Manhattan’s most famous shopping districts now hold a wildly outsized share of the borough’s empty storefronts, the Manhattan Institute newsletter The Bigger Apple argued in its February 6 edition, drawing on figures attributed to the Real Estate Board of New York to make the case that the old model of the “retail corridor” no longer works in an era when shoppers are glued to their phones.

Citing a New York Post report from that week, the newsletter said that Upper Fifth Avenue, Times Square, Herald Square and the Financial District together make up a relatively small portion of Manhattan’s overall retail inventory yet, according to REBNY, account for 60 percent of all the borough’s available storefronts and carry the most vacancies of more than 10,000 square feet. The newsletter presented those figures as the Post’s and REBNY’s findings rather than as its own reporting.