nicest food store in the world. Every department will have its own identity."
And while he wouldn't go into the financials of the build-out, Welles said the gourmet grocer is pulling out all the stops on this one. "They're using the highest possible finishes in the installation," he said. "Building a supermarket is just as expensive as building Cartier. Everything has to be designed to be stepped on and walked on and touched a thousand times a day. There's no question that this is the most expensive project in the development."
"We knew that a quality space was important to provide an atypical grocery shopping experience in Manhattan," says John Mackay, CEO of Whole Foods Markets. "The AOL Time Warner Center offers great space for Whole Foods Market to develop an innovative as well as comfortable shopping experience for New Yorkers on the West Side at this new landmark location."
With its upscale, foodie-friendly approach to grocery shopping, Whole Foods should fit neatly into the AOL Time Warner Center habitat. In addition to chef-prepared meals, the store will stock made-from-scratch baked goods, antibiotic- and hormone-free meats, daily seafood shipments from the company's Pigeon Cove facility in Gloucester, MA and a wine shop.
"The store will be a wonderful complement to the world class restaurants and shops that will be located at AOL Time Warner Center," says Stephen M. Ross, chairman and CEO of the Related Cos., one of the development partners.
And because it will offer a 250-seat eating area, Whole Foods' customer base likely will include quick-lunch seekers within the center as well as workers from the surrounding area looking for an informal alternative to brown-bagging it.
"The natural and organic market will offer the upper West Side of Manhattan an unparalleled selection of quality foods and become the destination location for all New Yorkers who seek the freshest and finest food products," says Kenneth A. Himmel, president and CEO of Related Urban Development.
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