Posted by Leonard Steinberg on February 24th, 2012
Location, location, location, the first three most important rules for the best real estate and yes, this rule even applies in politics! Mitt Romney learned this painful lesson yesterday while delivering a speech in Detroit to a group of 1,000….in Ford Field, an arena that can hold 65,000 people. 64,000 empty seats never looks good for an event. Wrong location!
Yet again, the right location is everything. I hear this same message from other groups too:
RETAILERS: They always prefer being on the East side of a North-West flowing street….why? Shoppers tend to come out later in the day as the sun is overhead and heading west. That leaves the east side of the street sunny and cheerful….and more attractive to shoppers, especially for smaller retailers.
RESTAURANTS: Most restaurants rely surprisngly heavily on walk-in traffic: No walk in traffic, and the chances of paying sky-high rents and making a profit are tough.
ART GALLERIES: While there are a few that like to exist on their own, separated, the majority like to be clustered. This makes life for art buyers, critics and viewers more convenient, and it also maximizes exposure, especially if you are aq newer gallery with less of a following.
FOOD STORES: If you want to know where neighborhoods are gentrifying with almost certainty, look out for a Whole Foods. They spend big bucks analyzing trends, building permits, transportation, street traffic, pedestrian traffic, etc to locate their stores in the most prominent up-and-coming neighborhoods……anaylisis you don’t have to pay for! Remember Houston and the Bowery before Whole Foods came along? Or how south of Chambers Street in Tribeca was poo-pooed….till that Whole Foods opened at 101 Warren Street….and all of a sudden that location became prime! So will a Whole Foods go into the West Chelsea 28th Street and Eleventh Avenue site? It certainly makes sense with the Highline Park, Hudson Yards, The Americano Hotel, a new subway stop at 34th Street and 11th Avenue, not to mention the thousands of new homeowners and renters that have moved there recently…. I used to live at 225 Fifth Avenue and every morning and evening I would see hundreds of tourists at Madison Square Park wondering around staring at the Flatiron and Empire State buildings…..the owners of EATALY must have seen what I saw!
Super-cool boutique hotels and restaurants can have the same effect….think the ACE HOTEL. Around the corner a new Starbucks just opened….
Leonard Steinberg says: Good location has everything to do with simple, common sense and nature: Have you ever tried planting sun-loving flowers in a shady spot?