FORMER BARGAIN WORLD BUILDING IN HARLEM PICKED UP
IN 99-YEAR GROUND LEASE
A discount department store that was considered an
institution on West 125 th Street is getting a new life as a
retail establishment. The Rosen family, who owned Bargain
World and the building that housed it, has leased out the
entire property to an out-of-town retail operator,
Commecial Observer has learned.
The tenant signed a 99-year triple-net ground elase at 4-14
West 125 th Street, the lone broker in the deal, Robert
Khodadadian of Skyline Properties, said, and the property
will be delivered vacant. The taking rent is $25 per square
foot for the entire property, or $60 a foot if just calculating
the most valuable 8,935-square-foot, ground-floor retail
space.
The sellers are “taking advantage of the huge retail opportunity over there,” Mr. Khodadadian said. Bargain
World, which occupied the entire four-story, roughly 30,000-square-foot building for 40 years (using the
address of 8 West 125 th Street), sold everything but clothes and food, the New York Times wrote in an August
2001 story about its imminent closing. The store, which had been in the Rosen family for three generations,
was the victim of a 1980 electrical fire that required the family to rebuild the entire building as well as a
mugging, riots and recessions, the Times said. The building is on the same block as former President Bill
Clinton’s office.
Today, Harlem Furniture and Boost Mobile are occupying two of the retail spaces on the ground floor. The
rest of the property is vacant.
The new owner, who Mr. Khodadadian wouldn’t identify by name, is planning to convert the ground floor into
one big retail space, with 100 feet of retail frontage on 125 th street. He is then turning the second floor office
space into retail and keeping the upper two floors as offices. The second through fourth floors are each 7.086
square feet.
“The retail rents are going up so high over there,” Mr. Khodadadian said. “Credited tenants are moving up
there more and more.”
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