By Amy Zimmer
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
This Miracle on Madison Avenue is not about Santa. It’s about shopping for luxury brands that are working together for charity.
The 24th annual event will be encouraging shopping on the famous street Sunday.
Free pedicab “sleighs” will be whisking shoppers from Coach, DKNY, Prada, Gucci and other participating stores that have pledged to donate 20 percent of Sunday’s sales to the Children’s Aid Society.
Another Miracle on Madison has been its real estate upswing. The tony retail corridor saw a “sharp decline” in the number of available storefronts and asking rents have improved modestly from a year ago, according to the Real Estate Board of New York’s fall 2010 report.
Madison Avenue — where space is less expensive than on upper Fifth Avenue — benefitted from stores migrating to a “high profile address at a more reasonable price,” the report said.
There were more than 20 vacant storefronts at Madison Avenue not too long ago, said Joanne Podell, an executive vice president at Cushman & Wakefield real estate firm. Now there are about six.
“It’s still a challenging economic time, but you’re seeing brands investing in the avenue, reinvesting in the avenue and expanding on the avenue,” said Matthew Bauer, president of the Madison Avenue Business Improvement District.
“Look at what Ralph Lauren has done on Madison and E. 72nd Street. It’s the first new building on Madison Avenue in many years. It shows the tremendous commitment from the New York brand to the avenue.”
Lauren has four separate boutiques on Madison, as well as its corporate headquarters.
“Madison Avenue is changing, but the ultimate character of the street has remained the same: a truly urbane location where you find the finest brands, but in a context that is true New York — vibrant and busy,” said Bauer.
Asking rents on Madison are already creeping upward, from $919 a square foot in fall 2009 to $1,049 this fall, a 14 percent increase, according to the REBNY report.
Since Martha Dupee and Noonie Marx, co-founders of the Madison Avenue Fund for Children, launched the Miracle on Madison event in 1987, it has raised $7 million for the charity.
Madison Avenue will be closed on Sunday to traffic from 63rd to 65th Streets — the only day of the year the street is closed.
