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    NYC Retail Zones: Midtown Has Been Empty, but Other Areas Have Bounced Back

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    Shopping locally has helped foot traffic in some commercial districts across the city return almost to prepandemic levels.All eyes are on Midtown Manhattan as everyone anxiously waits to see if and when office workers and tourists will return to what have been eerily empty streets and whether the businesses that line them will regain customers lost during the pandemic.But other retail corridors across New York are also important barometers of the city’s economy, as well as key to its recovery; a survey of five of them, one in each borough, showed signs of resilience.“On the whole, business districts outside Manhattan are holding up better and some are really thriving,” said Jonathan Bowles, executive director of the Center for an Urban Future.This is not to gloss over the hardship experienced practically everywhere.Corridors outside Midtown that have much in common with it — commuter hubs drawing 9-to-5 workers — have also experienced a dramatic falloff in foot traffic and, therefore, customers for stores and restaurants. The same goes for areas reliant on leisure activities that Covid restrictions shut down.But retail hubs surrounded by residential development have fared better during a time when many people who normally work in offices were holed up at home for extended periods. When they went out, they spent locally. Supermarkets and other essential businesses have been flourishing.Larger economic forces that were in play even before the pandemic — such as the decline in brick-and-mortar retail in the face of online shopping — have continued to exact their toll. Empty storefronts were an issue on many streets before Covid, and the closing of Century 21 and Modell’s Sporting Goods outlets during the pandemic have left gaping holes in some shopping districts.Street vendors have long been part of the scene on Harlem’s 125th Street; some now sell face shields and other pandemic items.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesRetailers that remain have scrambled to adapt to ever-changing pandemic policies. Some have branched into online sales, often with the help of merchant groups, business improvement districts or the NYC Small Business Resource Network, a new public-private partnership that has deployed “small business support specialists” to neighborhoods throughout the city. But stores are also competing with street vendors, which have proliferated during the pandemic, and other problems have emerged, including increases in graffiti and litter.On streets with empty storefronts, asking rents are falling as landlords try to lure new tenants. Some new businesses have opened because they have been able to take advantage of lower rents, more flexible lease terms and the ability to move into a space that had already been kitted out by a departing business.But store openings do not match closings, and the moratorium on commercial evictions that was put in place to protect tenants during the pandemic is set to expire May 1. Many businesses owe back rent because they had no income during the lockdown and reduced earnings since then.“Many of our merchants are still in business because of the eviction moratorium,” said Jennifer Tausig, co-chair of the NYC BID Association, which represents 76 business improvement districts across the city. “We don’t know what will happen when the rent apocalypse hits.”Much is still unknown, and the absence of hard data has left people searching for signs of recovery wherever they can find them.Thomas J. Grech, president and chief executive of the Queens Chamber of Commerce, estimates that 1,000 of the 6,000 restaurants in his borough have closed for good. But he is busy going to ribbon cuttings for new businesses. And he has noticed more small delivery trucks on the streets — “the Boar’s Head trucks, the folks who supply bacon and eggs to diners.” To him, it means “people are buying sandwiches,” he said. “All that stuff has a ripple effect.”The businesses along 125th Street have benefitted from local residents shopping locally.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesManhattan: 125th Street While Midtown has been a ghost town for much of the pandemic, four miles north, 125th Street in Harlem has at times felt like its old bustling self, a clamorous mix of chain stores, mom-and-pop shops and sidewalk vendors.For years, Harlem boosters had made efforts to attract “Class A” office buildings and hotels, with relatively little success. But ironically, during the pandemic, that meant the east-west corridor did not suffer the way areas dependent on 9-to-5 workers and tourists have.Instead, 125th Street had 600,000 residents within walking distance and shopping locally. Those who otherwise would have been heading to offices sheltered in place and, when they ventured out, spent money closer to home.“We had a lot of the essentials — the banks, the telecoms, even the pawn shops,” said Barbara Askins, the president and chief executive of the 125th Street Business Improvement District. “People needed money and that kept the pawn shops busy.”When Covid restrictions shut down the Apollo Theater, 125th Street lost a  major generator of foot traffic.Katherine Marks for The New York TimesAll is far from normal, though. The Apollo Theater, which typically attracts about 220,000 visitors annually, was forced to close, eliminating a big draw.Overall pedestrian activity declined, according to the BID’s counts. After a dramatic falloff during the lockdown of April and May of last year, it rose steadily until, by September, foot traffic was back to February 2020 levels. It dropped again when the city’s gradual reopening was put on hold by the surge in Covid cases last fall and winter.Vacant storefronts are noticeable, and average asking rents have declined six percent since 2019, according to a report from the Real Estate Board of New York. Some landlords are trying to hang onto the tenants they have. Leah Abraham, the founder of Settepani and the owner of a building on 125th Street, has lost a tenant and cut the rent of others, with her eye on better days to come. “Harlem has such a strong cachet,” Ms. Abraham said. “I am sure it will rebound.” One promising sign: Trader Joe’s and Target will be coming to a 17-story mixed-use development on 125th Street at Malcolm X Boulevard that is slated to open in 2023 and will also include some affordable housing, the headquarters for the National Urban League and New York’s first civil rights museum.Some retailers on Fordham Road in the Bronx say sales are nearing pre-pandemic levels.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesThe Bronx: Fordham Road Fordham Road, the biggest shopping district in the Bronx, an open-air bazaar strung along a major east-west transportation corridor, went into the pandemic with a three percent vacancy rate, according to the Fordham Road Business Improvement District. Today, the vacancy rate is still three percent. And asking rents, after declining slightly last year, are back up to prepandemic levels, said Scott Silverstein, a broker with Colliers.All this says something about the staying power of the historic shopping corridor, especially after a year that saw the loss of 40 percent of the borough’s businesses, not to mention the highest Covid death rates in the city and an increase in the unemployment rate to nearly 18 percent.While some businesses have closed during the pandemic, street vendors have proliferated.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesIt also says something about the demographics of the area around Fordham Road. Many people who live nearby are essential workers who continued to commute to work, providing foot traffic to the businesses that occupy 175 storefronts between Jerome and Washington Avenues, the core of the district.Businesses hustled to survive — adding masks and hand sanitizer to their offerings, shifting to online sales and banding together in what Wilma Alonso, executive director of the Fordham Road BID, called a “mini mall” trend. Where a single establishment might previously have occupied a storefront, now there could be multiple businesses in one location. “It looks like one store,” Ms. Alonso said, “but when you go inside there’s an eyebrow place, a jewelry store and a lingerie person.”City Jeans, a Bronx-born chain started in 1993, has a store on Fordham Road — one of many sneaker outlets here. Sales are 80 to 85 percent of prepandemic levels, said Marko Majic, community coordinator for the chain. The City Point shopping center, just off Downtown Brooklyn’s Fulton Mall, draws shoppers from a wide swath of Brooklyn.Stefano Ukmar for The New York TimesBrooklyn: Fulton Mall As in Midtown Manhattan, the office buildings of Downtown Brooklyn have been largely empty during the pandemic. Ditto the courthouses.The absence of commuters has been felt on Fulton Mall, the eight-block stretch of Fulton Street that is closed to cars and normally sees some 77,000 people a day, according to the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, a local development corporation. In 2020 foot traffic dropped by 48 percent to less than 41,000.But there has been a boom in residential development in the area in recent years, with new towers rising around the mostly low-rise buildings on Fulton Mall. And with people sheltering in place and shopping locally, this has helped balance things out, said Regina Myer, president of the development corporation.City Point, a multilevel indoor shopping mall just off Fulton, has drawn people from a wider swath of Brooklyn to its stores, which include anchor tenants Target and Trader Joe’s. This has benefited Fulton Mall as a whole, said Ms. Myer, pointing to pedestrian counts that reached 91 percent of 2019 levels on the corner of Fulton and Hanover Place in December.But it’s unclear whether Brooklynites flocking to City Point are also shopping in the chain stores and at independents selling cellphones, children’s clothing, sneakers and flashy gold jewelry on Fulton Mall.Of the strip’s 83 storefronts, 11 are closed permanently, although some of the closings predated the pandemic and some inactive sites are being marketed for redevelopment.The historic Gage & Tollner restaurant opens for indoor dining April 15 on a block where some vacant storefronts have been identified for redevelopment.Stefano Ukmar for The New York TimesGage & Tollner, the recently revived Victorian-era restaurant on the strip, has been doing takeout business since February but will open for indoor dining April 15. On a recent visit, its ornate white-painted facade stood out on a block lined with gated storefronts. “We have no neighbors here,” said St. John Frizell, a partner in the restaurant.Gage & Tollner is a landmark and by law must be preserved, but other sites on the block are slated for redevelopment, according to Claire Holmes, a spokeswoman for the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership.Rents on sites not up for redevelopment range from $125 to $250 per square foot, according to brokers, reflecting a slight drop from prepandemic highs. “They were hitting $300 per square foot at one point,” said Peter Ripka, co-founder of Ripco Real Estate.But Mr. Ripka was bullish about what he called “one of the granddaddies of the great borough streets.” “Fulton Mall will come back,” he added.Shoppers have returned to downtown Flushing, but storefront vacancies have increased and rents have fallen.Tom Sibley for The New York TimesQueens: Main Street in FlushingFlushing’s Chinatown is typically teeming, especially on weekends when people who live outside Downtown Flushing make pilgrimages to its dim sum restaurants and Asian specialty stores. The neighborhood is a major shopping district and transportation hub.The district went uncharacteristically quiet in early 2020, long before other parts of the city shut down, when many Chinese business owners here recognized the seriousness of the pandemic, and hostility directed at Asian-americans became more overt. Area residents were among the first to don face masks, shelter at home — and close stores and restaurants.Many of these businesses have not survived the year since then. Nearly half of the barbershops and hair and nail salons, many of which had been situated on side streets, have closed. So have about 35 restaurants, including longtime favorites like Joe’s Shanghai and Good Kitchen. Banks, medical offices and grocery stores, on the other hand, have done well, and a new supermarket has just opened in a space Modell’s previously occupied.There has been a 16 percent increase in consumer interest for shopping, restaurant and food categories in the Main Street corridor since the beginning of the pandemic, according to Yelp, at the same time that the share of consumer interest declined 49 percent for Midtown.These days the street feels as busy as ever, but the vacancy rate has risen to five or six percent from less than one percent, said Dian Song Yu, executive director of the Downtown Flushing Transit Hub BID. “We’ve never seen that before,” he added. Rents have dropped about 15 percent, said Michael Wang, founding partner of Project Queens, a brokerage. But deals are being made.In response to anti-Asian hate crimes, a volunteer patrol has sprung up to help keep local streets safe.Tom Sibley for The New York Times“Pre-Covid, if you had a retail store in the main strip you would have 30 offers,” Mr. Wang said. “Now the demand is much lower, but you still have five people very serious about moving in.”But anti-Asian racism that existed before the pandemic has flared up here, just as it has elsewhere, with people falsely blaming Asian-Americans for spreading the coronavirus. Earlier this year a woman was thrown against a row of newspaper stands and injured outside a bakery. Main Street Patrol, a volunteer group, has sprung up to document, record and, if necessary, intervene in hate crimes, as have other neighborhood watch groups around the city.Empire Outlets, an outdoor shopping mall in St. George, lost 65 to 70 percent of its foot traffic during the pandemic but visitors have recently increased.Erica Price for The New York TimesStaten Island: Bay Street The city’s most suburban-style, car-centric borough doesn’t have the density other parts of the city do, and many of its retailers line small commercial corridors and strip malls.The former have fared better than the latter during the pandemic, said Linda M. Baran, the president and chief executive of the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce. While most of the stores and restaurants along places like New Dorp Lane and Forest Avenue have been holding their own, the strip malls “are where I’m seeing vacancies,” she said. Six percent of the borough’s businesses have closed for good, according to a recent survey by the chamber.Bay Street, on the North Shore, is in its own category. It stretches from the Staten Island Ferry terminal south through three neighborhoods that together make up Downtown Staten Island: St. George, Tompkinsville and Stapleton.Home to mostly mom-and-pops, Bay Street was regarded as a work-in-progress before the pandemic. A 2017 city report counted 232 storefronts, many in poor condition, and put the vacancy rate at 21 percent. The rate had declined somewhat by early 2020, however.St. George, the neighborhood most familiar to day trippers who arrive by ferry, is the area that has seen the greatest falloff in foot traffic. This is where borough hall, courthouses and cultural institutions are clustered, and the businesses here have struggled ever since government workers were sent home, tourists stopped riding the ferry from Manhattan and the St. George Theater closed to visitors.Vacant storefronts have been a longstanding issue on Bay Street.Erica Price for The New York TimesSome restaurants have pivoted to takeout (and Enoteca Maria, famed for its rotating cast of chef grandmas, to selling bottled sauces). Some have opted to shut their doors and wait out the pandemic. But some new food purveyors have opened, including on Bay Street.Empire Outlets, an outdoor shopping mall near the ferry terminal, was still finding its footing before the pandemic. It has lost 65 to 70 percent of its visitors and four retailers, said Joseph Ferrara, a principal at BFC Partners, the mall’s developer. However, foot traffic increased 20 percent between February and March and parking jumped 140 percent.Empire Outlets and other area businesses are banking on the return of municipal workers, now scheduled for June 1. NYC Fast Ferry will start providing service to St. George from Battery Park City and Midtown Manhattan this summer. And on the horizon: the recently announced revival of the New York Wheel project, albeit in a scaled-down form and not until 2025.For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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    Curtains Up for the One Percent

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    While many Americans were stockpiling toilet paper and Clorox, the rich bought houses, sparking a gold rush in the decorating trades.Rob Satran thinks of it as the Hoshizaki syndrome.Beginning last March, when the world went into lockdown and it became clear that, as Mr. Satran said, “people were not going to be spending their disposable income on normal things,” the trade in high-end appliances abruptly took off.Mr. Satran is a part owner of Royal Green Appliances, a boutique dealership in New York that may be to refrigerators what a Rolls-Royce showroom is to automobiles. “Covid instantly domesticated people,” he said. “They were looking around and thinking about where to invest in their homes.”If, as the adage has it, old appliances are like old friendships — barely functional but too heavy to dispose of — this was the year when homeowners got around to casting a fresh eye on tired refrigerators, balky dishwashers, ranges with pilot lights that stubbornly refuse to ignite.It was the year in which some near the apex of the income pyramid concluded there was no reason to settle for an ordinary ice tray, or even cubes produced by some humdrum domestic appliance, when they could upgrade to a commercial machine capable of cranking out transparent crescents or lucid spheres or gelid top hats like the ones you used to see clinking in glasses at upscale bars. Why not buy a Hoshizaki?“Traditionally, the high-end appliance business is tied to the stock market,” Mr. Satran said, adding that when, by the third quarter of last year, it became clear that the markets weren’t likely to crash, the demand for Wolf ranges, Sub-Zero refrigerators and $4,000 ice machines took off. What followed was a combination of increased demand and supply-chain bottlenecks that produced a backlog felt most acutely by one population of professionals, and that was interior designers.Despite its dire human consequences, the pandemic had the effect in the design trades of sparking a gold rush, a development perhaps more surprising when you consider the fact that in the internet age everyone is a D.I.Y. expert in décor. “Insane is the word,” David Netto, an interior designer in Los Angeles, said of a surge in business noted in interviews with more than a dozen decorators and designers.If at the start of lockdown, Mr. Netto had assumed “brace position,” anticipating a career crash, he now finds himself in the midst of an extraordinary speedup, with far more offers for work than his firm can realistically take on.“I’m a boutique shop, and we never had more than four jobs at a time before,” he said. “Now we have 12.”For Brad Dunning, a designer in West Hollywood who emerged decades ago from the city’s punk rock scene and went on to establish a top-tier practice restoring houses by Modernist heroes like John Lautner and Richard Neutra, fears that a contracted global economy would spell doom for his business turned out to be unfounded.“I was, and still am, completely shocked that people were buying so much real estate and remodeling their houses,,” Mr. Dunning wrote in an email.“I get it that since people were stuck at home, they were focusing on their immediate surroundings,” he continued. “But I still found it odd that when we were all supposed to be wiping down our groceries with disinfecting sprays to avoid death, people were willing to spend gobs of money. Wouldn’t you be saving every penny?”Mr. Romano finds a place for a Regence fauteuil acquired from the estate of the restaurateur Glenn Bernbaum, the owner of Mortimer’s in Manhattan who was once called the “Solomon of bistro seating.”Drew Anthony Smith for The New York Times‘I’ve Never Been Busier’The answer to his question was anything but rhetorical for those Americans to whom a $1,400 government stimulus check was a fiscal lifeline. Yet for the wealthiest, those whom the design elite have traditionally served, the last year produced a home improvement stampede as people transformed their work-life safety bubbles with layers of comfort and convenience increasingly essential to those for whom wine cellars with computerized inventory systems are baseline amenities. Not only were the rich repainting, reupholstering and refreshing their curtains, experts said, they were snapping up houses as casually as ordinary mortals were binge-buying Crocs.“It’s bananas,” Mr. Dunning said. “As long as I’ve been doing this — over 25 years — I’ve never been busier or heard contractors or real estate agents I work with say the same.”When Todd A. Romano, a decorator whose interiors are regularly featured in shelter magazines, left New York in 2016 to return to his hometown, San Antonio, it was to ease the demands of a practice that once required him to commute to Paris from Manhattan on monthly shopping trips and to juggle a roster of clients around the country.“I wanted a more low-key quality of life,” Mr. Romano said. Steadily employed before the pandemic began, Mr. Romano has interior design projects booked through the end of 2022, he said.“It’s not just about rich people feathering their nests,” he said. “I mean, Home Depot is out of building supplies.”The walls of this Texas ranch house are papered in Bird and Thistle from Brunschwig & Fils, and the table is lighted by a piece of French mollusk pottery fitted out as a lamp.Drew Anthony Smith for The New York TimesYet while hoi polloi are shopping for the do-it-yourself flooring and bathroom vanity units that helped drive sales for the home improvement giant to $32.3 billion in the last quarter of 2020 — a 25.1 percent increase over the same period in 2019 — Mr. Romano’s clients are snapping up houses in places like Montecito, Palm Beach and Telluride.“We work for the one-half of the one-half of the one percent,” he said.“Sure, every so often I stop myself in my tracks and say, ‘Sheesh, this is a lot of money,’” he said, referring to things like a $31,000 sectional sofa recently commissioned from a Long Island City workroom for a West Texas ranch or a pair of $8,200 club chairs covered in hand-blocked linen from the fifth-generation French fabric house, Prelle — at a cost of roughly $396 a yard.“But it is also what it costs to do things at this level,” he said of the Olympian expectations of the ultrarich.When the decorator Elaine Griffin, who cut her teeth at firms like that of the architect Peter Marino in Manhattan, returned home to Georgia before the pandemic to establish Elaine Griffin Interior Design while caring for her ailing mother, it was with a modest set of expectations.“Before the pandemic, at client interviews, I was like, ‘Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!’” Ms. Griffin said, speaking from Sea Island, Ga., where she is designing three homes for as many clients new to the coastal barrier islands that rank among the top 10 most prosperous ZIP codes in the United States. “Now I’m like, ‘We have tons of wonderful New Yorkers moving down here, and if I don’t like you …’ Well, I’ll just leave it at that.”It remains unclear whether the pandemic flight from major cities will reverse itself as more Americans are vaccinated. For now, said Victor Long of Banker Real Estate on Saint Simons Island, Ga., the pandemic, a robust stock market, the flight from urban centers to tax-friendly states and what he termed “a major lifestyle reset,” have combined to produce an “a perfect storm’’ in real estate.“Initially, I was grateful for the slowdown, but it never really slowed down here,” the designer Elaine Griffin said of Georgia’s booming coastal islands.Malcolm Jackson for The New York Times“I went from doing $30 million in sales in 2019 to $53 million in 2020,” said Mr. Long, who added that he had already booked $36 million in sales by the beginning of March, 2021.“You always have those people who are struggling to get by on a million a year in New York,’’ Ms. Griffin said. “South of the Mason-Dixon line, the money goes a whole lot further.”She noted that a living room designed by her in 2021 may include a $21,000 sectional sofa, a $12,000 rug, a $6,000 coffee table and a pair of armchairs for $14,0000 and change. “My sweet spot as a Georgia designer,” she said, “is being able to cater to those New York clients because, guess what? New Yorkers are moving down to Sea Island in droves and droves.”It is not just Georgia, of course. “We have tons of people coming down here and buying horse farms, these houses that used to stay in the families of affluent Kentuckians,” said Lee Robinson of the Lee W. Robinson Company, a decorating firm in Louisville. “A lot of the old guard is having to sell, and the new guard represents a new level of wealth because, in my opinion, there has become a greater distance between the haves and the have-nots.”‘Zillionaire Bedlam’By Mr. Robinson’s calculations, to be a have-not in the current landscape of wealth creation is to eke by with a net worth of a mere $10 million. Few, if any, of the 34 clients for whom Mr. Robinson is currently designing houses, fit that description, he said. “The ‘haves’ nowadays are people with a net worth of $100 million plus,” he said. “If you want to see what that looks like, go down to Palm Beach.”In the Palm Beach of today, Maseratis and Lamborghinis are a dime a dozen, according to the designer and writer Steven Stolman. a longtime resident of the 16-mile barrier island. “A convertible Bentley is an entry-level car.”If Palm Beach was once a sleepy winter resort of the moneyed Eastern elite, it is now a kind of “zillionaire bedlam,” Mr. Stolman said. “Beverly Hills by the sea.”One bellwether is the unexpected arrival of a cluster of blue chip New York galleries: Pace, Paula Cooper, Acquavella, Lehmann Maupin, among them. They have established pop-ups and, in some cases, more permanent beachheads that cater to the same deep-pocketed buyers packing restaurants like Le Bilboquet, La Goulue and Sant Ambroeus or cleaning out the shelves at luxury goods purveyors like Brunello Cucinelli, Saint Laurent and Hermès.“At our price point,” Ms. Griffin said of top-tier professionals like herself, “these are second or third or fourth houses.”Malcolm Jackson for The New York TimesReal estate agents in Palm Beach have found themselves complaining about the paucity of inventory, with bidding wars now common and many homes being brokered and sold off-market before they can even be listed.“We have absolutely nothing,” said Liza Pulitzer, a realtor with Brown Harris Stevens. In over a quarter-century of selling property in Palm Beach, Ms. Pulitzer, a third-generation resident (her mother was the beloved socialite and designer Lilly Pulitzer), said she had never encountered anything resembling the frenzied market of the last 12 months.“Typically, we would see 180 or 190 houses,” for sale at any given time, Ms. Pulitzer said. “Right now on the entire island there are 42 houses.’’ Of those, 24 are “modestly” priced below $20 million; the other 20 range as high as $120 million. “Everything revolves around the real-estate boom,” she said. “Gallerists are insanely busy. Contractors are insanely busy. There isn’t a decorator I know that isn’t maxed out.”So, too, are appliances dealers hawking luxurious necessities like this year’s must-have range, the La Grande Cuisine 2000 from L’Atelier Paris. With six brass gas burners, a grooved electric griddle, two ovens and a central storage cabinet encased in a matte blue frame ornamented with copper trim, it comes with trademark fleur-de-lis appliqués on the doors and a price tag of almost $40,000.“I hear the lead time is a year,” Mr. Stolman said of the coveted ranges. (Contacted by a reporter, a representative from L’Atelier Paris placed the wait at closer to three months.)“If there are two things the rich hate, it’s to wait or to be told no,” Mr. Stolman said.Yet wait they must. “I used to tell people that on the back of my card it says, in very fine print, “It gets here when it gets here,”’ said Paul Vincent Wiseman, doyen of designers to the California Bay Area elite. “I’ve dealt with the very, very rich all my career,” said Mr. Wiseman, whose company recently added four new hires to its 40-person work force and, he said, recorded its most profitable month in 41 years in October when there was still no end to the lockdown in sight.“It’s obvious that people are a lot wealthier than they were even two years ago, but they’re also focusing inward a little more,” he said. “We all looked around and suddenly realized our homes needed help. It’s what I call the ‘What a dump’ syndrome.” More

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    What is Going on with China, Cotton and All of These Clothing Brands?

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    A user’s guide to the latest cross-border social media fashion crisis.Last week, calls for the cancellation of H&M and other Western brands went out across Chinese social media as human rights campaigns collided with cotton sourcing and political gamesmanship. Here’s what you need to know about what’s going on and how it may affect everything from your T-shirts to your trench coats.What’s all this I’m hearing about fashion brands and China? Did someone make another dumb racist ad?No, it’s much more complicated than an offensive and obvious cultural faux pas. The issue centers on the Xinjiang region of China and allegations of forced labor in the cotton industry — allegations denied by the Chinese government. Last summer, many Western brands issued statements expressing concerns about human rights in their supply chain. Some even cut ties with the region all together.Now, months later, the chickens are coming home to roost: Chinese netizens are reacting with fury, charging the allegations are an offense to the state. Leading Chinese e-commerce platforms have kicked major international labels off their sites, and a slew of celebrities have denounced their former foreign employers.Why is this such a big deal?The issue has growing political and economic implications. On the one hand, as the pandemic continues to roil global retail, consumers have become more attuned to who makes their clothes and how they are treated, putting pressure on brands to put their values where their products are. One the other, China has become an evermore important sales hub to the fashion industry, given its scale and the fact that there is less disruption there than in other key markets, like Europe. Then, too, international politicians are getting in on the act, imposing bans and sanctions. Fashion has become a diplomatic football.This is a perfect case study of what happens when market imperatives come up against global morality.Tell me more about Xinjiang and why it is so important.Xinjiang is a region in northwest China that happens to produce about a fifth of the world’s cotton. It is home to many ethnic groups, especially the Uyghurs, a Muslim minority. Though it is officially the largest of China’s five autonomous regions, which in theory means it has more legislative self-control, the central government has been increasingly involved in the area, saying it must exert its authority because of local conflicts with the Han Chinese (the ethnic majority) who have been moving into the region. This has resulted in draconian restrictions, surveillance, criminal prosecutions and forced-labor camps.OK, and what about the Uyghurs?A predominantly Muslim Turkic group, the Uyghur population within Xinjiang numbers just over 12 million, according to official figures released by Chinese authorities. As many as one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities have been retrained to become model workers, obedient to the Chinese Communist Party via coercive labor programs.Burberry created signature check “skins” for characters in the Honor of Kings video game, which its owner, the Chinese technology company Tencent, removed over the company’s stand on cotton produced in the Xinjiang region.via Honor of KingsSo this has been going on for awhile?At least since 2016. But after The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Axios and others published reports that connected Uyghurs in forced detention to the supply chains of many of the world’s best-known fashion retailers, including Adidas, Lacoste, H&M, Ralph Lauren and the PVH Corporation, which owns Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, many of those brands reassessed their relationships with Xinjiang-based cotton suppliers.In January, the Trump administration banned all imports of cotton from the region, as well as products made from the material and declared what was happening “genocide.” At the time, the Workers Rights Consortium estimated that material from Xinjiang was involved in more than 1.5 billion garments imported annually by American brands and retailers.That’s a lot! How do I know if I am wearing a garment made from Xinjiang cotton?You don’t. The supply chain is so convoluted and subcontracting so common that often it’s hard for brands themselves to know exactly where and how every component of their garments is made.So if this has been an issue for over a year, why is everyone in China freaking out now?It isn’t immediately clear. One theory is that it is because of the ramp-up in political brinkmanship between China and the West. On March 22, Britain, Canada, the European Union and the United States announced sanctions on Chinese officials in an escalating row over the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.Not long after, screenshots from a statement posted in September 2020 by H&M citing “deep concerns” about reports of forced labor in Xinjiang, and confirming that the retailer had stopped buying cotton from growers in the region, began circulating on Chinese social media. The fallout was fast and furious. There were calls for a boycott, and H&M products were soon missing from China’s most popular e-commerce platforms, Alibaba Group’s Tmall and JD.com. The furor was stoked by comments on the microblogging site Sina Weibo from groups like the Communist Youth League, an influential Communist Party organization.Within hours, other big Western brands like Nike and Burberry began trending for the same reason.And it’s not just consumers who are up in arms: Influencers and celebrities have also been severing ties with the brands. Even video games are bouncing virtual “looks” created by Burberry from their platforms.Backtrack: What do influencers have to do with all this?Influencers in China wield even more power over consumer behavior than they do in the West, meaning they play a crucial role in legitimizing brands and driving sales. When Tao Liang, otherwise known as Mr. Bags, did a collaboration with Givenchy, for example, the bags sold out in 12 minutes; a necklace-bracelet set he made with Qeelin reportedly sold out in one second (there were 100 made). That’s why H&M worked with Victoria Song, Nike with Wang Yibo and Burberry with Zhou Dongyu.But Chinese influencers and celebrities are also sensitive to pleasing the central government and publicly affirming their national values, often performatively choosing their country over contracts.In 2019, for example, Yang Mi, the Chinese actress and a Versace ambassador, publicly repudiated the brand when it made the mistake of creating a T-shirt that listed Hong Kong and Macau as independent countries, seeming to dismiss the “One China” policy and the central government’s sovereignty. Not long afterward, Coach was targeted after making a similar mistake, creating a tee that named Hong Kong and Taiwan separately; Liu Wen, the Chinese supermodel, immediately distanced herself from the brand.The actress Zhou Dongyu, the actor Wang Yibo and the singer and actress Victoria Song, all Chinese influencers who had deals with Western brands that they then  repudiated when their products were said to disrespect the Chinese people and government.VCG/VCG, via Getty ImagesAnd what’s with the video games?Tencent removed two Burberry-designed “skins” — outfits worn by video game characters that the brand had introduced with great fanfare — from its popular title Honor of Kings as a response to news that the brand had stopped buying cotton produced in the Xinjiang region. The looks had been available for less than a week.So this is hitting both fast fashion and the high end. How much of the fashion world is involved?Potentially, most of it. So far Adidas, Nike, Converse and Burberry have all been swept up in the crisis. Even before the ban, additional companies like Patagonia, PVH, Marks & Spencer and the Gap had announced that they did not source material from Xinjiang and had officially taken a stance against human rights abuses.This week, however, several brands, including VF Corp., Inditex (which owns Zara) and PVH all quietly removed their policies against forced labor from their websites.That seems squirrelly. Is this likely to escalate?Brands seem to be concerned that the answer is yes, since, apparently fearful of offending the Chinese government, some companies have proactively announced that they will continue buying cotton from Xinjiang. Hugo Boss, the German company whose suiting is a de facto uniform for the financial world, posted a statement on Weibo saying, “We will continue to purchase and support Xinjiang cotton” (even though last fall the company had announced it was no longer sourcing from the region). Muji, the Japanese brand, is also proudly touting its use of Xinjiang cotton on its Chinese websites, as is Uniqlo.Wait … I get playing possum, but why would a company publicly pledge its allegiance to Xinjiang cotton?It’s about the Benjamins, buddy. According to a report from Bain & Company released last December, China is expected to be the world’s largest luxury market by 2025. Last year it was the only part of the world to report year on year growth, with the luxury market reaching 44 billion euros ($52.2 billion).Is anyone going to come out of this well?One set of winners could be the Chinese fashion industry, which has long played second fiddle to Western brands, to the frustration of many businesses there. Shares in Chinese apparel groups and textile companies with ties to Xinjiang rallied this week as the backlash gained pace. And more than 20 Chinese brands publicly made statements touting their support for Chinese cotton. More

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    The Night New York's Theaters, Museums and Concert Halls Shut Down

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeFall in Love: With TenorsConsider: Miniature GroceriesSpend 24 Hours: With Andra DayGet: A Wildlife CameraAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMarch 12, 2020: The Night the City Sighed to SleepChocolate fountains, Debbie Harry and an artist’s swan song cut short. We gathered scenes from the New York City cultural landscape in the last moments before lockdown.The view from Sardi’s on March 12, 2020, as Broadway and much of New York locked down.Credit…Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesMichael Paulson, Julia Jacobs and March 11, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETMarch began with an ominous drumbeat. A packed cruise ship with a coronavirus outbreak was left floating for days off the coast of California. South by Southwest was canceled. The N.B.A. suspended its season. And then, on March 12, Broadway shut down, and with it every large gathering in New York City.By the time the grates came down, it was not much of a surprise. The city that never sleeps was grinding to a halt.But it was impossible to imagine what was to come. The staggering death toll. The vast job losses. The isolation. The endlessness.That evening, a group of Broadway bigwigs — theater owners and producers, mostly — gathered to drown their sorrows at Sardi’s, the industry hangout famous for its celebrity caricatures. They noshed, they drank, they commiserated, and they hugged. Several of them wound up infected with the virus, although there were so many meetings, and so few masks at that point, who knows how they got it.They posted signs on their theaters saying they expected to be back four weeks later.Now it’s been 52.Do you remember your final nights out? We gathered scenes from around the city as the curtains closed. MICHAEL PAULSONFondue Fountains, Buckets of Bouquets and Fresh DolceThe dressing rooms at the Brooks Atkinson Theater were filled with flowers. The ruby chocolate fondue fountain was booked for the after-party. Brittney Mack’s mother and her brother and her best girlfriends had all flown into town, not about to miss the moment when the 30-something Chicagoan made her long-awaited Broadway debut as a 16th-century English queen.But it was not to be. Ninety minutes before the scheduled opening of “Six,” an eagerly anticipated new musical about the wives of King Henry VIII, Broadway shut down.“I got to the theater early, and there were gifts from all over — buckets and buckets of plants, and cookies, and so much love, and I was like, ‘Hell, yes,’” Mack recalled. “And then the assistant stage manager came in and said the show is canceled, and I just said, ‘How dare you!’”Credit…Lucas McMahon“It was very, very overwhelming, and all of a sudden I felt incredibly alone. And then I was like, ‘But my dress! And the earrings!’ So many perspectives hit me, and I realized this happened to our entire industry, and I thought, ‘What the hell are we all going to do?’”What most of the “Six” family did was to gather. Mack went out for drinks with her friends at Harlem Public, near her apartment. Meanwhile, the show’s producer, Kevin McCollum, fresh off canceling an 800-person opening night party at Tao Downtown, hosted about 100 members of the show’s inner circle at the Glass House Tavern, a few doors down from the theater.“Looking back, it was ridiculous that we did that, but we didn’t know what we didn’t know, so we had a buffet of crudités, and a host of droplets, I’m sure,” he said. “We were in shock. There were people crying. We were giving it our best stiff upper lip, for the British, but we were emotionally devastated.”The notice posted on the doors of the Brooks Atkinson Theater, home to the Broadway production of “Six.”Credit…Lucas McMahonBundled playbills that would have been distributed to the sold-out audience.Credit…Lucas McMahonGeorge Stiles, an English composer, was among many British friends of the show who had flown over for the opening. Stiles was once in a band with the father of Toby Marlow, who wrote “Six” with Lucy Moss, and had become a mentor and then a co-producer.“Never before has something that I’ve been involved with felt so poised to go off with a crack,” Stiles said of “Six” — quite a statement given that he wrote songs for the stage musical adaptation of “Mary Poppins.” “I was anticipating the euphoria of the crowd, and the fun of the red carpet-y nonsense, and the everyone wanting to be the last one to sit down.”Instead, he and his husband and Marlow’s father licked their wounds at Marseille. What was on the menu? “The sheer awfulness of being this close to a wonderful Broadway run.” Stiles has since put his “suitably regal” gold and black Dolce & Gabbana outfit “into very careful mothballs,” anticipating that there will yet be an opening night to celebrate. “We are very gung-ho,” he said, “and hopeful, fingers crossed, that it wont be too many months away.” PAULSON“We Love You, New York! Don’t Touch Your Face!”Only about half of the people who bought tickets to the March 12 show at Mercury Lounge had turned up, but there were still throngs of people drinking, talking and grooving to the band. Debbie Harry of the band Blondie was there, and so was the music producer Hal Willner. He would die less than a month later from Covid-19.Onstage, Michael C. Hall, the star of “Dexter” and lead singer of the glam rock band Princess Goes to the Butterfly Museum, belted and wailed into the microphone.The staff members at Mercury Lounge knew they were watching their last live concert for a while; what “a while” meant, they had no idea. Bands had been canceling their appearances at an increasing rate, and on a call earlier that day, the owners had asked the staff members if they were still comfortable working, said Maggie Wrigley, a club manager. The line was silent for a moment, before one employee spoke up to say that no, it was no longer comfortable.Michael C. Hall, the star of “Dexter,” and his glam rock band, Princess Goes to the Butterfly Museum, were the last act to perform at Mercury Lounge prior to shutdown.Credit…Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated PressOthers piped up to agree: They felt exposed and vulnerable to the virus at work. Because the late show had already canceled, the owners decided that the club would shut down that night after the early show.At about 9:30 p.m. — painfully early for a Thursday night on the city’s club scene — the audience was asked to leave. “We love you, New York! Don’t touch your face!” Hall yelled at the end of his set.Alex Beaulieu, the club’s production manager, sanitized the microphones and packed the drum kit, amps and cables for longer term storage.“We locked the door and sat at the bar and had a drink,” Wrigley said of the club’s staff, “and we just kind of looked at each other, with no idea what was going to happen.”JULIA JACOBSA Swan Song, Cut ShortFor Sheena Wagstaff, chairman of modern and contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the spring of 2020 was destined to be bittersweet. The Met Breuer, the museum’s experimental satellite space, was going to close, three years ahead of schedule. But its final show was one she’d spent years preparing: “Gerhard Richter: Painting After All,” a survey of the stern and skeptical German artist, filling two floors of the landmark building and including loans from 30 different collections.The exhibition, intended by the now 89-year-old artist to be his last major show, opened March 4. It had the makings of a blockbuster, and it ought to have introduced New York to four paintings called “Birkenau” (2014): streaked, abraded abstractions that obscure imagery of the titular death camp. On March 12, the show’s ninth day, Wagstaff realized it had to close.The Richter exhibition at the Met Breuer had all the makings of a blockbuster when it closed on its ninth day.Credit…Charlie Rubin for The New York TimesAt first the gravity of the crisis wasn’t fully clear. “I had every anticipation that it was going to reopen in May at the very latest,” Wagstaff said recently. But soon she realized that “Birkenau” — a culmination of Richter’s 60-year engagement with German history and the ethics of representation — would not find an audience. “Beyond a kind of personal huge disappointment, it was that the artist, so aware of his own mortality, was denied the possibility of actually making a mini-manifesto to the world. Alongside that was the curtailment of the Breuer. What we ended up with was this implosion.”Richter never saw the show. A few days before it came down, Wagstaff stood alone with “Birkenau”: paintings about the possibility of perceiving history that, now, no one could perceive at all. “It was a kind of haunting experience,” she said. “They became almost anthropomorphic. They’re sitting there on the walls, and there’s nothing, there’s no one to witness them. The paintings are witnessing something, and that witnessing cannot be conveyed any further.”By autumn, the Met had ceded occupancy of the Breuer to the Frick Collection. Most of Richter’s paintings had been crated up and shipped back to their lenders. Yet “Birkenau,” which belongs to the artist, stayed in New York. Wagstaff brought these most challenging works into the Met’s main building, introducing into the lavish Lehman Collection these four speechless acts of remembrance and horror. “It was a trace of the show. The viewing conditions weren’t perfect,” Wagstaff conceded. “We had really limited attendance; we still do. But people stayed in that room for a really long time. For those who came to see it, it was a revelation.” JASON FARAGOOne Final SetBy March 15, Broadway theaters and concert halls were empty, but in the dim light of the Comedy Cellar, audience members sat shoulder to shoulder sipping drinks and watching stand-up comedy. Masks were not required.The comedian Carmen Lynch was hesitant about showing up that night: Her boyfriend was heading out of the city to stay with his family in Connecticut, and she planned to join him — it seemed like it was time to hunker down. But, Lynch said, she knew that the days of doing multiple shows in a single night were ending, and she wanted to make as much money as possible before the inevitable shutdown. She exchanged texts with fellow comedians to feel out who was still performing.“I thought, ‘I’m not doing anything illegal. I’ll just do this one show and then leave,’” Lynch recalled.In the last stand-up shows at the Comedy Cellar before it closed on March 15, comedians joked about Corona beer and the newly clean state of the subway.Credit…Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesSo her boyfriend took her suitcase to Connecticut while she stayed to perform — one set at 7:45 p.m. another at 8:30. Before each comedian would walk onstage to tell jokes in front of the club’s famous exposed brick wall and stained glass, they would reach into a bucket to take a microphone that had been recently cleaned.Just before Lynch went on, the comedian Lynne Koplitz took the stage, removed the sanitized microphone from the stand and theatrically wiped it down with a white cloth another time, saying, “I’ve wanted to do this for years!”When Lynch finished her second set, she didn’t linger. She called an Uber and felt relieved when the driver accepted her request for an hour-and-a-half drive to Connecticut, not knowing how long she’d be gone (until summer) or what the city would be like when she returned (eerily empty, store windows boarded up).She drove away, and in retrospect, she remembers it like a scene in a disaster movie. “It’s like you’re in the car,” she said, “and you turn around and there’s an explosion behind you.” JACOBSAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Suburban Home Sales Soar in the New York Region

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySuburban Home Sales Soar in the New York RegionLines of cars at open houses and multiple offers above the asking price, often all cash, have become a regular occurrence.Open houses across the region, including one at this house in Port Washington, N.Y., have drawn crowds as sales inventory has dwindled during the pandemic.Credit…Tara Striano for The New York TimesVivian Marino and March 5, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETHeading into the spring sales season, the housing market in the suburbs of New York has already gone into overdrive, with bidding wars becoming the norm and many homes selling within days of coming on the market.The frenetic sales activity — a second wave after a surge last summer — has been fueled by multiple forces: historically low mortgage rates; pandemic-fatigued city dwellers desperate for more space; and many employers’ willingness to embrace remote work, allowing buyers to look in places beyond what would be considered an easy commute.Another major factor: unusually tight inventory, as people hold onto their homes longer, which over the last few months in some suburbs has led to demand outstripping supply for the first time since the pandemic began.Brokers across the region report long lines at open houses, multiple offers coming in as soon as listings go live, and all-cash deals ruling the day. “This is the strongest market I have seen in two decades,” said Sara Littlefield, an agent in Connecticut with Coldwell Banker.“If there is a silver lining in this devastating pandemic, it’s that it has allowed people the freedom to make lifestyle choices like relocating, or downsizing, or moving up,” Ms. Littlefield added, “and they’re taking that freedom.”At the same time, Manhattan’s housing market has also finally picked up. “Contract activity first broke even back in December with year-ago levels,” said Jonathan J. Miller, a Manhattan-based real estate appraiser who also monitors suburban markets. Then it rose in the first two months of 2021, he said, adding that he expected the strong pace to continue through the spring.In a just-released February report for Douglas Elliman Real Estate, Mr. Miller found that signed contracts for all property types in Manhattan jumped 73.1 percent from a year ago. “It’s a combination of softer pricing, low rates and the distribution of the vaccine — people are feeling more safe about living in the city,” he said.Jeffrey Otteau, the president of the Otteau Valuation Group, based in Matawan, N.J., agreed that once-depressed urban areas would recover. “I don’t think anyone expected people would leave the city,” he said, “and never come back.”For those buyers focused on the suburbs, here’s a glimpse at what’s going on throughout the region.WestchesterBrisk could describe the weather and pace of sales in Westchester this winter, as the single-family sales market builds on its 2020 gains, from Pelham to Scarsdale to Armonk.A shortage of single-family houses explains the heightened competition. Starting last fall, demand began eclipsing supply, according to a new report from Douglas Elliman, and signed contracts have picked up since January: The busiest brackets have been houses priced from $1 million to $2 million, with $600,000 to $800,000 a close second.Among the crop of deals that closed this winter, the time from being listed to going into contract had shrunk to just two months, according to Julia B. Sotheby’s International Realty, though brokers say that spread can be misleading because much of the time is eaten up by overworked bankers and lawyers completing paperwork.In actuality, some houses are finding new owners shortly after hitting “coming soon” websites.“Buyers think they are buying at the peak, but at the same time, they’re still doing it,” said Jennifer Meyer, a Compass agent, who received an offer on a six-bedroom Tudor-style house in Pelham, listed for $1.275 million, on Feb. 26, two days after it went live.Low interest rates and scarce inventory, which are national trends, explain some of the local spike in demand and prices. But other factors are also in play.Troy Benson, left, and Nolan Fitzgerald are relocating from Manhattan to Armonk, N.Y., a suburban hamlet in Westchester County.Credit…Karsten Moran for The New York TimesAfter spending extended time outside of New York to avoid coronavirus, lockdowns and street protests, some buyers warmed to the idea of full-time nonurban life. Troy Benson, 37, who owns a marketing firm, and his husband, Nolan Fitzgerald, 34, who works in fashion, so enjoyed the months spent in their weekend house in Orange County that they decided to stay out of the city for good.After selling the vacation property — in two days, for 15 percent more than its asking price — as well as their condo in the South Street Seaport, the couple are in contract for a midcentury modern house by Edgar Tafel on six woodsy acres in Armonk last listed at $2.475 million.“New York is very high energy,” said Mr. Benson, who will scale down his time in his Manhattan office to just a few days a week. “But I think a lot of people get addicted to the energy and get stuck.”Recent converts to Westchester, brokers say, also include New Yorkers facing expiring leases on the rentals they escaped to last spring and who are now angling for more permanent addresses, further pressuring the market.But it’s not just transplants who are being squeezed. Last year, Marialena Pulice, 39, a school psychologist, and her husband, Chris, 39, who works in finance, made offers on 15 houses, most of which were rejected. “We were outbid, or the seller would go with somebody who had a bigger down payment,” Mr. Pulice said. “Houses were being scooped up left and right.”Late last year, a three-bedroom house in Hawthorne, listed at $589,000, caught the eye of the couple. But their above-ask offer of $595,000 was not enough to seal the deal — at least until the first buyer backed out. The Pulices, who have a young son, have been staying with Ms. Pulice’s parents and will move into their new home this month. “I really can’t wait,” Mr. Pulice said.Homes are selling fast in Montclair, N.J. “The only houses on the market that are sticking around are those that are not so wonderful,” said Roberta Baldwin, an agent with Keller Williams.Credit…Tom Sibley for The New York TimesNew Jersey“The spring market really began in October — that’s how crazy it’s been,” according to Vicki Gaily, a real estate agent based in Saddle River, N.J.As soon as pandemic restrictions eased, Ms. Gaily, the founder of Special Properties, a division of the real estate firm Brook Hollow Group, noticed a burst of pent-up demand, largely from people fleeing urban areas. “I haven’t had a day off since,” she said.Her biggest challenge — and the task facing other harried agents across the state — is finding enough available properties to sell at all price points.As of January, there were nearly 44 percent fewer homes listed for sale in New Jersey from a year ago, according to the New Jersey Realtors trade association. At the same time, closed sales rose during the month by 17 percent and the median sales price surged about 20 percent.“I’ve never seen the inventories as low as they are now,” Ms. Gaily said, noting that in Saddle River, which is in Bergen County, there are “maybe 40 homes” available right now, down from the usual range of 55 to 85 this time of year.Farther south, in Westfield, in Union County, “we have about a third of what we should have in inventory this time of year,” said Frank D. Isoldi, an agent at Coldwell Banker Realty based in Westfield. The result, he said, has been homes being snatched up quickly after multiple bids, and often above asking price.“The only houses on the market that are sticking around are those that are not so wonderful,” said Roberta Baldwin, an agent with Keller Williams Realty who is based in Montclair, in Essex County, where bidding wars are also more common.To help get a leg up on the competition, one of her clients, Brian Herlihy, a 42-year-old financial analyst from Manhattan’s Upper West Side, actually devised a bidding formula last summer, based on the price per square foot of comparable sold properties. “But even then we got outbid,” he said.Emily McDonald and Brian Herlihy recently moved into a fully renovated colonial in Upper Montclair, N.J., but only after the original winning bidder backed out.Credit…Tom Sibley for The New York TimesIn the end, after several unsuccessful bids, Mr. Herlihy and his partner, Emily McDonald, a 38-year-old high school teacher from Brooklyn, managed to move into a fully renovated, four-bedroom colonial in Upper Montclair — but only after the original winning bidder backed out of the deal. Mr. Herlihy paid $1.1 million for the home, which was about $100,000 over his maximum budget.Jaclyn and Zach Plotkin also exceeded what they had hoped to pay when recently buying an Upper Montclair colonial. “We paid a lot over — I don’t want to say how much,” said Ms. Plotkin, 28. “When we started looking, we were less comfortable with bidding over the asking price, but then we came to realize that we had to in order to get a house.”The couple and their infant daughter plan to move from their Midtown East apartment sometime this spring.Tom and Alicia Monforte were filling out paperwork to buy their house in Bellmore, N.Y., just two hours after seeing it.Credit…Adam Macchia for The New York TimesLong IslandBuyers throughout Long Island are likely to face continued competition, too, along with rising prices, in large part because of the shrinking supply of available homes..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-c7gg1r{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:0.875rem;line-height:0.875rem;margin-bottom:15px;color:#121212 !important;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-c7gg1r{font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1pxllx6 header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:5px;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1pxllx6 header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-1pd7fgo{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1pd7fgo{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1pd7fgo:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1pd7fgo{border:none;padding:20px 0 0;border-top:1px solid #121212;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-k9atqk{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-k9atqk strong{font-weight:700;}.css-k9atqk em{font-style:italic;}.css-k9atqk a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ccd9e3;}.css-k9atqk a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px solid #ddd;}.css-k9atqk a:hover{border-bottom:none;}The World’s Tallest BuildingsLearn More About N.Y.C. SkyscrapersLuxury developers use a loophole in the city’s zoning laws to build these soaring towers in New York City. This may be one reason why these supertall buildings are facing a range of problemsTake a look at the view from 432 Park Avenue as it was being built.The current high-rise building boom, with more than 20 buildings that are more than 1,000 feet tall built or planned since 2007, has transformed New York City’s skyline in recent years. Its impact will echo for years to come in Manhattan and the boroughs.Tall, skinny buildings tend to sway slightly in the high wind. To keep residents from feeling this movement, developers are placing giant counterweights at the top to slow building motion. Take a step back and take a look with our critic at some supertall N.Y.C. buildings and how the ingenuity of engineers helped build landmarks like Black Rock.“In the last two months we’ve seen such a depletion of new inventory that sales growth has been nominal,” said Mr. Miller, the Manhattan-based appraiser who also follows the Long Island market. He noted in the Douglas Elliman report that signed contracts in February were flat from a year ago, while inventory levels, excluding the Hamptons and the North Fork, fell nearly 37 percent. “That’s a free-fall.”(The Hamptons saw a 72 percent jump in signed contracts in February for single-family homes, according to Mr. Miller, and an almost 38 percent drop in new listings.)On the South Shore of Long Island, there’s about a month’s supply of available homes, or even less, in some areas, agents say. “We would normally have five to six months’ worth at any one time,” said Seth Pitlake, an agent at Douglas Elliman in Merrick. “It’s not that inventory is not increasing,” he said, “it’s just that anything that comes out in the market is being scooped up.”Mr. Pitlake’s clients, Tom and Alicia Monforte, both in their early 30s, witnessed these tight conditions as both seller and buyer. Their Great Neck co-op sold in a week, but when they began searching for a larger property farther east, in Bellmore, they found themselves in a crowded field of purchasers.“We would put in an offer only to find out someone else offered $40,000 over the asking price,” said Ms. Monforte, a clinical social worker, adding that “every free moment was devoted to looking.”The couple recently found a house at the end of a long day of hunting. “It was the last house we looked at out of seven,” Ms. Monforte said. The home — a 2,200-square-foot, five-bedroom high ranch with a $649,000 price tag — had just been re-listed after a previous deal fell through. “After five minutes we knew,” she said, “and in two hours we put in an offer for the full ask that was accepted.”Similar scenarios of stiff competition are playing out on the North Shore. Mr. Pitlake’s Roslyn colleague at Douglas Elliman, Maria Babaev, who specializes in the so-called Gold Coast, recently listed a five-bedroom, split-level in Roslyn Pines that “needs lots of work.”In just one showing, she said, “I had 27 groups of buyers coming in and received eight offers, three above asking.” The winning bid: 10 percent above the $999,000 list price. Ms. Babaev said more expensive homes were selling faster than usual, though she was quick to add that all property types needed to be competitively priced to garner any interest.And what do buyers want? “They want green space,” said James Gavin, an agent with Laffey Real Estate in Manhasset, “and a lot are asking for a home office and then a pool.”Single-family houses have seen a bounce in activity this winter in Westport, Conn.Credit…Jane Beiles for The New York TimesConnecticutIn Fairfield County, towns that struggled with flat sales a year ago have seen major bounces.There are also far fewer houses to go around than at any time since the pandemic began, which is starting to cut into sales volume, according to Douglas Elliman. In February, there were 510 signed contracts, versus 623 in February 2020. Greenwich, though, has posted huge gains in the new year: February saw 108 signed deals as compared with 42 a year ago, according to Elliman.Gains were perhaps expected south of the Merritt Parkway, whose popularity derives in part from regular train service. Indeed, in the past two months, Westport saw 33 sales of single-family homes priced from $1 million to $2.5 million, compared with 19 sales last winter, according to William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty.But points north were strong as well. Ridgefield had 18 similar sales, according to Sotheby’s, up from six, and New Canaan had 55, up from 11; countywide, there is almost no difference between list and closing prices.But as potential sellers cancel plans to downsize because of suddenly back-at-home children or over worries about finding new homes, supply has been crimped, and the steady stream of New Yorkers searching for homes into the county have created cutthroat conditions.“Briefcases full of cash are coming in. It’s been crazy,” said Alex Ramsey, 38, a financial-services worker who for the past year has been trying to relocate his family from their four-bedroom house in Stamford to a five-bedroom in either Westport or New Canaan. One house they liked had 45 showings in two days, Mr. Ramsey said, “and a line of cars with New York plates filling the cul-de-sac.”Six of Mr. Ramsey’s offers have been rebuffed so far, with the most recent in January, when he failed to connect on a Westport house despite offering a 10 percent premium: “There seems to be so much irrational behavior.”A year ago, the Noroton Heights section of Darien had 67 active listings but there are only 17 today, said Sara Littlefield, a Coldwell Banker agent, who canceled an open house for a shingle-sided 1950s five-bedroom, listed $1.595 million, because she got four offers beforehand.Pre-Covid, buyers asked to be 10 minutes from train stations. But now, because they don’t have to be in the office as much, if at all, that requirement is moot. “Working from home is the future,” Ms. Littlefield said, “and a lot of people seem OK with it.”Lori Elkins Ferber (left), a Sotheby’s broker, talks with Susan and Noah Klein in downtown Westport. Since last summer, the Kleins have bid unsuccessfully on three houses in the town.Credit…Jane Beiles for The New York TimesYet even as buyers are acting quickly, speed can lead to problems. Susan Klein, and her husband, Noah, retired residents of White Plains, N.Y., had their hearts set on Westport when they began looking last June. After two failed purchases, they swooped in last month with an all-cash offer for a four-bedroom house, listed for $1.749 million. And it seemed to do the trick; a contract was in the works.But a rushed title search missed problems, and on Feb. 24, the Kleins walked away. (The seller upped the price to $1.849 million a day later.) “This frenetic market forces you to make very quick decisions,” Ms. Klein said, “which you may need to change.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Companies Put Return-to-Work Plans in Motion

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerBuildings in Manhattan, where the amount of sublet office space available to rent surged nearly 50 percent last year.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York TimesReturn-to-Office Plans Are Set in Motion, but Virus Uncertainty RemainsMany employers are not making a decision until many workers are vaccinated. And some are making plans for “hybrid” work arrangements.Buildings in Manhattan, where the amount of sublet office space available to rent surged nearly 50 percent last year.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyJulie Creswell, Gillian Friedman and March 3, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETA year and a pandemic ago, over 100,000 people filled the central business district in Charlotte, N.C., pouring out of offices, including several recently built skyscrapers, and into restaurants, bars and sports venues. Then as the coronavirus sent employees to their homes, much of the city center quickly went quiet and dark.The return of those employees to their offices has been halting and difficult. Last fall, Fifth Third Bank began bringing back workers, but soon reversed course. LendingTree, which is moving from the suburbs to the city, is waiting for the end of the school year. Wells Fargo has delayed its return to the office several times, telling its employees recently that they will continue to work remotely through at least May 1. And Duke Energy will bring some employees back in June, and most of the 6,000 people at its headquarters in September, when children should be able to go back to schools.Corporate executives around the country are wrestling with how to reopen offices as the pandemic starts to loosen its grip. Businesses — and many employees — are eager to return to some kind of normal work life, going back to the office, grabbing lunch at their favorite restaurant or stopping for drinks after work. But the world has changed, and many managers and workers alike acknowledge that there are advantages to remote work.While coronavirus cases are declining and vaccinations are rising, many companies have not committed to a time and strategy for bringing employees back. The most important variable, many executives said, is how long it will take for most employees to be vaccinated.Another major consideration revolves around the children of workers. Companies say they can’t make firm decisions until they know when local schools will reopen for in-person learning.Then there is a larger question: Does it make sense to go back to the way things were before the pandemic given that people have become accustomed to the rhythms of remote work?“Everyone has different comfort levels with coming back,” said Chuck McShane, a senior vice president at the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance, an organization that has helped lure businesses to the area. “For some companies, it depends on the type of work you’re doing and whether you can remain at home. But a concern about continued remote work is, how do entry-level workers get socialized into the office culture?”About a quarter of employees across the country are going into offices these days, according to Kastle Systems, an office security firm that gets data from 3,600 buildings in the United States.Many companies, paying to rent empty office space, are eager for that number to rise. Their executives believe having employees working side by side improves collaboration, supports the development of younger employees and nurtures the heart and soul of any company — its culture.A mass return to the office would help revive the economies of city centers that have been ghost towns for months.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York TimesA lone pedestrian in Midtown Manhattan. The number of workers returning to the office remains below 20 percent in New York.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York TimesThat’s why some managers like Mark Rose, chief executive of Avison Young, a commercial property consulting and property management firm based in Chicago with offices around the world, is asking employees to return to the office in April.“You’re not going to be fired or written up if you don’t come back, but it is the expectation that, subject to local laws, and subject to your individual issues, that you start to make your way back,” Mr. Rose said about his 5,000 employees. “It absolutely is going to be an expectation.”A mass return to the office would, of course, be a boon for commercial real estate companies like Avison Young. Landlords, whose revenues are under threat as corporations move out or reduce the amount of space they rent, would breathe a sigh of relief. Many tenants have more space than they need. In Manhattan, the amount of sublet office space available to rent surged nearly 50 percent last year and it is currently 27 percent of all available space, the highest share since the period right after the 2008 financial crisis, according to Savills.Moreover, a return to the office would help revive city centers that have been ghost towns for months. Restaurants and bars could start hiring again and returning commuters could generate much-needed revenue for struggling transit systems.The course of the pandemic has largely dictated office attendance. That number crashed in March and April last year as the pandemic took hold and started slowly rising in the late spring, according to Kastle. Another surge in infections after Thanksgiving drove occupancy down but it appears to be on an upswing.There are big regional differences. In large cities in Texas, more than a third of workers are back, while the New York, San Francisco and Chicago areas remain below 20 percent.[embedded content]Some of these regional differences might be explained by how people get to work. “In places where people are commuting through public transportation, we know that makes people much more vulnerable to Covid because of the sheer presence of others, compared to if you’re commuting in your own car,” said Tsedal Neeley, a Harvard Business School professor who studies remote work.The Coronavirus Outbreak More