Pearl River Mart To Add Chelsea Location

CHELSEA, NY — The popular store Pearl River Mart is opening a Chelsea location, two years after NYC shoppers worried that increasing rents had forced the brick-and-mortar shop out of the city forever.

The shop, which brands itself as the first Chinese-American department store, had been a Manhattan standby for food, home goods, clothing and more for decades. The store first opened in Chinatown in 1971 before moving to a spacious Soho address. After 15 years in Soho, Pearl River Mart's owners said that the storefront's rent had been increased fivefold, forcing them to move their retail business online in 2015. More than a year after closing its main Soho space, Pearl River found cheaper rents at a Tribeca location, and will be setting up shop in Chelsea Market in November.

The Tribeca location, located at 395 Broadway, opened in the renovated space earlier this year.

"Pearl River has been a number one pursuit the whole time we've owned the building, because it is fundamentally a New York business, a local business, a second-generation business," Michael Phillips, president of the company that owns Chelsea Market, told the Wall Street Journal, which was first to report the news.

Pearl River signed a 12-year lease on the 3,500-square foot space, according to the Journal. (For more information on this and other neighborhood stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

Image credit: Mary Altaffer / Associated Press. Caption: This Tuesday, April 14, 2015, photo shows the Pearl River Mart store on Broadway in the Soho neighborhood of Manhattan.