Williamsburg retail is all grown up.
Ages after hipsters, artists and club kids made North Brooklyn their gritty playground and long since the big names of national retail — Lululemon, Apple and Sephora — put the neighborhood’s commercial strips into competition with established Manhattan markets, institutional landlords have noticed the new era.
They’re now snapping up buildings along such prime corridors as North 6th Street for record prices, then renting them at a premium to tenants who might also consider Fifth and Madison avenues, Soho or the Meatpacking District. They see a place not just for the well-dressed millennials who’ve already arrived, but also for future wealthy tenants who will ink lease deals and buy condos in the new high-end residential towers sprouting up along the waterfront.
“Williamsburg, for a long time, was kind of in its teenage years,” Hank O’Donnell, a retail broker with GoodSpace NYC and a 15-year Williamsburg resident, said. “Now it’s got a really good job, it’s not getting money from Dad anymore, it’s self-sustaining. Brands do well here, rents keep climbing and demand is off the charts.”
More than $372 million worth of retail buildings changed hands along North 6th in the past year, as institutional players such as Acadia Realty Trust, Empire State Realty Trust and City Urban Realty scrambled to lock up properties, according to data from Brooklyn commercial brokerage TerraCRG.
Just 15 years ago, landlords were signing retail deals along North 6th Street for $45 per square foot. Today, rents on the neighborhood’s golden strip are pushing $400 a foot, with a few boutique storefronts touching $500. That puts Williamsburg on par with, or in some cases above, Soho.
But there’s still skepticism about whether the neighborhood has staying power as a destination for such ultra-luxury brands as Hermès, which announced a long-term lease and a pop-up in 2022 and is slated to open its two-story flagship early next year.
“I think the verdict’s still out,” O’Donnell said.
Developers bet big
Williamsburg’s rise didn’t happen overnight. Its transformation began slowly at the turn of the millennium and started to gain steam in 2005, when the rezoning of a 175-block area of Greenpoint and Williamsburg allowed old warehouses to be converted to retail and residential. Brands including Urban Outfitters, J. Crew and Vans swooped in in the mid-2010s, drawn by the neighborhood’s creative energy and young crowd.
“Williamsburg was where you went if you wanted to tap into the cool, creative New York — music, nightlife, art — that had left Manhattan,” O’Donnell said.
The wave of retailers that followed was more practical. Stores like Warby Parker, Sephora and Whole Foods opened soon after the first national clothing retailers, and they catered to the affluent young residents moving in. Next came trendier stuff, including Glossier and Reformation, which arrived in the early 2020s.
In 2023, 34 percent of households in Williamsburg and Greenpoint were in the income bracket ranging from $100,001 to $250,000, making it the largest income group. That’s a big change from 2000, when the largest income group, at 21 percent of households, was making less than $20,000, according to NYU’s Furman Center data.
North Williamsburg’s median home sale price increased 25 percent between July 2024 and July 2025, according to TRD’s analysis of StreetEasy rental data. The median rent went up 6.5 percent.
“Buyers are paying $2,300 a foot for condos. That translates to retail spending power … Everyone wants in.”
Developers chasing the opportunity brought in high-profile residential and office projects, fueling more retail bets. Two Trees transformed the waterfront with the 2,800-unit Domino Sugar redevelopment and it’s pushing ahead with River Ring at a former Con Edison storage lot, which will add another 1,000 rentals and condos. Naftali Group has Williamsburg Wharf, a luxury 850-unit condo complex at 470 Kent Avenue.
“Domino created a whole new neighborhood within Williamsburg,” TerraCRG broker Michael Kelleher said. “Buyers are paying $2,300 a foot for condos. That translates to retail spending power, which is why you see confidence from every type of developer. Everyone wants in.”
Two Trees has about 100,000 square feet of retail between its residential buildings and 460,000-square-foot office project, the Refinery at Domino at 300 Kent Avenue. It’s trying to fill that space with such amenities as restaurants, coffee shops and fitness clubs.
But the new retail square footage doesn’t seem to be changing what’s happening on the main drags.
“It’s a very different animal than what happens on Bedford and North 6th because it’s 100,000 square feet out of a 3 million-square-foot project,” Two Trees’ David Lombino said. “It gives us a certain amount of flexibility when it comes to leasing retail.”
Brokers break Williamsburg into three markets: the north side around Wythe Avenue and Kent Avenue, which leans toward hospitality and experiential retail; the North 6th-Bedford corridor, which is the luxury fashion hub; and the south side near Domino, which is finding its footing with smaller, service-oriented tenants.
“It’s going to take another five or six years for the Domino area to really fill in,” CBRE broker Duane Davis said. “But once those 2,000 or 3,000 apartments deliver, it’ll be a whole new retail ecosystem.”
Market gone wild
For a long time, mom-and-pop owners controlled one or two Williamsburg storefronts at a time.
Now, three big buyers account for every transaction on North 6th during the past year, including Empire State Realty Trust, the Manhattan-based REIT, which paid $68 million for a set of retail properties on North 6th Street, part of a $195 million all-cash deal for multiple buildings.
“We’ve seen prices jump to as high as $6,000 a foot for retail buildings on North 6th,” Kelleher said. “Investors are comfortable paying that because they believe in the growth story. They see Hermès opening and they want in before it’s too late.”
The pitch is simple: Williamsburg is young, wealthy and plugged-in. It’s one subway stop from Manhattan, three from Union Square, and it’s loaded with restaurants, bars, hotels and cultural cachet. Tourists flock there, and young families are raising their children there.
“Williamsburg has always been one of our mission-critical markets,” A.J. Levine of Acadia Realty Trust said. “It’s like M Street in D.C. or the Gold Coast in Chicago. Coming out of Covid, we’ve seen an acceleration of leasing because brands want to go direct-to-consumer. That means brick and mortar, and Williamsburg is where their customers live.”
Acadia has purchased seven retail buildings in the neighborhood since 2024.
Empire State Realty Trust has snapped up eight retail buildings along North 6th in the past two years, including the building where Hermès inked a long-term lease with the previous landlord. ESRT’s Frank Posniak said the firm is in talks with other high-end tenants.
”How often do you have an opportunity to be the largest single landlord in a prime retail strip?” Posniak said. “It’s a great curation now, but we’re able to improve on that. The days of the tattoo parlor and the dive bar, that’s not there anymore.”
Identity shopping
For many retailers, opening in Williamsburg isn’t just about sales — it’s about identity.
“Williamsburg is a brand,” said Joseph Hudson, a broker at CBRE. “Retailers want to associate themselves with it. It’s aspirational. It’s a lifestyle.”
Most brands that open in Williamsburg already have Manhattan outposts, and Williamsburg gives their portfolio a cool factor. That explains why Abercrombie & Fitch, once a mall staple, chose Williamsburg for a stylish reboot.
“Consistently, the conversation starts at the CEO level,” CBRE’s Hudson said. “The boss calls the real estate director and says, ‘What about Williamsburg?’ That’s how important it’s become.”
Luxury retailers are scrambling for a piece of the action, competing for a small number of spaces.
“It’s about cultivating the next generation of customers,” Levine said. “Get them while they’re in their 20s and 30s, then watch them become your Madison Avenue client later.”
RTL broker Michael Shkreli said that his firm tracked shoppers on North 6th and found that they were coming from the suburbs as well as from nearby high-rises.
“People that live in these rental and condo buildings are definitely part of the picture,” Shkreli said. “But it was interesting for us to see people coming from Long Island to Williamsburg as opposed to going all the way into Soho.”
The brands — and their landlords — are also after Gen Z.
“You have access to what is now considered the most influential consumer base in the country, which is affluent millennials and Gen Zs, who are driving all this culture,” ESRT’s Alec Stone said. “They spend with intention, and I think that’s really why these brands are migrating to [North] 6th Street.”
But generational quirks are forcing the new businesses to think critically about what their presence in the neighborhood looks like. “Luxury brands are trying to figure out how to speak to the Williamsburg customer,” O’Donnell said. “If they can incorporate vintage, capsule collections, collaborations — that sense of individuality — it works. But Williamsburg isn’t Madison Avenue. It’s not about cookie-cutter luxury.”
The verdict
Retail is still cyclical, and what happens in the next downturn will test Williamsburg’s durability.
“In good times, brand decisions work,” Hudson said. “When there’s a correction, the question becomes: Can these stores make money? That’s when you separate the hype from reality.”
But for now, Williamsburg is white-hot.
“Who knows where it goes from here?” O’Donnell said. “But the neighborhood just keeps maturing. And right now, it’s one of the most important retail markets in New York City — period.”
