Exclusive | 21st Century Landlord Signs Sephora, Barcade on Vital Broadway Block, Adding to Rental Boom

Century 21, the discount fashion store, downsized from 250,000 square feet to 100,000 square feet when it reopened in May 2023 after more than two years of pandemic closure.

But ASG Equities, the real estate arm of the store’s owners, the Gindi family, went to work finding new tenants and uses for the rest of the space on the vital Broadway block often considered the gateway to the Wall District. Street.

ASG owns the entire retail portion of the block bounded by Broadway and Church Street and by Cortlandt and Dey Streets.

Last year, in a joint venture with the Cayre family and designer Roy Nachum, she brought the Mercer Labs Museum of Art and Technology, an “immersive” exhibition space, to 36,000 square feet on the west side of the block, once home to clothing store. men’s suit department. It opened last winter to widespread acclaim.

Now, as a nascent retail leasing boom along lower Broadway gathers steam, ASG has scored two big, previously unreported new tenants.

Sephora signed a lease for a 5,000-square-foot store on the Broadway side, opening this week with 50 feet of sidewalk frontage.

In early 2025, Barcade, the nation’s largest operator of arcade bars, will break ground in 15,000 square feet at 10-12 Cortlandt Street. It will be the fourth Barkada in Manhattan. Each location has video games and pinball machines “mainly from the classic 1980s era,” its website says, and a bar for beer, cocktails and bar food.

George Karnoupakis, head of asset management for ASG Equities, said, “It will be Barcade’s flagship in the city centre. It’s a fun venue that will bring much-needed nightlife to the area.”

He said of Gindis’ overall strategy, “After we closed Century in December 2020, we decided to bring it back to a smaller footprint and curate other tenancies in the block that feed into each other.

“We’ve been very intentional about activating the streetscape with a mix of experiential offerings and traditional retailers,” Karnoupakis said.

What most people think of as the “21st Century Block” sits between the World Trade Center to the west and the Fulton Transit Center to the east.

ASG previously signed smaller retail leases there as well to replace stores that closed during the lockout. Norma’s Pizza replaced the former Majestic and, “We moved Dunkin Donuts and gave it a bigger footprint,” Karnoupakis said.

With the Sephora and Barcade leases signed, the only remaining retail space is the 1,000-square-foot corner of Broadway and Cortlandt Street.

Steven Soutendijk of Cushman & Wakefield and Sean Moran of Cushman & Wakefield represented ASG in both transactions. Barcade was represented by Jason Pennington of RIPCO. Sephora was represented by Virginia Pittarelli and Christine Jorge of Mona.

Meanwhile, Brooks Brothers will soon launch a nearly 10,000-square-foot flagship store at L&L Holding Co.’s 195 Broadway in the block immediately south of Century 21. It will join Anthropologie on the first floor and a of the basement. The famous Nobu restaurant is located on the Fulton Street side.

While Lower Broadway’s biggest retail punch is certainly the 60,000-square-foot Printemps at One Wall Street in a few months, the corridor also boasts Zara, Urban Outfitters and Miniso USA.