Back in August, the New York real-estate firms Related and Vornado bought the Virgin Megastore chain–not because they wanted to roll around in free CDs, but because the chain’s two NYC stores are paying way below-market rent. Which just happens to be going to those two companies. Well, it looks like Related, which owns the building occupied by the chain’s Union Square outpost, is ready for its payday! Billboard.biz is reporting that the New York company Winick Realty has been shopping the two-floor, 58,000-square-foot Union Square outpost around, and according to a corroborating report in the New York Sun, the asking rent is much, much higher than the estimated $100-a-square-foot that Virgin is paying now:
Retailers are expected to pay as much as $750 to $1,000 a square foot for 27,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space at 52 E. 41st [sic! see below] St., the home of Virgin Records. Virgin will be vacating the space in the mixed-use residential tower, which also houses a UA Regal Cinema, on February 1, 2009.
OK, first of all, a note for people who (like me) hadn’t had your coffee yet and thought that the 41st St. address meant the Times Square store was on the chopping block too: The Sun means 52 E. 14th St*, which is the address of the Union Square outpost. So all of you who (also like me) had “Christmas 2007″ as that store’s last, sale-filled gasp in your office pool are going to lose out, but at least the $85 Gwen Stefani hoodies and cute Japanese sweaters that the store’s putting on its main floor in a last-ditch effort to make up for the general lack of demand for recorded music in general will be at least half-price for next year’s holiday season, right?
Virgin To Exit Manhattan’s Union Square? [Billboard]
A ‘Very Exciting Time’ For Retail In New York [NY Sun]
Earlier: Virgin Megastores In New York City May Be Closing Sooner Than We Thought
* Funnily enough, though, there is a music-related tie-in at the address he quoted: 52 E. 41st St. is actually the address for the Dylan Hotel, which some of you may remember as the home of Britney Spears’ foray into the restaurant world. Maybe he really liked their portobello burger?
I took a crap in there about 4 months ago.
I’m sure I’ll have fond memories of it when I’m paying 99 cents to crap over the internet.
Well, good luck with that. I haven’t been in the Virgin Megastore in a few years, around the same time that I began downloading all my music. I didn’t even realize Tower Records was gone until I walked by one of the empty stores a few months ago.
Ha ha, the Winick website has “Keeping It Retail” on its main page.
@Camp Tiger Claw: Um, my “good luck with that” statement was intended for the real estate deal. But it’s way funnier following your comment.
Virgin stores in the UK have been sold and re-branded ‘Zavvi’. Because it sounds like ‘savvy’, and includes a ‘Z’ (which is obviously the coolest letter in the alphabet ever).
I bought Kanye’s latest online and I kind of regret it. I miss spending five minutes trying to rip open the plastic film from the CD case.
I really do.
Virgin bailed out of its huge Michigan Ave. store in Chicago earlier this year.
It’s becoming a Forever 21.
Now there will be no virgins left in New York.
I have far, far less residual affection for Virgin than I did for Tower; but as a Union Square denizen during the workday, I am a frequent visitor, and this seriously bums me out. Picking up Billboard on Friday is a weekly ritual for me, and that can only be done on a Friday in a big record store (newsstands get it the following Monday). What little disc-buying I still do, I basically roll into my weekly Friday ritual.
When Tower closed, that eliminated one reliable locale to get Billboard. With Virgin gone, a 20-year tradition of mine will go the way of the dodo. Man, I am old.
For once I ask a serious question? What kind of retailer could pay $1000 a square foot for that much space? Isn’t that $2.5 million a month????
OK. Maybe Starbucks.
I’m worried about that awesome smoking art clock thing on the facade.
@triplethreat: You mean “The Flaming Butthole*”?
* nb: not official name
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