Amazon Shops for Real Estate in New York City

Amazon is taking over an entire building on 34th Street across from the Empire State Building, according to construction and real estate executives, raising questions about just what the giant retailer is up to.

The property, at 7 West 34th Street, is 12 stories. The executives said Amazon would use the building for offices and a distribution center.

This week, Amazon abruptly pulled out of a deal for a large block of space at 1133 Avenue of the Americas.

The retailer has no brick-and-mortar presence in Manhattan or, for that matter, anywhere else. So the deal ignited intense speculation that perhaps Amazon was going to do something that has been endlessly rumored: open an old-fashioned store.

The prospect of a store was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

But whether there will be an Amazon store any time soon on 34th Street seems an open question.

The two retail outlets in the building, a Mango and an Express store, recently signed new leases. Juliana Ochoa, store manager at the Mango store, said the retailer had no plans to move out of its space. “I’ve never heard of Amazon coming here,” she said.

An Amazon spokesman declined to comment. Lisa Vogel, a spokeswoman for Vornado Realty Trust, which owns the building, did not return calls for comment.

The building, near Macy’s flagship store at Herald Square, has been undergoing major renovations since December, said Miriam Gonzalez, an employee at an import-export company there.

During the renovations, the front entrance was off limits to occupants, she said. But that entrance reopened about two weeks ago, installed with what looked like new metal detectors.

Ms. Gonzalez said that many tenants had moved out, but that other businesses, mostly corporate offices, remained on the upper floors.

An engineer at the building on Thursday said that there was a showroom space at the back of the building, which faces 35th Street, and that it was not in use. The doors and windows to what appeared to be that space looked as if they had been sealed for some time.

A distribution center would come with its own complexities. Companies have been moving their warehouses out of, not into, Manhattan for decades. Perhaps the delivery drones that Amazon says it is working on fit into the secret plans here. That would at least solve the traffic problems.

A stock of inventory in Manhattan could conceivably offer advantages, like same-day delivery of books, an area in which Barnes & Noble has tried to set itself apart.

Amazon’s opening of a physical store is one of those stories that is constantly the subject of speculation in the technology news media, similar to what the next iPhone will be like or what the iPhone after that will be like. The Journal’s report of a possible Amazon store immediately became the top article on the Techmeme site, which collects technology news.

Part of the fascination is the irony: The company that basically invented e-commerce would be acknowledging the virtues of old-fashioned shopping. Partly, also, it seems inevitable. For all their focus on the future, technology companies have been expanding to traditional retail for quite a while.

“There’s a growing realization that you can’t force customers to shop in just one way,” said Chris Donnelly, global managing director of retail strategy at Accenture, a consulting firm. “We’re in a world where the retailer can no longer dictate the shopping experience.”

The pioneer here was Apple, which has more than 400 stores worldwide. Microsoft has quietly followed, with more than 50.

Even Amazon has partnered with retail outlets for its Lockers, secure places that customers can pick up a purchase if they cannot get it delivered to their home. But the retailer has declined to make the sort of wholehearted commitment that its peers did.

As Radio Shack struggled recently to stay viable, there was speculation that Amazon would snap up the chain and infuse it with new life. It did not do so.

If one of the ground-floor retailers at the 34th Street property is bought out and the space does indeed become an Amazon outlet, the likeliest outcome is that it will be a showroom for Amazon’s hardware, including its respected Kindle line of tablets and e-readers and its unpopular Fire phone.

“It makes sense to have a physical showroom to let people see Amazon’s hardware products, particularly with the Kindle priced at $100,” said Colin Gillis, an analyst at BGC Partners. “You want to touch and see and feel these things.”