Madison Avenue Retail Availability Hits Record Low

Madison Avenue and Lower Fifth Avenue are outpacing other prime submarkets in filling up available space during Manhattan’s retail recovery.

The retail availability rate continued to plunge in the Madison Avenue submarket in the first quarter of 2024, dropping from 10.7% in Q4 2023 to a new record low of 5.9%, according to a new market report from JLL.

The scope of the resurgence on Madison Avenue can be seen in bold relief in a year-over-year comparison: in Q1 2023, the availability rate in the Madison submarket was 16%.

Lower Fifth Avenue also has seen a dramatic drop in availabilities during the same period, dropping from 24% in Q1 2023 to 14.5% in Q1 2024, which is approaching the record low for the submarket of 12.9% at the end of 2019.

The average prime submarket availability rate ticked down to 15.4% in the first quarter, a drop of 0.5% from Q4 and a 2.3% decrease in a year-over-year comparison. Average prime submarket availability peaked in 2021 at 28% in the middle of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, 150 feet below Madison Avenue, the MTA has issued a request for proposals for a “master lessor” to manage 32 retail units encompassing 25K SF at Grand Central Madison, the new Long Island Rail Road terminal.

MTA chief Janno Lieber touted Grand Central Madison as one of NYC’s safest train stations in a press briefing this week, noting that the gleaming new underground rail hub won’t face the same problems as Fulton Transit Center.

“This facility has been virtually perfect from day one,” Lieber said about Grand Central Madison, according to a report in Gothamist. “The word is out that this is a really comfortable place to move through, and it’s got the best public bathrooms in New York, which says something about the level of safety.”

Westfield, which manages the retail space at the Fulton Transit Center in Lower Manhattan, notified the MTA in February that it is opting out of its 20-year lease for the transit center at the corner of Fulton Street and Broadway 10 years before the lease expires, blaming crime and safety concerns for scaring away tenants from the shopping space.

The MTA filed a lawsuit in federal court last month aiming to enforce the lease. The Fulton Transit Center shopping complex, a $1B indoor mall that opened in 2014, sits above the city’s busiest transit hub in Lower Manhattan serving eight subway lines.

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