Barney’s flagship stores on Madison Avenue in Manhattan and Beverly Hills’ Wilshire Boulevard will face a tripling of their rents by 2019.
The two stores together bring in about two-thirds of the chain’s total revenue, according to the New York Post, so losing or moving them could be a potentially fatal proposition for the luxury retailer.
A source the Post talked to goes as far as to call the situation a “ticking time bomb” for Barney’s.
When the lease rolls at the New York store, a renewal would bring the tab to $60M a year if a new deal were to be done at market rents on that stretch of Madison Avenue—about $1,500/SF.
In Beverly Hills, the rent jump would be from $5M a year to around $14.5M. The chain’s majority owner, Richard Perry, is looking for investors to buy minority stakes. Sales have declined steeply in recent years. [NYP]
