Open Thread Wednesday 3/3/10

By on March 3, 2010 12:23 am in Brooklyn Heights

Heights Blizzard II-Columbia Heights

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  • nabeguy

    traitor, you talk about dictatorships, and yet post under a name that is the life-blood of any one of them. I’m confused.

  • Matthew Parker

    @anony: Spice Market

  • nabeguy

    Matthew, totally.

  • mike

    While I also bemoan the lack of small retailers on Montague St and the cell phone / real estate agent / fast food / bank requirement to be on the block, it is silly to blame the vacancies and chain stores on “greedy landlords” as people on this blog have repeatedly resorted to.

    Smaller independent stores do better in other neighborhoods (and on Atlantic Ave) simply because rents are cheaper. That is a function of location, not of greed. A neighborhood where property is expensive will, by definition, require higher rents so that people will buy properties and achieve a return. This is like whining about there not being enough “artist housing” in the Heights.

    It is an expensive neighborhood to live in, why should commercial rents be any different? There is a laundry list of small neighborhood stores that I would love to see in the area, but I have a feeling that even if we had them, most of the people in Brooklyn Heights wouldn’t go to them anyway. Just look at the experience of Abitare.

    Also worth remembering, a lot of these “greedy landlords” are actually us, through condo boards that dictate terms of the retail properties on the ground floor.

  • Harry K

    @mike

    I’m going to assume you’re right and that you know much more about the BH retail problem than I do. (I don’t think you explained the downright poor quality of so many of the restaurants, however, and I like my government-lunch-trade deconstruction.) So answer these two questions (I’m not being snide – I really want to know the answers):

    1. Since BH has been an expensive neighborhood (relative to others in the borough) for many decades, why was it able to support many small independent merchants through the 80’s, or so I’m told?

    2. More ditrectly to the point – why doesn’t Park Slope, which has to be as expensive as BH, have the same retail problem we do?

  • tb

    KJ-Thank you for your help. Love to see that photo if not too much trouble!

  • AAR

    A couple of thoughts about the vitality of Park Slope’s commercial district- (1) PS has a larger population than the Heights and (2) it is farther from Manhattan. The blessing and bane of BH is our close proximity to Manhattan.

  • The Where

    The palate of the daytime dweller of downtown is unrefined and dare I say unevolved. A nugget from Popeye’s is sheer delight for these knuckledraggers and wannabe street poets. And lest you forget the sublime pleasure they derive from feeding their offspring big macs, french fries and high fructose corn syrup. So imagine the dilemma this poses to any real chef trying to open a business on Montague Street. These people think shallots are just a name of a very old movie critic.

  • my2cents

    Mike, it’s not the landlords are greedy so much as shortsighted. If you talk about the market dictating rents and then look at rows of vacant stores, it indicates one thing and one thing only: Rents are too high for the market to bear in Brooklyn Heights. Also, believe it or not, landlords do have a choice of who they rent to. So I feel justified in criticizing landlords who rent to cel phone shops and other businesses that add little value to our streetscape. If they thought about Montague as a holistic business district and chose tenants accordingly (as people in other places have) then you could see a real “culture” of retail and restaurants develop instead of this piecemeal approach where each space is just going to whoever plunks down the biggest pile of cash. Given our economic situation, that mentality is a sure fire road to hell for Montague and will only result in more and more vacancies. As for the building at Cranberry and Henry, I just have no idea what those people are thinking. Can they at least let a nonprofit arts group use those empty spaces temporarily or SOMETHING? It’s so depressing.

  • jorale-man

    I think the best hope for Montague Street is a more varied and upscale mix of chain stores. Rents are too high for quirky/interesting little shops like Abitare but that does leave open the possibility of higher-end chains – a Godiva or a L’Occitane or even a Barney’s outlet. I could see it becoming a smaller-scale version of say, Columbus Avenue in the W. 70s or Madison in the E. 80s. Not saying that’s so great either, but it beats empty storefronts.

  • Harry K

    @AAR I fear you might be right about the Manhattan issue. Sometimes i feel that many who live in Brooklyn Heights and work in Manhattan basically just think of BH as a crash pad – certainly if they are well-heeled enough to have weekend vacation houses.

    @my2cents and @Mike I think my2cents response was eloquent and I throw my vote in with him/her. Mike, isn’t the logical implication of your argument, when followed through, that no reasonably affluent neighborhood could possibly have an interesting and vital retail area, because only franchises with deep pockets could afford the corresponding commercial rents? I’m not willing to accept that there are no alternative universes here.

  • my2cents

    jorale-man, I agree with your aspiration, but the failure of Korres seems to undermine the idea of high end chains populating the strip there.

  • nabeguy

    I agree with you too jorala-man, but it’s 2010. Why do landlords think that the same dynamics from the 80’s and 90′ can be applied to the current marketplace? We’re mired in a stay-ession, yet they’re still holding out for the big pay-off, regardless of the source and the impact it has on the neighborhood. As a former commercial landlord in the Village, I consider myself lucky to have seen the handwriting on the lease and decided that the wisest thing to do was sell the building rather than make a sucker bet on returns that were so far off that I’d be lucky if they were enough to cover my funeral expenses.

  • AEB

    My2, I’m afraid (and regret) that landlords–most of them–aren’t in the least civic-minded, don’t care about participating in a community-supportive effort to improve business locations as a whole.

    What they’re interested in is the bottom line, and can, depressingly, afford to hold out until a tenant comes along who can pay what is asked.

    Of course, as more and more stores become vacant, the area becomes less desirable/attractive as a place in which to do business, thus frustrating the possibility of finding those deep-pockets tenants. Maybe this is your point.

    It’s been said lots of times, but again, Montague is IN BH but not really OF it. Surely store renters there set their business sights on the adjacent daytime working community rather than on “the locals.”

    The situation of vacant stores at Cranberry and Henry is a different matter–and really depressing.

  • mike

    @ Harry and My2cents. I think you have valid points and I don’t believe that retail in high rent areas is not possible (look at times square). There are obviously many more factors which, in an attempt to keep a post to less than three paragraphs I left out. The true point of my initial post is better rephrased as this: The reason why we have bad tenants and a lot of empty space in BH is not because of the high rents (charged by those greedy landlords), it is because of neighborhood specific reasons (many of which have been raised already). Because of this, Montague St. defaults to what easily works in a high rent environment. Convenience Shopping. Notice that the majority of the businesses on Montague St. are absolutely about convenience and not differentiation (banks, cell phone stores, real estate agents). Montague st is not a shopping destination, it is a place where people have to go to get errands done. It has nothing to do with high rents.

    For local retail to work in a high rent environment (as you cite in Park Slope), the place has to differentiate itself as a shopping destination. If all the empty storefronts on Montague st turned into quirky local retailers tomorrow, maybe others would be attracted to the remaining spaces. But seeing as that is not going to happen, most single small retailers that take the chance will go out of business, Montague St. just doesnt draw that crowd. Again, I think the high rents are pretty irrelevant.

    Regarding landlords having the ability to choose their tenants, this is a non-argument. In a magical world without taxes, mortgages, employees, health insurance, and the need to put food on the table, I am sure that many landlords would be very focused on holding out for a more “local” tenant. But the reality is that when AT&T comes knocking, you know that they will do the sales needed to pay the rent, you know that if they run into trouble they have deep pockets to cover shortfalls, and you know that they will be around in ten years (likely as a different merged company of some sort) at the end of your lease.

  • jorale-man

    Interesting points, Mike. I also wonder whether the size of the storefronts on Montague plays a role in the vacancies. Many of them seem too small for another Duane Reade or bank branch, but are too expensive for something quirky and local. So it’s neither hear nor there.

    It would be nice if the Montague business improvement district could exert a greater role in the situation. Consider districts like Bleeker or Hudson Streets in the West Village, which have a similar scale of storefronts and a fairly similar demographic BUT which are much more interesting and local in character. Or as I mentioned, Columbus Ave. People in those areas have a need for convenience shopping too but have managed to get a more varied mix of stores as well.

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