International shoppers have been filling the streets of New York, taking advantage of the weak dollar. Most international shoppers who are coming to shop are Europeans. Now it’s the turn of foreign retailers who are coming in to set up shop in the city, taking advantage of their higher exchange power. According to David LaPierre, retail broker at CB Richard Ellis, says that retail space in the Manhattan area has been “buoyed by the weakness of the dollar.” While the nationwide trend for retail space has leveled out, rents have been rising in Manhattan due to foreign retailers setting up shop. Adds Mr. LaPierre, “Foreign retailers are coming here for multiple reasons. They know that their loyal customers are coming here to shop now, because of the dollar. But they also want to be in the New York market to build their brand in the U.S.”
Most retailers coming in from Europe select neighborhoods where foreign shoppers visit, such as SoHo and the meatpacking district, both trendy neighborhoods between Madison Avenue in Midtown and Fifth Avenue in Lower Manhattan, and are not as interested in areas where domestic tourists viit such as Times Square and Columbus Avenue.
One reason that these neighborhoods appeal to foreign tourists and retailers alike might be that they remind them of home, said Karen Bellantoni, a retail broker at Robert K. Futterman & Associates. “SoHo, with its cobblestone streets, feels very much like Europe,” she said, while Fifth and Madison Avenues are like the Champs-Élysées, the fashionable shopping thoroughfare in Paris.
