Shopping at Grand Central Madison is delayed again with stores not expected to open until 2026 — at the earliest — as the transit agency tries a new strategy to fill the empty retail spaces, MTA officials said Tuesday.
Transit officials said last April that they had begun their search for a “master tenant” to manage the LIRR terminal’s 25,000 square feet of retail space, and that a selection would be made by the start of this year.
“We’re hoping to see some stores slowly ramp up during the course of 2025, and probably by ’26 you’ll see a full complement of stores,” MTA’s head of real estate, David Florio, told reporters at the time.
Florio said Tuesday, however, that despite “really good faith negotiations” with an unnamed firm, “we just couldn’t get there” on an agreement to manage the whole space.
Instead, he said the MTA plans to make individual agreements with retailers to lease the 32 different storefronts that line the halls of the gleaming white concourse — a strategy the real estate czar says serves the transit agency well upstairs at Grand Central Terminal.
The glass storefronts of Grand Central Madison, the LIRR’s long-awaited eastern terminal, have been papered over by photos of generic shopping scenes since the concourse first opened in January 2023, with only a handful of kiosks selling to hungry straphangers.
A display at the station’s southern entrance Tuesday still sought to secure a large lessee.
“What would you do with 25,000 [sq. ft.] of retail space in the heart of NYC?” it asked, calling the called-off deal “a grand opportunity.”
Florio’s team opened applications for the first six retail locations on Friday, and proposals are due by mid-March. Applications to fill out the rest of the retail space will be opened in batches, Florio said. He estimated the first shops could open their doors by next year.
“Hopefully we’ll make 2026 a really good year of retail openings,” Florio said.
The MTA has already struck a deal with Tracks, the well-known Penn Station pub, which is set to open a Grand Central Madison location in June after supply-chain issues waylaid an expected Summer 2024 opening.
Meanwhile, retail above ground in Grand Central Terminal is returning to pre-pandemic levels — when all of the landmark train station’s retail locations were occupied — the MTA announced Tuesday.
Currently 81 of Grand Central Terminal’s 92 retail locations are occupied, up from 77 at the start of last year.
With Téa Kvetenadze
