Storefront: Fashion retailer pivots from tenant to owner in Nolita

The founder of men's apparel and lifestyle brand ONS, which stands for One Nice Shirt, has bought the Nolita storefront he began leasing about five years ago for almost $8 million, records show.Brian Chung, who started the minimalist retailer in 2016 with a store in Hong Kong, scooped up the roughly 2,700-square-foot ground-floor commercial unit at 201 Mulberry St. for $7.8 million, according to a deed that appeared in the city register last week.Chung, who hails from a family embedded in the apparel manufacturing and textile development business in Hong Kong and signed for the purchase himself, opened his flagship Mulberry Street shop in August 2020 after the pandemic curtailed his plans to move from his original Greene Street location months earlier. ONS started as a menswear brand but has since expanded to include women's clothing, accessories and home goods.The commercial unit is on the first floor of a six-story building between Kenmare and Spring streets, which also contains seven residential apartments above it. The retail space was formerly owned by a partnership between real estate firms the Hakim Organization and Centaur Properties, both based in Midtown. The development companies had purchased the space for $8.3 million in 2014 through a limited liability company named after the address and sold it a decade later at about a half-million dollar loss, records show.Adam Brodsky, director of operations and development and co-general counsel at the Hakim Organization, confirmed that the two companies had sold the unit to Chung. He declined to say how much Chung was paying in rent for the last several years, but nearby retail space lists for between $190 and $300 per square foot, according to commercial real estate database LoopNet.James Kennedy, a partner at the Worldwide Plaza-headquartered law firm Wilk Auslander who is representing Chung, did not respond to a request for comment by press time, and attempts to reach Chung himself were unsuccessful.ONS is one of several high-end retailers that has made the jump from leasing to owning in recent months. Kering, the fashion firm that owns Gucci and Balenciaga, purchased 715-717 Fifth Ave. for $963 million earlier this year, and the French skin care company Caudalie acquired a SoHo retail property at 130 Greene St. for just under $10 million, Crain's reported in September.