Topshop signs lease for Fifth Avenue unit

British retail billionaire Philip Green is to step up the expansion of his Topshop/Topman brands in the United States with the opening of a flagship store on Fifth Avenue, New York, his Arcadia retail group said on Wednesday.

The 40,000 square foot Manhattan store is scheduled to open in the third quarter of this year on the corner of 49th Street, adjacent to the Rockefeller Center in a registered art deco building built by Henry Goelet in 1931.

Green has long sought a Fifth Avenue location.

It will be the Topshop brand's second largest store in the world after the 90,000 sq ft British flagship on the corner of London's Oxford and Regent Street.

Several hundred new jobs will be created both within retail and new U.S. head office operations based in New York.

Green will spend $40-50 million on fitting-out the new Manhattan store as well as on store openings in San Diego and Washington in 2014, and in Houston and Atlanta in 2015.

Details of the rent he is paying were not disclosed.

Topshop/Topman currently trades from four stores in the U.S., including a first New York store which opened in 2009, and also trades within Nordstrom department stores.

"Following the investment of Leonard Green & Partners in December 2012, it was always our plan to significantly expand Topshop and Topman in the U.S.," said Green.

Green sold a 25 percent stake to the U.S. private equity firm in a deal that valued the popular high street chain at 2 billion pounds ($3.26 billion).

Globally Topshop trades from around 500 stores, while Topman trades from about 400.