New tenants are squeezing into one of Chicago’s top North Side retail avenues amid historically low vacancy, underscoring how the wealthiest urban areas are thriving despite broader economic worries.
Abercrombie & Fitch confirmed it plans to open a clothing store at 921 W. Armitage Ave. this summer.
Another clothing brand, Marine Layer, said it will move a few doors down from its current store to new space at 825 W. Armitage Ave. by the end of June.
Other recent additions to the street include New York-based jeweler Catbird, Vernon, California-based clothing brand Rails and one of the initial U.S. shops for U.K.-based chocolatier Hotel Chocolat.
Those retailers gobbled up limited spaces on the stretch of Armitage between Halsted Street and Sheffield Avenue in Lincoln Park, where retail vacancy fell to 4.3% in 2024, down from 6.4% the previous year, according to Stone Real Estate.
Vacancy could fall to nearly zero this year on the street where many buildings are more than a century old, according to a report on top North Side shopping corridors by the Chicago retail brokerage.
The latest deals follow a wave of e-commerce companies such as Warby Parker, Allbirds, Black Tux and Bonobos flocking to Armitage.
Traditional retailers such as New Albany, Ohio-based Abercrombie, long a staple in shopping malls, also have been elbowing into an area where household incomes have doubled over the past 15 years, according to the Stone report.
San Francisco-based Marine Layer is moving to its new 1,200-square-foot space, where stationery store All She Wrote recently closed. The planned relocation comes after New York’s Levain Bakery struck a deal with Acadia to take over Marine Layer’s current space at 849 W. Armitage later this year.
Marine Layer’s new store with another landlord is expected to open by the end of June, a spokesperson said in an email to CoStar News.
An Abercrombie spokesperson said in an email that its store will open sometime this summer. It is replacing the Chicago Bar Store, which closed last year.
Abercrombie has leased the 2,900-square-foot space at 921 W. Armitage for five years, with a five-year extension option, according to Brian O’Donnell of Armitage Properties, a decades-long landlord on and around the street whose patriarch Dan O’Donnell died in 2021.
Brian O’Donnell said his family is frequently approached by retailers looking for available space, even as rents have soared well above $100 per square foot for some top spaces on the street.
“As all these national brands have come in, it’s pushed up the rents,” he said. “The demographic is their customer base. It’s good for landlords, but some mom and pops can’t afford to stay.”
The jockeying for space on Armitage stands in contrast to the city’s best-known shopping corridor, the Magnificent Mile, which is slowly regaining its footing after the effects of COVID-19, high-profile store closures and other challenges.
High-end luxury on Oak and Rush streets south of Armitage and boutique shopping to the north on Southport Avenue — where vacancy was zero each of the past two years, according to the Stone report — also have stood out in Chicago.
“Some of these boutique streets like Southport and Armitage are about as hot as they’ve been in years,” Colliers International broker Chris Irwin said.
Similar trends are playing out in higher-income neighborhoods throughout the country, according to the largest property owner on Armitage, Acadia Realty Trust.
The Rye, New York-based real estate investment trust’s tenants in Chicago’s Gold Coast and Armitage markets, along with New York’s SoHo and M Street in Washington, D.C., saw double-digit sales growth in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period in 2024, said A.J. Levine, Acadia’s senior vice president of leasing and development, earlier this week in a call with analysts.
That is despite continued inflation, higher interest rates and more recent worries about the effects of tariffs imposed on several countries by President Donald Trump.
“Our core customer is a high earning, gainfully employed homeowner that has consistently proven to be the most resilient and best equipped demographic to absorb price increases, whether those increases are driven by inflation or tariffs or otherwise,” Levine said, according to a transcript of the call. “And so far, the data shows that our shopper continues to spend.”
Levine said Rails described its recent Armitage opening as its strongest ever.
“And so far, the store is exceeding even their wildest expectations,” he said.