Century 21 Owner Signs New Tenants for its Block on Broadway

By: Hadassa Kalatizadeh

A key block on Broadway has signed on new lease tenants, adding steam to the retail leasing boom. As reported by Realty Check, the owners of the Century 21 discount fashion departments store secured new lease deals for the block they own on Broadway, which is bounded by Church Street and Cortlandt and Dey streets. The entire retail portion of the vital Manhattan block, which is often referred to as the gateway to Wall Street, is owned by ASG Equities— the real estate arm of the Century 21 owners, also known as the Gindi family.

The owners had scaled back the size of their department store from 250,000 square feet to 100,000 square feet in May 2023 upon reopening, after some two years of pandemic-forced closures. Since then, ASG has been working to fill that retail space. In 2023, some 36,000 square feet of the space on the block’s western side, was filled by Mercer Labs Museum of Art & Technology, in a joint venture with the Cayre family and designer Roy Nachum, for use as an “immersive” exhibition space. The exhibit opened last winter, gaining widespread acclaim.

Recently, two more lease deals were signed for the block, further proving the current retail leasing boom. As per Realty Check, Sephora signed a lease for a 5,000 square-foot store on the Broadway side of the block, with 50 feet of sidewalk frontage. The French beauty products giant plans to open the store this week. Also, another 15,000 square feet of the space, at 10-12 Cortlandt Street, has been leased out to Barcade, the country’s biggest arcade bars operator. Barcade, which features video games and pinball machines “mostly from the classic period of the 1980s,” as well as a bar for draft beer, cocktails and pub food, is slated to open in early 2025.

This will be its fourth Manhattan location. George Karnoupakis, the head of asset management for ASG Equities, commented to say, “It will be Barcade’s downtown flagship. It’s a fun place that will bring the area some much-needed nightlife.” He added, “After we closed Century in December of 2020, we decided to bring it back in a smaller footprint and to curate other tenancies on the block that feed off each other. We’ve been very intentional in activating the streetscape with a blend of experiential offerings and traditional retailers,” Karnoupakis said about the Gindi family’s strategy for the space.

The vital Broadway block, sometimes known as the “Century 21 block” is centrally situated between the World Trade Center to the west and on the east to the Fulton Transit Center. ASG had also already signed other smaller leases for the retail space, including Norma’s Pizza and a larger Dunkin Donuts. “We relocated Dunkin Donuts and gave it a bigger footprint,” Karnoupakis said. Now, after the Sephora and Barcade leases agreements, the block only has some 1,000 square-feet of available retail space remaining on the corner of Broadway and Cortlandt Street, per the NY Post.

ASG was represented in both new lease deals by Cushman & Wakefield’s Steven Soutendijk and Sean Moran. Barcade was represented by Jason Pennington of RIPCO.