City Apartments

From the January issue: Darrell Rubens brokered the deals for high-end fashion stores Thomas Pink and Canali in early 2007 during the luxury rush Downtown. Last fall, however, he inked leases for Korean chicken chain BonChon Chicken at 104 John Street and nail salon Spring Sun Nail at 119 Fulton Street. "Obviously, it's slowed," said Rubens, senior managing director at Winick Realty Group. Four years after BMW touched off a luxury boom that brought Tiffany & Co. and Hermès to Lower Manhattan's Wall and Broad Street corridors, the district's upscale aspirations have collided with the hard reality of the Great Recession. By the middle of last month, no new luxury fashion transactions had been completed in 2009 in Lower Manhattan, according to numerous local brokers and Alliance for Downtown New York research reports. Instead, the openings touted by the Downtown Alliance in its first-, second- and third-quarter retail market overviews were mainly casual restaurants including Swich, which makes pressed sandwiches, and discount fashion stores such as Bolton's and Strawberry.