Acupuncture Local has secured a new retail space at 4407 Broadway in Washington Heights, where the practice plans to open a treatment location for its patients. The deal adds another health and wellness tenant to a stretch of Upper Manhattan that brokers say is drawing steady interest from street-level businesses.
The lease was arranged by Meridian Capital Group, according to the New York Real Estate Journal, which reported that Noam Aziz and Carson Shahrabani represented Acupuncture Local as its tenant representatives. Lee & Associates represented the landlord, 189 Realty Corp., and the two firms negotiated the lease terms and brought the deal to signing, per the same report. The size, rent, and term of the lease were not disclosed.
Acupuncture Local provides acupuncture care and will use the new Broadway space as a treatment location for its patients, the outlet reports. Aziz said Acupuncture Local found a good fit on the Broadway stretch, and he noted that health and wellness users continue seeking street-level space in Upper Manhattan. He added that Meridian helped the practice secure a home on Broadway and said he appreciated working with Lee & Associates on the transaction.
Acupuncture Local’s website identifies Rosanna De La Cruz as a New York-licensed Doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine who completed graduate and doctoral training in the field. The practice also lists Lauren Cleary as a licensed acupuncturist with a master’s degree in Traditional Oriental Medicine. Those practitioner credentials add a clinical dimension to the business’s expansion from an online-consultation service to another neighborhood treatment location, as described on the practice’s staff page.
A Broader Manhattan Retail Rebound
The Washington Heights deal lands amid what the Real Estate Board of New York describes as a strong recovery in Manhattan's retail market, with momentum extending beyond traditional prime corridors. REBNY reported that average asking rents increased in eight of the 16 Manhattan retail corridors it tracks, and that demand is spreading into residential neighborhoods and emerging retail districts.
The city’s neighborhood-level storefront data offer a more localized measure than Manhattan-wide retail figures: in Washington Heights South, 9.4% of 1,077 tracked storefronts were vacant in the third quarter of 2024, down from 10.8% a year earlier. The Department of City Planning’s survey also recorded a 14.2% vacancy rate across Manhattan that quarter, underscoring how boroughwide averages can obscure differences between local commercial districts.
That tightening market shows up in the vacancy numbers too. Cushman & Wakefield reported that Manhattan's retail availability rate fell to a historic low of 9.8% in the third quarter of 2026, down 60 basis points from the prior quarter and 2.7% year over year. The firm also found that Manhattan's average ground-floor asking rent climbed to $730 per square foot in the third quarter, up 2.9% quarter over quarter and 5.2% year over year.
A CBRE report cited by Crain's New York Business found that the Upper East Side and Upper West Side were the two best-performing Manhattan neighborhoods for retail leasing in the third quarter, a sign that demand north of the traditional retail core has been building.
Precedent for Acupuncture Retail Deals Uptown
Acupuncture practices have found space along Upper Manhattan's commercial corridors before. In 2023, Body Mechanics Acupuncture leased 600 square feet at 2807 Broadway for about $160 per square foot, according to Traded. Meridian Capital Group brokers Ben Biberaj, Ben Howard and Damian Meehan represented both the landlord, Heller Realty, and the tenant in that earlier transaction.
Acupuncture Local's own site describes its practice, Washington Heights Wellness, as an integrative health care center that has offered online initial consultations to domestic and international patients for more than a decade.
Opening a treatment location also brings professional licensing requirements: New York State requires people practicing acupuncture, or using the title “licensed acupuncturist,” to hold a state license unless an exemption applies. Applicants must meet education and examination requirements, with the state recognizing approved professional programs or qualifying equivalent training. The rules are set out by the New York State Education Department’s Office of the Professions.
