May 2, 2008

Bird Blog: Week 1

We've documented home renovations and ground-up developments on Brownstoner so far, but never a store. That changes today with the first installment of the Bird Blog. Jennifer Mankins, owner of Park Slope- and Cobble Hill-based stores Bird, is just embarking on her most ambitious retail effort yet, a 2,500-square-foot space on Grand Street in Williamsburg. (She'll have lots of help from her project manager/sister Stephanie and architect Ole Sondresen.) The space is three times bigger than her two existing stores and, although it has some great bones, is going to need a lot of work. With that, we'll hand it over to Jen for the first installment of what will be a weekly Friday feature on the blog until, well, until opening day.

A self-confessed fashion and real estate junkie, I am always plotting and planning new branches and outposts of the store – baby bird, green bird, bird dog, birdhouse, birdbath. My current stores, both located in typical 20’x40’ townhouses, are approximately 800 square feet, and I carry over 100 women’s designers. You can do the math. There just isn’t any extra space for adding new products. So I started thinking bigger. Instead of opening five separate small stores, why not put everything under one roof – a one-stop shop for the urban Brooklyn family?

My planning showed I would need at least 2000 square feet, and I knew I would probably have the best chance of finding a space that size in an area with an industrial history like Dumbo, Williamsburg, or even Manhattan. I’d already spent a good deal of time trying to make something work in Dumbo, and gone round and round with every major developer there including Walentas, Guttman and Boymelgreen. Nothing ever worked out. So I followed a few leads in Manhattan, including a dream space on Orchard and Broome, a generic storefront on Grand and Mercer, even an old church in Chinatown. Earnest Sewn beat me to the punch for Broome Street, and the jaw-dropping prices of everything else I saw in Manhattan left me feeling a bit woozy. Try keeping a straight face when a broker tells you the asking rent is $360,000 per year!

This left Williamsburg. I saw a promising listing on Craig’s List for a 2,500-square-foot space on Grand Street, but in a typical bit of real estate cat-and-mouse, the broker wouldn’t disclose an exact location. We booked a meeting for the next afternoon and I found myself looking at a former spa with a striking iron façade. I loved the exterior, and wouldn’t need to install a new storefront, a big plus. The interior was another story. It was full of peach painted drywall, awful etched glass, fluorescent lighting and two, that’s right, two Styrofoam dropped ceilings. I didn’t even want to think about how much the demo would cost. On the other hand there were extremely high ceilings, beautiful clearstory windows, a 1,250-square-foot extension with three functioning industrial skylights, and a second, beautiful storefront on North 1st Street. Not to mention a perfect, never-been-used cedar sauna! It wasn’t hard to see the potential. Even the basement, flooded with natural light from glass sidewalk panels, with its decrepit doors, vaulted brick ceilings and exposed stone support walls was just dreamy. I couldn’t believe it. All this and seemingly very cool landlords? There must be a catch. I just kept reminding myself of one of my father’s favorite sayings, “It’s not the good deals you miss that hurt you, it’s the good deals you get.”

More photos on the jump...

Posted by Brownstoner at 11:33 AM | Comments (23)
Categories: Renovation, Streetlevel, Williamsburg

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