Editor’s Note
This article highlights a notable concentration of high-profile commercial activity on Madrid’s prestigious Golden Mile, underscoring the area’s enduring appeal to global luxury brands.
Three significant moves in a single premises on Madrid’s Golden Mile: the opening of the Balenciaga store, the landing of the luxury watchmaker Richard Mille in Spain, and the sale of that property by the owner once leased to these two brands. This concerns the boutique located at number 10 Ortega y Gasset street, which will host these changes and could be one of the major transactions of the year in what the real estate sector calls high street.
The fund AXA Investment Management (recently acquired by the French group BNP Paribas) has commissioned the consultancies Cushman & Wakefield and CBRE to handle the transfer of this commercial property located on the traditional luxury street of the Spanish capital. Sources consulted indicate that the seller aims to pocket around 70 million euros from the transaction, which would be a very significant amount for a single street-level store on a commercial axis.
The move for AXA began with the departure of the jewelry brand Tiffany & Co from that premises located at 10 Ortega y Gasset (a street located in the heart of the Salamanca district). This brand moved a few meters away, to a store on the corner of Serrano, the other luxury axis of Madrid.
After Tiffany & Co’s departure, Axa sought new tenants for the premises and found two interested brands, so it divided the space. Firstly, it has opened the Balenciaga business (from the Kering group), in its first street-level store in Madrid, as the current sales point for this brand, which originates from the Basque designer Cristóbal Balenciaga, is located inside the El Corte Inglés of Nuevos Ministerios.
The adjacent premises to be occupied by Richard Mille is currently under construction to prepare for the landing of the Swiss firm in Spain, one of the boutiques with the most expensive handcrafted watches on the market. For example, its RM UP-01 Ferrari model costs close to 1.8 million euros.
AXA is one of the major real estate investors in Spain. It recently carried out one of the major sales of the year by divesting the office building at number 5 Ramírez de Prado street (in the Méndez Álvaro neighborhood) leased to Amazon and the Community of Madrid, in addition to a logistics complex and industrial land. The buyers were IBA Capital Partners and the French firm Batipart, which paid around 300 million for the entirety of these properties.
The French firm has also invested in housing for rent. For example, at the beginning of the year, it was known that it had sold around 330 houses in the Madrid municipalities of Móstoles and Arroyomolinos to the insurer Zurich. It is also the owner of the Grand Hyatt Barcelona, recently acquired together with Blasson, from the Brookfield fund. In housing development, it has also partnered with the developer Neinor.
Among the relevant street-level operations this year is the acquisition by Fast Retailing (owner group of Uniqlo) of the flagship store of this Japanese brand at 37 Gran Vía (Madrid).
