Nostrand Ave: Many Hair Salons, No Cafés
Back in 2007, the New York Sun ran an article with the title Retailers So Far Fail To Follow Homebuyers to North Crown Heights. From the article: While homebuyers see the area’s potential, new businesses are proving harder to attract. Along Nostrand, for example, many stores have old facades and rundown signs. Graffiti covers the…
Back in 2007, the New York Sun ran an article with the title Retailers So Far Fail To Follow Homebuyers to North Crown Heights. From the article:
While homebuyers see the area’s potential, new businesses are proving harder to attract. Along Nostrand, for example, many stores have old facades and rundown signs. Graffiti covers the security gates over the storefronts. While heavy on nail and hair salons and barbershops, the commercial strip lacks basic services such as a bank branch. “People are buying nice homes and spending good money and there are no services,” a project coordinator for the North Crown Heights Merchants Association, who is a sales agent with Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate, Barbara Brown-Allen, said. “They don’t know the spending power that’s here.”
A year and a half later, the blog Nostrand Park decided to try to put some numbers to that assertion by doing a store-by-store analysis of the retail options on Nostrand Avenue between Eastern Parkway and Atlantic Avenue. The five most represented categories were Hair/Braiding Salons (13%), Variety Shops (11%), Caribbean Take-Out (10%), Bodegas/Delis (8%) and Nail Salons (5%). On the flip side, the survey found that there was not a single dine-in restaurant, café, book store or art store on the entire strip.
Nostrand Avenue North Retail Survey [Nostrand Park]
Photo by filmlynx
NOP, thank you for the well written post.
You know, I’m actually quite surprised since the What has always been so shy and reticent about his feelings. I would hope he holds nothing back and doesn’t think to spare our feelings. We expect nothing less 🙂
that would be the most-read column. good reading too
“I would like to start a column called “Get The Fuck Out Of Here”!
I will expose my true feelings of the Asshead movement of Covert Race/Class warfare and the incessant whining of the Retards! Plus I will expose the Poser Broke Assed Hipster Clique!”
I’d read it…
Awww, What- such lovely sentiments.Thanks for sharing.
Some areas of Brooklyn seem under-yuppified while others (Fort Greene) go over the top. A nice balance of old, new, low, and high would make everyone happy.
Oh, and ladies, I’m sure you’ll be happy to know you can get your hat needs met in Williamsburg, which is now home to two new hat stores. Here is one. I cannot wait to wear the feather hats in slide 4 whilst sweeping the sidewalk:
http://nymag.com/daily/fashion/2009/05/ryan_wilde_will_customize_your.html#
“I think Mr. B should start a column called “Growing Up in the Nabe” and let people write about what it was like growing up in the different neighborhoods. Of course growing up in the Bronx automatically rules me out 🙁 but we have so many posters who can really paint a vivid picture of Brooklyn life- NOP, ENY, What, Cobblehiller, etc.”
I would like to start a column called “Get The Fuck Out Of Here”!
I will expose my true feelings of the Asshead movement of Covert Race/Class warfare and the incessant whining of the Retards! Plus I will expose the Poser Broke Assed Hipster Clique!
The What (Move to Park Slope Posers)
Someday this war is gonna end…
M4L – It’s all relative. Just because a specialty shops charges more than a bodega for coffee and people happen to be hanging out there doesn’t mean that they will not do volume. You have a point that $4 lattes will not fly on Nostrand, but a coffee shop similar to many than have taken root in cheaper priced neighborhoods can easily get away with charging twice as much as the corner bodega for superior products and inviting environs. My point is simply that the demand is there for, gasp, $1.50 medium coffees. . . . . .
thanks, Wont UB 🙂