Lease deal for 93 Court St. storefront is a record $200-plus per square foot

T-Mobile is the Downtown Brooklyn building's new tenant

December 17, 2015 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle

T-Mobile will be moving into the little building in the middle of this rendering, tucked between True Value Home Center and Bruno's Hardware. Rendering courtesy of CPEX Real Estate

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Ka-Ching!

A big-dollar lease was just signed for a storefront in a tiny Tudor-style Downtown Brooklyn building, 93 Court St.

The rent for the long-vacant space is more than $200 per square foot — a record for the Court Street commercial corridor, Ryan Condren, the managing director of the Retail Leasing Team at CPEX Real Estate, announced Thursday.

The new tenant of the approximately 2,200-square-foot ground-floor space is T-Mobile. Renovations are now underway at the building.

Condren and colleagues George Danut and Keat Chew repped 93 Court’s landlord in the big-bucks lease deal. Evan Schuckman of Schuckman Realty repped T-Mobile.

The 1920s-vintage building belongs to John Vendikos through his company Tomtro Realty Corp., as the Brooklyn Eagle previously reported. Tomtro bought the building for $63,000 in a 1967 foreclosure sale.

Before hiring CPEX as the building’s leasing agent, Vendikos kept a sign in the building’s third-floor window instructing prospective tenants to leave their names and phone numbers in the building’s mail slot.

A couple years ago, a beach-themed fast-food restaurant called Boneheads had planned to move into the storefront. That deal didn’t pan out.

The space was last occupied by a deli that was evicted in 2011.

Things are looking up for the block between Livingston and Schermerhorn streets where 93 Court is located.

An upscale South Korean bakery chain, Paris Baguette, opened earlier this year at 97 Court St.

And big-name retailers Sephora and Neiman Marcus have moved to the Court Street side of the redeveloped Brooklyn Municipal Building, just one block away. The retail development in the civic building on the corner of Joralemon and Court streets is called Brooklyn Heights Plaza.

“As a prime retail corridor in Brooklyn, this section of Court Street from Atlantic Avenue to Montague Street is in high demand, but the low turnover and vacancy rates create a lack of supply in this area that led to the record-breaking numbers in this lease,” Condren said in a statement.

“The strong tenancy and proven success of the beautiful Brooklyn Heights Plaza was another major factor that helped make this record-setting lease possible,” he added.

Retail rents in the area were $100 to $125 per square foot per year in 2013 and $150 to $199 per square foot per year in 2014, CPEX’s annual Brooklyn Retail Report notes.