Ms. Yunis brokered a number of notable transactions with major retailers during her tenure at Newmark, where she rose to the rank of executive vice president within the company’s retail leasing arm.

Amira Yunis. (Courtesy Katie Khouri)

In 2005, she brokered a deal to have the grocery chain Trader Joes come to a location in Union Square, a transaction for which she and her co-broker in the transaction Newmark’s president James Kuhn were honored with an award from REBNY. The deal was the first lease that Trader Joes signed in the city and opened the door for several subsequent transactions in Manhattan.

More recently Ms. Yunis leased an 8,500 square foot space at the Fred French Building to the clothing retailer Tommy Bahama. In the spring, she represented the party goods chain Party City in a 13,000 square foot deal at 100 West 93rd Street.

CBRE has a number of successful retail leasing brokers, including executives Andrew Goldberg and Richard Hodos. But the firm, which is the world’s largest real estate services company, has not dominated the retail leasing market the way it has with office brokerage. Ms. Yunis would appear to add depth to the company’s pool of talent.

Ms. Yunis’s hiring is one of the highest profile defections in the city’s retail brokerage business in recent years.

The former model is also one of the most prominent executives to step down from Newmark since the company was acquired last month by BGC Partners. In recent weeks, BGC issued contracts to Newmark brokers requiring them to convert portions of their commisions into stock in the company.

It wasn't clear by press time whether Mr. Yunis’s departure had anything to do with Newmark’s recent acquisition or the mandatory stock offering.
Ms. Yunis could not be reached for comment.

Representative from CBRE and Newmark couldn't be reached.

Dgeiger@Observer.com

Ian Schrager shares Steve Jobs' obsession with detail.

The Commercial Observer: Will the style of PUBLIC New York be similar to how PUBLIC Chicago was designed?

Ian Schrager: No. It will be the same attitude, the same approach. But it will be different. That’s because it’s New York, and New York is different from Chicago and really we have fun redoing each room (in a) new, original style, but with the same attitude, the same approach.

Who is handling the design of the hotel?

Right now we’re responsible for laying out the hotel, obviously, and all the finishes and a lot of it will be done by my in-house design staff.

But in all likelihood, we’ll also be working with John Pawson, who is an English architect.

And what can you tell us about The Clock Tower project? When will that become an Edition hotel?

Because they  (Marriot International, the owners of the Clock Tower, and with whom Mr. Schrager is a partner) are a public company, I don’t really like to talk about it very much. It’s really their show.

I am thinking that The Dakota, which was built around the same time – I think there was twenty year’s difference. I think The Clock Tower was built in 1909 and The Dakota was built in the 1880s, and so I am very much inspired and would use the Dakota as a point of departure.

Not Gothic, like the outside architecture of the Dakota, but more the inside, with the rich woods, and the proportions, and the way that all works on the inside. We would use that as a point of departure for The Clock Tower.

And what would you say would be the point of departure for PUBLIC New York?

It’s really been very much inspired by Apple and Steve Jobs and the way… every aspect of (the design) is important. The screw in the back of the computer is as important as the screw in the front, and it’s really bared down and simple and pure. When you look at it, everybody gets it, everybody understands it. That basic approach is a real influence on me. Also, the service that they offer in the Apple Stores. When you go in there, you really get the service you need to get in and get out really quickly.

They have that Genius Bar, and you don’t have to wait on line to pay. When I saw that, I asked myself ‘what kind of service is that? Is that luxury service?’ I came away saying ‘no, it’s just the service you need.’ So that was a real inspiration for me and kind of the great service we want to provide.

Also Trader Joe’s, the supermarket was a big inspiration, because it’s a combination of elite, sophisticated shoppers (standing) right alongside bargain hunters, all sharing the same experience shopping in the same store and cutting across all demographics. Both of those two had a tremendous impact on me for this brand.

Do you share a Steve Jobs’ fastidious obsession with glass?

Absolutely. Every single thing is a matter of life and death to me. Because you never really know what thing pushes it over the top. There’s no rulebook. You just try to sort of overwhelm the customer with the details. Not at a kind of superfluous kind of way, just don’t leave a stone unturned and try to make every single aspect – no matter how big, no matter how small – important, so that when it all comes together, there’s a certain alchemy that happens. Which is what happens with (Jobs’ products)… Walt Disney did it like that also, and both those guys have been incredible inspiration as me.

Do you use the same glassmaker as Apple?

Well, I would! I just can sort of empathize with him so much…You never really know what a person’s going to respond to. You just don’t know. Therefore everything becomes important, and to me everything is a matter of life and death.

Will you have any say in the design of the rentals?

No, I won’t.

What do you think the experience is going to be with two separate entities living in one building?

I think it’s going to be a “one plus one makes three” situation. I think that it’s really going to enhance the apartments, because you’re going to be able to provide hotel services and you’re going to be able to pick and choose what you want and when you want it.

You can have all the benefits of having a personal staff, but just pick and choose when you want it. I think it’s great for the (rental) apartments and I think some of the facilities that we’re doing for the apartment, the hotel guests will also be able to use. I think it just makes it better.

I’m very reluctant to talk about the residential. (Durst Fetner Residential) are the experts on that. The only thing I do know is that it will be first rate and of the highest quality and they’ll make every possible effort to make it special. If I didn’t feel that, I wouldn’t want to be a part of it.

What will be the going rate for a room? Will it be similar to what PUBLIC Chicago is charging (that hotel’s starting rates are at $135 a night)?

It’s affordable, but it’s for a new class of person. It’s for rich people and for people who are not so rich and young people and people who are older. Because I think value is going to be critically important going forward.

I don’t think it has anything to do with a bad economy. I just think people want value for their money, and I think if you can stay in a really, really cool place that gives you really, really great service, and you get everything you want and you can pay less than you would at some other hotel that gives you an array of services that you really don’t care about, why would you stay there?

Do you have any other hotels in the works?

We’re looking at a hotel in downtown (NYC) as well. We just won a bid for a hotel in London. And we’re looking to expand quickly. It’s the same strategy that I always had, and that is to go in to these 24 hour international gateway cities. It’s that same strategy, but not make the mistakes I made before by not having a brand. This time I want to do it with a brand.

Drosen@Observer.com

A little over a month ago, Trader Joe's opened up a new store two blocks down on Broadway. "It had an impact," Howard Glickman, Fairway's CEO, told the business weekly. "We saw a little downturn in a few departments, but we aren't changing anything about the way we operate." A supermarket analyst said he thought the store could be losing up to 10 percent of its profits, though another thought the quality at Fairway is superior, and once that new grocery smell wears off, the appeal will, too, and it will simply become a matter of preference and convenience.

Still, what would the Upper West Side be without Fairway? Imagine a Lower East Side without Russ & Daughters or Soho without Gourmet Garage. Yet as Fairway, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's and their ilk continue citywide campaigns, the competition may continue to heat up. Maybe grocery stores will be the new bank branches, opening on every corner in the city. Granted in some neighborhoods, that would actually be great news.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

The landmarked address, called the Mattel Building since the 1980s, was largely for many years a three-tenant show: its eponymous occupant; some Gap Inc. offices; and, for nearly 15 years, a block-size Barnes & Noble.

Then, as Netflix did to Blockbuster, so has Amazon done to the giant book retailer, which vacated in April 2008 amid accusations of exorbitant rent. Leasing agent Robert K. Futterman and Associates has now filled the gaping Barnes & Noble hole with the unique grocer known for affordable wine.

More than its major tenants, though, the story of 675 Sixth is really the story of the surrounding neighborhood known as Ladies’ Mile, an historic stretch of retail that traditionally spanned 14th to 23rd streets, between Fifth and Seventh avenues. Some say its heyday began just after the Civil War; others that it was at the turn of the 20th century; and most agree that it ended by World War I, when major retail shifts, such as the relocation of Macy’s to its current Herald Square site, signaled the end of the era.

That period was one of social and economic flux, much of which was evident in the changes along Sixth Avenue. So the story of Ladies’ Mile is kind of the story of New York City.

AS WOMEN WERE emancipated from the home, and a middle class further emerged, a cluster of dry goods stores (what would later be called department stores) sprang up. Shopping was a new pastime, and nearly always left to women, hence the name Ladies’ Mile. The experience was not exactly sweet and feminine, with horse manure lining the street and the omnipresent clanging of the Sixth Avenue el. Among these stores were Macy’s; B. Altman; Hugh O’Neill Dry Goods; Simpson, Crawford & Simpson; and Adams’ Dry Goods, the original tenant of the six-story cast-iron-frame low-rise that still sits between 21st and 22nd streets.

Built in 1900, expressly for the dry goods store, the building was sold to the competitor next door, Hugh O’Neill, in 1906 because the original owner lacked an heir. The two stores were connected by a tunnel that ran under 21st Street. That venture failed, and the Adams’ Dry Goods building began its descent into a 90-year stretch of nameless light manufacturing, warehouses and vacancies.

“After Macy’s moved uptown, the rest of [the department stores of Ladies’ Mile] followed or failed,” says Gary Alterman of Robert K. Futterman, a current leasing agent for 675 Sixth. “It had been a dark, dry warehouse neighborhood. Then, about 15 years ago, they started converting to office.”

A New York Times article reported that “[by] the 1920s, all the giant stores had been converted to lofts and manufacturing. A 1940s photograph shows the old O’Neill store occupied by the Central Time Clock company, a machinery exchange and similar businesses.”

The pullout of department store B. Altman from the area inaugurated the beginning of the end for Ladies’ Mile. That store moved to Fifth Avenue and 34th Street in 1904. A Real Estate Record and Guide article of the same year predicted that move would spur others and “give the Avenue a very different atmosphere. Its architecture will be showy and so far un-businesslike; but it will be adapted to fashionable stores, patronized by wealthy clients. It will be ‘smart’ and ‘swell.’”

How right they were.

THE BUILDING, WHICH still bears Adams Dry Goods’ signage and has been restored admirably, began its revitalization in 1986 under the ownership of Israel Taub’s Chelsea Green. The firm began that year to restore 675 Sixth and 625 Sixth (between 18th and 19th) to install office space, and generated a fair amount of skepticism. Because Chelsea Green anticipated the buildings’ status as historic landmarks, which they received in 1989, the firm renovated the buildings in concert with the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

William Cary, then the commission’s director of preservation, told The Times then that 675 Sixth “is exactly the type of building we are trying to protect with the creation of the district. These buildings are being opened up after literally being sealed up for years.’’

There were doubters. “Fifth Avenue has turned into the boutique part of the area,” a broker told The Times in 1990. “On Sixth Avenue, nothing seems to have happened. … It’s not what we’d deem a high-traffic area.” The asking rents were $25 per square foot, 20 percent higher than the average for the area. The owner of a lot across the street and one block up from 675 Sixth was more optimistic. “I am pretty certain that in the decade we’ve just entered, Sixth Avenue will be all developed between Ladies’ Mile and mid-Manhattan.”

And the rest is (fairly recent) history. Mattel signed on as the anchor tenant, and, with a team of consultants, Chelsea Green converted it to office space, keeping the exterior of the brick and concrete Beaux-Arts building, originally designed by DeLemos & Cordes, in as close to its original form as possible.

Barnes & Noble took the ground floor in 1994 and propelled big-box retail in the area, one of the few in Manhattan with floor plates large enough for such stores. Bed, Bath & Beyond, the Container Store and others have followed nearby.
The building still houses Mattel’s showroom and eastern regional offices as well as design offices for the Gap, and soon enough, it will birth New York’s fifth Trader Joe’s. The ground floor will now be multi-tenant (though Trader Joe’s had the option to take the whole thing, Mr. Alterman, the broker, says they indicated it was “a little much”). And although the rent is around $200 per square foot, the 5,000 to 6,000 shoppers that Mr. Alterman believes Trader Joe’s will bring per day should sweeten the deal. He estimates the occupancy rate for the whole building to be at about 95 percent.
A recent move by the Gap to 40 Worth, in a deal brokered by Newmark Knight Frank this September, will leave many open floors in 2012.

Still, Trader Joe’s is starting construction as soon as the first of the year, with an opening slated for as early as next spring. And, if their Union Square location is any indication, never underestimate the power of cheap hummus to move feet.

gvoien@observer.com

The store has signed a lease for the retail space at the handsome Mattel Building at 675 Sixth Avenue, the storefront formerly occupied by Barnes & Noble, according to an industry source. Trader Joe's, as is its notoriously press-unfriendly wont, declined to comment for this story, except to remind The Observer that Trader Joe's has another "confirmed" store opening on 72nd Street.

But the deal is, for all intents and purposes, done, with all but one party signing (and that party is not Trader Joe's). 

This will bring the New York population of Trader Joe's to five: There's the original store on 14th Street; another Trader Joe's on Court Street in Brooklyn; a third Trader Joe's  in Rego Park, Queens; a fourth Trader Joe's to open next year at Broadway and 72nd Street; and now this one on Sixth Avenue, between 21st and 22nd streets. (We suppose it's six if you count the wine shop on 14th Street.)

The following people would not comment for this story: Gene Spiegelman, the Cushman & Wakefield broker representing the chain store; Gary Alterman and Robert K. Futterman of the eponymous Robert K. Futterman, who represented the landlord, and the landlord himself, Israel Taub. 

But a brochure on the real estate database CoStar describes the 41,000-square-foot space, with its asking rent of $200 a square foot, thusly: "Exceptional retail space with soaring ceilings and the grandeur of original turn-of-the-century Adam’s Dry Goods department store."

drubinstein@observer.com

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If all goes according to plan, that will soon change. For the better.

Trader Joe’s is in discussions to open another low-priced, high-quality food store, complete with Hawaiian-shirt-wearing clerks, at the Mattel Building at 675 Sixth Avenue, between 21st and 22nd streets, according to industry sources. That’s just 11 blocks away from the original New York Trader Joe’s, between Irving Place and Third Avenue. And it might just mean that the shopping-while-somehow-keeping-one’s-place-in-line phenomenon will be replaced by a more laid-back experience.

This being the New York real estate industry, neither 675 Sixth Avenue landlord Israel Taub, nor Mr. Taub’s broker, Gary Alterman of Robert K. Futterman & Associates, nor Trader Joe’s, nor its broker, Cushman & Wakefield’s Gene Spiegelman, would comment for this story.

But, according to real estate database Costar, the asking rent on the approximately 40,000-square-foot retail space is about $200 a square foot.

drubinstein@observer.com

Sadly, all Three-buck Chuck purchases will still have to be made Manhattan-side, since the Brooklyn location won't be stocking alcohol.

Recently, the City Council passed a bill – despite intense lobbying against it by food retailers – to issue street vending permits for vegetable stands in the city's poorer neighborhoods. It's clear to anyone living in the areas included in the measure – like my neighbors in Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant – that fresh, decent produce is not as readily available as it is in much of Manhattan. Cue that long trip home from Whole Foods.

One of the first things I did when scouting out a place to live was to take note of the nearby grocers and bodegas. After disembarking from the Q train on my way home to Prospect Heights I have three options. On Flatbush Avenue the Natural Foods Market is the best, and most expensive option. The aisles are cluttered but clean, like in the next option, the Met on Vanderbilt Avenue. Both of these stores sell a decent selection of fresh fruit and vegetables and the prices are pretty average for the city (that is to say, pricey).

The last, and sadly most convenient, option is the C-Town on Washington Avenue. Upon visiting the C-Town for the first time, my eyes immediately locked on a white plastic bin labeled pig snouts. Now, I'll admit, being vegetarian, this especially doesn't sit well with me. The bin sat in the center of the produce aisle where green peppers were turning black, the lettuce was on the verge of extinction, and even the apples looked a little bit sour. The store itself is in shambles, clearly not updated in many moons, but the staff does what they can to make it as hospitable as possible. I suspect that the appearance of the store contributes to the excellent two-for-one deals they have on anything from English muffins to Tropicana orange juice. Though, upon purchasing chocolate soymilk recently, I returned home to find that someone had already taken a swill of it.

For those too lazy to consider lugging groceries home from Manhattan, there is also Fresh Direct. Though an order from the online grocer always seems to add up to more than you expected to pay, it's convenient and easier to buy in bulk should you not have a car (or a Zip Car!) for an occasional trip to an acres-long suburban retail grocer. I have a theory that Fresh Direct aids (on some psychological level) in quickening the gentrification process, as despite the cheap rent, one major deterrent from living in a low-income neighborhood is the lack of amenities like a decent grocer.

However, shopping at Whole Foods or Fresh Direct is all well and good – if you can afford it. By relying on these options to provide fresh food, we mask the fact that New Yorkers who can't afford either of these retailers are left with rotting produce or none at all. In Greenpoint, where I used to live, there was a plethora of small vegetable markets dotting Manhattan Avenue selling produce just off the truck at a very reasonable price. They even accepted food stamps for payment. This option does not exist in Prospect Heights.

I applaud the City Council for doing something approaching goodness by passing the produce measure, but also am saddened by the fact that even with an issue that most people should be able to agree upon – more produce vendors! – there was such a heated argument against it. I understand the weariness of small grocers who already provide fresh produce to neighborhoods covered in the council measure, but surely they'll be able to work out a system where everybody in New York City has access to fresh, healthy food.

In that case, I might feel less compelled to schlep an extra 20 pounds home from work.

There's one coming to Brooklyn, too, the news of which The Observer broke in July.

The DUMBO-based real estate company recently closed on the old Sovereign Bank building at 130 Court Street for $6.5 million, according to city records.

The Observer broke the news of the borough’s first outpost of the wildly popular grocery store at this location back in July. According to sources with knowledge of the deal, the chain signed a lease for 14,500 square feet in the building. A neighborhood broker told The Observer that retail space can go for upwards of $100 per square foot for the year.