Goodbye, Teresa’s?

By on September 5, 2019 10:42 pm in Commercial Real Estate, Restaurants

Thanks to reader AbbeyK we have a link to a real estate ad that lists 80 Montague Street, Teresa’s Restaurant, as for lease. If it is leased to a new tenant, your correspondent may have to go far afield – Greenpoint?; East Village? – to get his tripe soup and kielbasa fix. Moreover, Brooklyn’s elite will have to find a new power breakfast spot. And what could afford the $18K/month rent the ad asks? Applebee’s? The Cheesecake Factory? The Olive Garden? God help us.

Say it ain’t so!

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  • A Neighbor

    That’s more than $500 a day for rent – before you even get to food and wages.

  • Jorale-man

    Very sad. Montague doesn’t have many restaurants with local character left. This would be another nail in the street’s coffin.

  • HeightsGuy77

    $18,000.00 a month, rent!?!?! It makes ZERO sense for any restaurant (or business) to pay that in that location.

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7nPOzGeyaw Arch Stanton

    You think that’s high? A friend of mine owns a restaurant in the west village, the rent is $45k a month. Teresas does a pretty good amount of business, it’s probably not too hard for them to make that nut.

  • Jane Van Ingen

    I have mixed feelings about Theresa’s. It’s the only place where I can get pierogies, but they don’t use seamless or grubhub, they won’t deliver in bad weather, and the service is crusty. But I also hate to see a restaurant that’s been part of BH for 20 years close. It will be hard to fill the space with the rent they’re asking for.

  • Heightsguy77

    Respectfully, I don’t care about your friend’s restaurant in the west village. And for you to make all the assumptions you need to make to come to the conclusion that 18k “isn’t too hard” for Teresa’s, pretty much ignores the major fact that they’re closing…
    I know you live in the neighborhood, as do I. That location is not prime by any means. From my view, Teresa’s has their regulars and then a few stragglers that wander in from the promenade, here and there. Definitely NOT a prime location.

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7nPOzGeyaw Arch Stanton

    I never said it was a PRIME location. I said based on the business Teresa’s does ( I’m a regular so I can see) they can pretty easily cover that rent. I was in the restaurant business so I also know rent isn’t the biggest overhead, labor and food are. Say an average of $20 a head 30 customers a day cover the rent, they easily cover ten times that a day. Anyway, it appears Teresa owns the building so the rent is what she wants to make, not what she is paying.

  • Andrew Porter

    A quick Internet search shows you can order using Grubhub and Seamless.

    And they have been there far longer than 20 years. Just called and they said 30 years, though I think it’s been longer.

    Frankly, it’s one of the very few restaurants I still patronize, now that Pica-Deli closed last century.

  • Jorale-man

    When you called, did they happen to confirm that they are closing? So far we don’t have any confirmation here that this is the case (though the real estate listing strongly hints as much).

  • CassieVonMontague

    Average yearly commercial rent on Montague St was $110 per square foot last year.

    https://www.rebny.com/content/rebny/en/research/retail/Summer_2018_Brooklyn_Retail_Report.html

    This space is priced at $98 per square foot and that’s not including the full basement and outdoor space. If you think these rents make zero sense, tell that to every commercial space on Montague that on average pays more.

  • Andrew Porter

    I stopped by today, and Teresa Brzozowska, the owner, confirmed that she is listing the restaurant on the real estate site.

    I asked her about leasing the place to someone else to run, and she asked me, “Are you interested?”

    She has been doing it for 30 years, and she’s tired. She told me she wants to spend more time with her husband.

    Don’t forget at one time she also had restaurants in the East Village, and in Forest Hills. Both closed long ago.

  • KXrVrii1

    So, are you interested?

  • Jorale-man

    Wow, good to know. Thanks for asking her. That will be sad to see that storefront sit empty. Having a restaurant there with sidewalk seating really keeps that stretch of Montague feeling at least somewhat vibrant.

  • Pierrepont

    Montague real estate is all completely insane. Top to bottom! Just watch a super-liquid, multi-national corporation like Starbucks halve the size of its Montague location, as they did a number of years ago. If THEY don’t have the money for the bigger space, who has a chance?

  • http://selfabsorbedboomer.blogspot.com/ Claude Scales

    I don’t think Starbucks’ move was rent related so much as they had a building owner who refused to properly maintain the space. The smaller space may have been the best thing available at the time. The space Starbucks vacated has remained vacant since, except for use as a storage area for Lassen & Hennigs next door.

  • Nomcebo Manzini

    Love (just for your referencing them) those FACTS, but you have to admit that the numbers are likely pulled way up by the many banks on “the first block.” Given what seems to me to be high turnover for restaurants – ok, maybe, it’s not any higher than elsewhere in Bklyn – on Montague, maybe, $100 p.s.f. is tougher to “cover” than might seem to be the case. (Equivalently, tabs aren’t at W. Village levels, nor – for many – is overall demand. Other than a beautiful day’s Sun. brunch, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a line ANYwhere on the several blocks.)

  • KXrVrii1

    So for some reason the mention of the old Starbucks place staying vacant for years reminded me of 194 Columbia Heights, the semi-abandoned multi-million dollar townhouse. (Probably because it seems both owners must be a bit crazy.)

    Googled it to see if anything had happened to it recently, and came across a detailed article about its history.

    The random thing that jumped out at me was one of the residents: Norman Dike, Jr. (the grandson of the original owner). He was an officer in EZ Company / 101st Airborne in WWII, the unit that was memorialized in the book and HBO series “Band of Brothers.” (Although in Norman’s case, not in a particularly flattering way – but far be it for me to criticize anyone who has served…)

    Link to article which has other colorful history.

    https://www.brownstoner.com/neighborhood/brooklyn-heights/the-story-behind-194-columbia-heights-in-brooklyn-heights/

  • Allen Swerdlowe

    I recently took my son to Teresa’s to celebrate his 30th birthday. It was there, or so I thought, that we took him 30 yers earlier at 1.5 days old to have brunch. It was a day to remember the moment shorty after his birth but something didn’t seem right. We called his mother in Norway who immediately corrected me and said that first lunch was at NoHo Star, which has also just recently closed. Very embarrassing. Nonetheless, we will miss Teresa’s.