By Liana Grey
Two years ago, Joanne Podell saw potential in a seven-block stretch of Fifth Avenue that had largely been ignored by fashion retailers.
Between 42nd and 49th Streets, “the problem was the tenants,” said Podell, an executive vice president at Cushman and Wakefield with a pioneering spirit: 15 years ago, she helped Duane Reade secure its first lease in a residential building — a rental complex on 2nd Avenue and 63rd Street — and worked with Anne Taylor to roll out Loft, the clothing chain’s hipper, younger offshoot.
As Fifth Avenue passes through the 40s, its haute couture boutiques gave way, for much of the last decade, to low-end electronic stores. Podell argued that foot traffic never stops flowing on the avenue, even along its blander stretches. But it was only in the last few months that popular clothing chains took notice, lured by the prospect of Fifth Avenue cachet at bargain rents.
“The street is filling in wonderfully,” said Podell, who counts Nike, Anne Taylor Loft, and TD Bank among her current clients. “At its price point, it’s not going to be luxury, nor should it be.”
Zara, H&M, and Urban Outfitters are now fixtures on the block, along with one of Podell’s longtime clients, United Colors of Benetton. Joe Fresh, a Canadian brand, opened an American flagship just north of Bryant Park in February. “People won’t stop walking when they get to 49th Street,” Podell said.
It’s the same logic that applied to SoHo’s transformation from artist colony into outdoor shopping mall. “It started at Houston Street,” Podell said. “Then people didn’t want to go past Spring.” Now, boutique owners are clamoring for space on Broadway between Broome and Grand. “Part of what makes retail successful is the walking,” she explained.
Tourists are known to trek up Broadway from the Financial District to Greenwich Village, in search of stores like Uniqlo and Urban Outfitter. Along the way, they pass Canal Street. “I don’t think Canal will get luxurious, but it’ll clean up,” Podell said. “I think it’ll be a new area of growth with legitimately good tenants. You have transportation,” and a handful of new luxury towers near the Hudson River.
Podell spends much of her days scouting out the next hot corridor, but you would be hard-pressed to catch her in a store during off-hours. “I hate shopping,” she confessed. When she needs new clothes, she buys them in bulk, dashing the hopes of countless salespeople. “They think, ‘this is my next great customer,’ then I disappear,” Podell joked.
But the business side of retail piqued her interest at an early age. Born in the Bronx and raised on Long Island, Podell spent her summers at a midtown shop owned by her father, who exported kitchen appliances to Brazil and Argentina. “I would work behind the counter,” she said. Occasionally, she accompanied her father on trips to South America.
After a brief stint as a teacher following college, she launched a furniture chain, Brazil Contempo, across the tri-state area. “I chose all my own stores, all the locations. I negotiated the leases,” she said. A total of ten shops, including one at 2 Park Avenue, thrived. But every so often, Podell took a gamble that failed. “I learned from my mistakes,” she said, adding that site selection involved very little demographic analysis at the time. “It was more intuitive in those years.”
In 1990, she shuttered Brazil Contempo, and revisited a question her father had asked years earlier, after she earned an undergraduate degree in the liberal arts: “So, what are you going to do with the rest of your life?”
The answer came in the form of a job offer at Garrick Aug, the midsized retail firm that closed in 2007. Right off the bat, she handled the Duane Reade lease on the Upper East Side, with guidance from Garrick Aug founder Charles Aug. “It was very complicated,” she said. “I had to move a tenant that was there, negotiate a deal, and then work with Duane Reade.”
A flurry of big-name deals followed. Podell, who later joined Newmark Knight Frank and then Cushman and Wakefield, worked with furniture giants like Ethan Allen and Jennifer Convertibles, and helped Kate’s Paperie, a competitor of Papyrus, expand throughout Manhattan.
“I put them on 3rd Avenue and Spring Street in SoHo,” she said. When the stationery shop moved out of 72 Spring Street, Podell inked a deal with a startup (which she can’t yet name) in the same space.
In a similar game of retail music chairs, she watched a Benneton shutter on Eighth Street, and helped Anne Taylor Loft vacate 560 Broadway for a new location. “They decided it was the wrong neighborhood,” she said.
As clients came and went over the years, Podell stuck with familiar themes, moving fledgling concepts into prestigious neighborhoods, and encouraging big-names to expand their horizons. She won a REBNY Retail Deal of the Year award for placing Ethan Allen on West End Avenue, a former retail dead zone, and brought Anne Taylor Loft to the Financial District shortly after 9/11.
At a time when upper Sixth Avenue was dominated by financial services firms, Podell nearly begged Nine West, one of her major clients, to rent space at Rockefeller Center. Her encouragement paid off, and the mid-range shoe chain profited from the move. “We helped build the market,” she said of the tourist hot spot, which is now ringed with fashion outlets. An Anne Taylor Loft she had placed on the ground floor of the Cushman and Wakefield offices, at a Vornado-owned tower on 1290 Sixth Avenue, will be one of the latest clothiers to migrate to Rockefeller Center.
About 30 blocks south, Podell secured a lease for another Rockefeller Center tenant, Cole Haan. “The first deal we did for them was on Prince Street,” she said. Now, the blocks west of Madison Square Park are on her radar. “Eataly is changing Flatiron,” she said.
Before Mario Batali opened his 50,000 s/f specialty market last August, just months before Cole Haan moved in, the neighborhood was stable but not particularly strong. With little foot traffic from tourists, Podell said, there was little reason “for retailers to anticipate a strong surge in sales.”
Despite confidence in the neighborhood’s growing appeal, she held her breath for Cole Haan’s launch — as she does every time she guides a client to an up-and-coming corridor. “Until you open and are operating,” she said. “You’re nervous.”
