The Stoler Report with Michael Stoler: Chris Bradicich

0:00 Speaker 1 Good morning. This is Mike Stola for the Stolar Real Estate Report, Statistics economic reports. Those are interesting topics. Where do you get the information what’s happening in the city. What information provides developers and builders the right information to stop building new projects and ranting different space. So today I have Chris Braderich, who is the director of Partnership

0:25 and Growth at live xyz. So what is live xyz.

0:30 Speaker 2 Live xyz is the first ever living map of New York City and we track every place across every block of every borough that is public facing. Specifically, that’s over one hundred and sixty thousand storefront and retail spaces, and we bring an innovative mapping and analytics platform that is powered by boots on the ground and powerful cloud systems

0:55 that make tracking change over time possible for the first time in the retail sector.

1:02 Speaker 1 So what is the information provided recently? I know you just came out with the press release.

1:07 Speaker 2 So live xyz has been used for several years now as the official source of the storefront vacancy rate across New York City. That’s across all of the boroughs, community districts, et cetera. And we also are able to track with high fidelity and completeness industry trends, so we’re able to look at any individual neighborhood or corridor and understand what

1:30 has happened to storefront and retail occupancy as well as business composition over time. And this information has been collected comprehensively every quarter going back to the third quarter of twenty twenty three, so we have ten quarters consecutive of really high fidelity data for New York City, and we also have historical data that goes back pre pandemic, so

1:53 we can understand what happened during the pandemic period and then what are the quarter over quarter pulse of the city changes over the past three plus.

2:01 Speaker 1 So let’s talk about some of the posts and the trends taking place now.

2:06 Speaker 2 Yeah. So, obviously with a global pandemic, New York City with a massive population of office workers and local storefront businesses and it’s over one hundred and thirty thousand storefront businesses across New York City, it was affected very significantly, particularly Manhattan and the area of forty two below, which starts at thirtieth Street, goes north to forty second and

2:34 stretches from eighth Avenue across to Bryant Park was one of the hardest hit areas in Manhattan. It had certainly substantial effect of the remote work conditions that affected the economy overall in the United States, certainly in New York City, and a lot of storefront businesses were wiped out in this area. Now, what’s been incredible to see in Manhattan overall,

3:02 and particularly in this forty two below corridor, is a rapid resurgence into growth mode. People have returned to office. There is an understanding that there’s a need for much more residential units across Manhattan, across New York City, and this is fueling an accelerated occupancy rate for retail spaces across Manhattan. I can certainly go deeper into forty two

3:29 below or any other area.

3:31 Speaker 1 Let’s talk about the forty two and below. It’s an important area, especially since you have port authority, Penn Station, and so on.

3:39 Speaker 2 Yeah, So this area pre pandemic had a lower vacancy rate than Manhattan overall. So forty two below had just over a twelve percent vacancy rate, Manhattan overall a little south of thirteen percent. Now by the third quarter of twenty twenty three, so About three years after the pandemic, the forty two below vacancy rate had reached seventeen and

4:03 a half percent, which was substantially higher than the fifteen point three percent for Manhattan overall. However, we have seen a significant increase in the occupancy rate where now forty two below is at nearly eighty six percent, close to the eighty six point seventy five percent for Manhattan overall.

4:22 And if you look at the rate of change, it’s just leasing is happening faster in this corridor. We can also see why that’s happening, So there’s certainly been a return to office. We also have recognized significant updates to city zoning led by the Department of City Planning, and there is a Midtown South mixed use plan that was

4:43 passed last year that expects to bring nearly ten thousand new residential units into the forty two below in Midtown South area.

4:51 Speaker 1 Does that relate to the City of Yes.

4:53 Speaker 2 Yes, The City of Yes zoning for economic opportunity, as well as the updates to housing have put the city in a position to grow faster into what New Yorkers need it to be. And the most historic updates to city zoning in over sixty years. Live xyz is very proud to have worked closely with the Department of City

5:15 Planning on that work, and overall live xyz actually supports over fifty government agencies, over one hundred business improvement districts, Chambers of Commerce, and other economic development partners. So we truly do provide the index for storefront and retail for the City of New York. Now, moving from just the occupancy picture into what has changed in terms of makeup.

5:40 When we look at the overall recovery from the pandemic, one category stands above all, which is food. People are looking for more places to eat across New York City, across Manhattan and especially in forty two below.

5:56 Speaker 1 Okay, especially also the food courts.

5:58 Speaker 2 Right, Yes, we actually supported a Bloomberg story that highlighted Wonder and other food courts, but this actually goes beyond that. In our food category at live xyz includes restaurants, coffee, sweets, and juice, and overall, what we’re seeing in forty two below is seventeen percent growth in the last two years alone of the number of restaurants relative to six point

6:23 twenty five percent for Manhattan six point twenty five percent is already big growth. There are more than six percent more restaurants in Manhattan than two years ago, but in forty two below that’s over seventeen percent. And when you look at coffee, sweets and juice, forty two below is up over thirteen percent. Manhattan overall up over ten and

6:42 a half percent.

6:42 Speaker 1 What about gyms?

6:44 Speaker 2 The gyms was another data point that just jumped off the screen, and I would go beyond just strictly gyms and say body and fitness. So there are several more gyms in forty two below than there were before, but we also see more yoga studios, studios, and also personal care where we see more nail salons, hair salons, barber shops, browwashes, lashes,

7:09 and makeup over all the types of places.

7:12 Speaker 1 That are about hospital office says urgent care centers.

7:16 Speaker 2 So that was not one of the fastest growing areas. But just taking a quick look at the data, what we’re able to see is that the number of pharmacies has been stable and actually.

7:28 Speaker 1 That would be surprising, I think in more than it’s been closing.

7:32 Speaker 2 Yeah, So in Manhattan overall, we’ve seen the number of pharmacies decrease, but over the last year at least in forty two below that has been stable. But in terms of the hospitals and healthcare, I would need to look one click deeper. That was not something that kind of jumped off the screen to us when we analyze the data.

7:56 Speaker 1 So what happens in areas that are not in the zone with the information that you have.

8:04 Speaker 2 So when you look at our map, which is available at live xyz dot com. We also power the small Business Services shop. Your city map and our maps are embedded as well across business improvement districts. You actually can see all of the places you can go that are open to the public. The only things that are missing

8:24 are going to be the exclusively residential buildings, the exclusively office buildings, and then industrial facilities.

8:32 Speaker 1 What about the offices that have been converted to residential.

8:37 Speaker 2 So in every office and residential building that has retail storefronts for lease, we are tracking the occupancy actively. We’ve seen an overall trend that the number of storefronts totally in the city has gone slightly down from over one hundred and forty four thousands at the ground floor level to now about one hundred and forty two thousand, five

8:58 hundred and a lot of that is explained by the conversion of many buildings into residential units as well as the consolidation of spaces across the city.

9:08 Speaker 1 So how would my listener get access to the information.

9:13 Speaker 2 Live xyz is a full service data provider analytics provider serving over fifty government agencies, and you are now actually hearing it for the first time that we would love to bring in more partners from the real estate ecosystem, from companies that are serving small businesses. You can get in contact with me personally at Chris at livexyz dot com.

9:36 You could contact support at live xyz dot com. You can visit our website at xyz dot com and our information can be made available citywide for particular areas. We’ve been supporting many particular retail reports and stories that have been coming up, and we’d love to just get in contact with more folks in the industry that understand the

10:00 importance of retail and the opportunity for growth that exists today and in the future.

10:03 Speaker 1 I’m happy to have you today and to provide some information to the general public. Thanks again, thank you very much. Michael