DSW Opening Manhattan Stores

NEW YORK CITY-Big box shoe retailer DSW, part of Columbus, OH-based Retail Ventures Inc., will open two new stores in the coming weeks. The company already has sites in Queens and in Brooklyn, but these opening are their first in Manhattan stores.

Retail Ventures, which also owns the Value City and Filene’s Basement chains, signed on for 30,000 sf at 4 Union Square South on 14th Street, which is owned by Vornado Realty Trust. The site will also be home to a 90,000-sf Filene’s that will also open at the end of October. A Whole Foods market and Forever 21 are both expected to open early next year.

“It’s a great fit,” says Faith Hope Consolo, vice chairman of Garrick-Aug. “It’s a shoe street.” She adds that a key advantage is that there are more than 15 schools in the immediate vicinity, creating an ripe audience for the DSW product. Bruce Shepard of Mamaroneck, NY-based EMB Associates represented DSW and Filene’s.