Pharming futures
CVS continues to be a good choice for developers who want to fill large retail space.
“Pharmacies are always a safe tenant bet for developers,” said Ron Brien, real estate lawyer and retail broker for M.H. Heaven Real Estate in Greenwich.
CVS brand pharmacies will be taking two newly constructed sites in Fairfield County in the next months; one in Greenwich and the other in Fairfield.
The first is a location on the long vacant 644 West Putnam Ave. in Greenwich. The location will house a 36,000-square-foot retail, office and medical building. CVS was the first tenant signed on to the project.
“That location will do some major business,” Brien said. “On a per-square-foot per year basis, $500 to $750 is very good; pharmacy chains typically sell double that,” said Brien. “They really know how to pay the rent.”
Brien said the location is only a few short miles from the Greenwich Avenue CVS location but will serve a different demographic.
“There is room for growth within pharmacies, they have a large capacity for additional business,” he said. “You”™ll see a lot of people using that pharmacy going to and coming from work, there looks to be abundant parking over there, plus you have 25,000 cars passing by on Putnam every day.”
The two-story structure on West Putnam Avenue is being developed in a partnership between Fareri Associates of Greenwich and Simone Development Cos. of the Bronx. CVS plans to occupy 13,500 square feet on the ground floor of the building. An additional 3,500 square feet of space on the ground floor is still available for lease and is approved for a drive-up bank ATM.
Simone and Fareri have 19,000 square feet on the second floor of the building designed to accommodate office, medical or retail space.
The building, which has a two-level parking garage, is currently under construction. The property had been vacant for over ten years when it was originally excavated in 1999 to make way for a car dealership but the plan was stalled and ultimately never went ahead.
The second major new CVS location is to be part of the Kings Crossing Shopping Center in Fairfield, which opened the doors of it first tenant, Whole Foods Market, in a standalone building. CVS will occupy a 13,000-square-foot standalone store on the opposite side of the parking lot of the 11-acre site of the former Handy & Harman factory. The project is being developed by Summit Development in Southport and Greenfield Partners in Norwalk.
Eric Goldschmidt, a partner with Goldschmidt & Associates in Scarsdale, N.Y., which represents CVS locations in Westchester County, said the CVS model is working well because it has created a general-store mentality based around pharmaceutical necessities.
“It”™s one-stop shopping on top of health and beauty aids and prescriptions,” Goldschmidt said. “These stores offer a lot of what people are looking to pick up on the fly.”
Goldschmidt said CVS has done a good job of understanding how lifestyle demographics have changed and filling and need.
He said developers like to fill locations with pharmacy chains like CVS because they are secure tenants and well-financed. “There really is such a demand for their convenience,” he said.