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They’re falling fast, folks. Everybody must be eating in, because another restaurant is down, this one the delicious Israeli cuisine of Miriam on 229 Court Street. PMFA notes that they’ve still got a Park Slope location, at 79 5th Avenue. Better go get some grilled haloumi cheese to show your support. GMAP
Photo from PMFA.


What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. There are a lot of empty storefronts of that stretch of Court. I agree that some of these landlords may have overshot rent-wise and now have to sit with empty spaces. Blockbuster (huge and not typical), the paint store, Shakespeare’s Garden, now Miriam, soon Margaret Palka, the old OTB (what is going on there for years?), Cafe C at Kane, The dry cleaner, etc…

  2. I personally know a few landlords in Williamsburg who have owned their old storefronts for decades and are free and clear. Every one of them had old and reliable tenants paying faithfully every month, but over the past 2 years they upped their rents to what everyone else was getting and finally put the old businesses under. I watched a couple new businesses try to start up but they failed in 3 months or so. It’s really hard to net 10K a month just for rent, then cover operating costs, payroll, and other expenses and try to actually bring home a paycheck for yourself. Unless you’re a chain and can afford to run a store in the red just to have a presence in an area and let your other stores in other areas of the country make up the difference (is chain coffee shops, cell phone stores, etc – like WTerraceGirl said), you’re going to see a lot more stores and restaurants go under because of greed. The landlords I know seem to think that it’s ok for their stores to sit empty because what they netted in 2 years would have been more than 5 years would have brought otherwise. I tell them just wait until the whole neighborhood returns to what it was in the 90’s with whole blocks of empty storefronts, busted windows, squatters, druggies, fires. Then they won’t be able to rent them for $100 month. They will have no-one but themselves to blame, and we will all have to live in the ghetto again with all the crime and gang crap that used to go on here. Ah the old Williamsburg. It sucked then and will suck again before long, and I am not as young as I used to be when I could run home from the subway at night trying not to get jumped.

  3. “Can the landlords afford their mortgages, taxes, building maintenance without charging such rents?”

    The answer is as well as they could when they first rented the space a mere year or two ago. Landlords see other landlords commanding a higher rent and they want a piece of the pie. Simple as that.

    W’burguy, I’m with you. They’ll see what their greed gets them. It’s another shedding that is happening right now and the landlords will regret their choice to be greedy. And we’ll all regret that they made that choice because we’ll be surrounded by cell phone stores, chain “coffee shops”, and real estate agencies.