The Home Depot Takes Over Bed Bath & Beyond Lease On Manhattan Store

As it takes over a large space that Bed Bath & Beyond is leaving behind, The Home Depot is preparing to bolster its footprint in Manhattan.

The company has inked a lease for a large space that is over 120,000 square feet on the Upper East Side, CNBC reported.

“We signed the lease in April,” Gazit Horizons President and CEO Jeff Mooallem told CNBC. “The biggest hang-up in the deal was neither party knew what it would cost to retrofit this.”

The Home Depot will pay approximately two times the amount of rent that Bed Bath & Beyond was paying, CNBC reported, citing an unnamed source. Bed Bath & Beyond’s current lease runs out next year.

The home improvement chain has two nearby stores in the Big Apple: one in the Flatiron district and another in midtown on 59^th Street, which is anticipated to shutter following the move to a larger 61^st Street location.

The Home Depot’s arrangement is among the most sizable retail leases in terms of overall yearly rent and scope on record in Manhattan in recent history.

Information from CBRE indicates that the average asking rent for retail space in the Big Apple dropped for the 12^th straight quarter to $659 for each square foot.

The news comes as it was reported over the summer that Bed Bath & Beyond will be shuttering 200 retail locations in the two years to come.

This week, news surfaced that the company was looking at putting less emphasis on its 15 and 20 percent coupons in favor of more of an online omnichannel approach. Chief Merchandising Officer Joe Hartsig indicated in a meeting with investors that he desires to see less of the “overreliance on the coupon.” The retailer said it looked at 405 million customers’ baskets alongside 285,000 store products and discovered that a number of their promotions weren’t really necessary.