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Some of the most famous images of New York City line Fifth Avenue like picture postcards hanging on display. Within just the 10-block stretch from Sak's Fifth Avenue to the Plaza Hotel are buildings and stores that New Yorkers and tourists alike perceive as solid symbols of Manhattan.
Yet block by block on that elegant half-mile one institution after another is in transition. Some of the city's best-known businesses are among those moving, expanding, finding new owners or seeking space on Fifth Avenue.
Unlike other neighborhoods, however, in which commercial tenant turnover significantly alters the area's character, on Fifth Avenue's "Gold Coast" the more things change, the more they seem to remain virtually the same.
"Fifth Avenue is the major shopping thoroughfare in New York now," says Ira Neimark, chairman of Bergdorf Goodman, "and will be in the future."
That Fifth Avenue mystique did, however, suffer some from the late 1970s to mid-1980s, with the arrival of shops that should be called Perpetual Clearance Electronics and rug stores that mainly sell souvenir T-shirts. But real estate experts say, north of Sak's especially, the combination of today's high retail asking rents (upwards of $300 per square foot) and demand for a Fifth Avenue address by tonier tenants will eventually eliminate those discount retailers once their leases expire.
"There's still some improvement needed here and there, but in my 43 years here things have never looked better," says Michael Grosso, executive vice president of the Fifth Avenue Association,...