NYC Faces Retail Nightmare With Manhattan Struggling To Recover

It’s been almost two months since Manhattan started to reopen, but the shoppers aren’t around. Wealthy New Yorkers have decamped for the summer, or longer. Storefronts are boarded up in SoHo, while the Times Square and Fifth Avenue sidewalks are quiet as a city devoid of office workers and tourists tries to regain its footing. New York was already dealing with a glut of retail space — and the pandemic is making it worse. Average asking rents in Manhattan, which have been sliding for years, plunged to the lowest level since 2011 in the second quarter, according to a report by CBRE Group Inc. Vacancies are growing in prime shopping districts, the firm said. Read more at Bloomberg.