Upper East Side café inks 10-year deal for second location as dining restrictions end
By Eddie Small
June 22, 2021
A French café is doubling down on the Upper East Side in the wake of New York's lifting nearly all of its remaining pandemic restrictions. Bel Ami has signed a 10-year lease at 866 Lexington Ave. by East 65th Street. Asking rent was $210,000 per year, and the café will occupy 900 square feet in the building, including 200 square feet in the basement.
Vanessa Laplaud opened the café’s first location in 2010 at 30 E. 68th St. It serves salads, pastries, soups and sandwiches sourced from local French bakers and chefs, and it provides catering services for private jets and small picnics.
The luxury bedding store Casa Del Bianco previously occupied the space. The Beekman Estate, a corporation run by the descendants of 17th-century New Yorker William Beekman, purchased the building for $10.5 million in 2018, property records show.
Nicholas Judson of Judson CRE represented the building owner and the tenant in the deal. The building recently went through extensive renovations, and he credited these for helping get the deal done.
“By improving their spaces, we’ve seen landlords enticing prospective retail tenants and generating additional demand,” Judson said.
New York’s restaurants have had a particularly difficult time during the pandemic. The state placed multiple restrictions on the industry and reimposed a ban on indoor dining from December to mid-February. The state, however, has been gradually easing these restrictions since Valentine’s Day, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced on Tuesday that he was ending virtually all pandemic regulations in New York because 70% of adults had received at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.
Average retail asking rents have dropped in 16 of 17 Manhattan corridors year over year, according to the Real Estate Board of New York’s Spring 2021 Manhattan Retail Report. They dropped by 9% year over year in the three Upper East Side corridors the report examined, falling to $197 per square foot on Third Avenue between 60th and 72nd streets, $773 per square foot on Madison Avenue between 57th and 72nd streets and $311 per square foot on East 86th Street between Lexington and Second avenues.