High Rents Killing Montague Street
With a high concentration of wealthy residents and plenty of nearby businesses, Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights should be a vibrant retail strip but it appears to be a victim of its own overinflated sense of self-worth: Eight storefronts on the five-block stretch are now vacant, victims, The Daily News reports, of too-high rents. “The…
With a high concentration of wealthy residents and plenty of nearby businesses, Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights should be a vibrant retail strip but it appears to be a victim of its own overinflated sense of self-worth: Eight storefronts on the five-block stretch are now vacant, victims, The Daily News reports, of too-high rents. “The common denominator is high rent,” said the Brooklyn Heights Association’s Judy Stanton. “Little businesses will come here if they think they can make a profit, but it handicaps itself with the high rent.” Recent casualties include Heights Books (which is moving to Smith Street), Blue Rose and Spicy Pickle, which by all accounts wasn’t any good anyway. Do you think landlords are going to get a clue?
Montague Street Hitting the Wall [NY Daily News]
Photo by tosca2002
-> daveinbedstuy
Thanks. Aside from doing errands on Court Street, I’ve not spent much quality time on Montague Street recently.
Your remarks and those from anyone else who spends a significant amount of time in the area are appreciated.
Hannible only goes where the short bus takes him.
starpower, I’m not trying to be snarky here, but I think this is exactly what is happening…the market forces are at work and those businesses which are unsuitable are folding.
hannible,
“In reality it has always been a landing runway for young business hippies that immigrate here from other places not having a clue about business but having a sturdy shoulder because of mommy and daddy’s wallet back home. They open up their new hippie style stores and so what if they pay too much rent and don’t make a profit! They have mommy and daddy sending them a check every month. They are so proud of their children. After all they have a business!”
You have OBVIOUSLY never visited Montague Street.
About seven or eight years ago, I wandered into a convenience store on Montague Street and experienced a Rip Van Winkle moment. A bar with sidewalk cafe tables had been at that location for many years, and I’d asked the man behind the front counter when it had closed (and when had the convenience store opened).
The man told me that he had been the owner of the bar and that he made the transition about 12 or 15 months beforehand.
He said that the cost of living in the neighborhood had changed. The bar’s clientele had moved out of the neighborhood, and a new demographic of people had moved in.
“The area used to be populated by writers and schoolteachers, and they liked to go out on weeknights,” he said. (Indeed, I remembered the times that I had met Brooklyn Heights-area friends for a burger there any evening of the week but especially on weeknights.)
“Now, families and lawyers are living around here. They don’t really go out. They stay at home.”
Montague Street may have something in common with upper Madison Avenue, which also has many newly vacant street-level retail properties.
However, it would be interesting if someone would address the general compatibility of the retailers and the current Brooklyn Heights-area population. Are they a good match, or they ill-suited to one another?
I seem to remember reading a thread either here or on Brooklynian that centered on the same situation on 7th Avenue in Park Slope. There was reference in that thread to certain anomalies in NYC tax laws that supposedly make leaving a storefront unoccupied a comparatively minor financial pain to a landlord, thus encouraging him to hold out for a long term lease at a higher rent than would currently appear viable for a retailer. Anyone know whether this is really the case and, if so, the details of this (what would amount to a) commercial landlord subsidy?
In reality it has always been a landing runway for young business hippies that immigrate here from other places not having a clue about business but having a sturdy shoulder because of mommy and daddy’s wallet back home. They open up their new hippie style stores and so what if they pay too much rent and don’t make a profit! They have mommy and daddy sending them a check every month. They are so proud of their children. After all they have a business!
Sounds like a lot of small businesses have made faulty assumptions in their projections for their income model and balance sheet. What else is new??
Every business understands that its biggest expense is the rent. Before they open for business they have done the math. They came to the conclusion that with all the expenses they should be able to make a profit.
They are quick to blame the landlords when the economy has taken a turn for the worst. Its the business model that they follow and the poor economy that has led them to close. The book store mentioned can’t possibly expect the landlord to keep the rent the same as it was 10 years ago. Operating expenses for a building went up a great amount since then.
………before you know it, they will expect the city to regulate commercial rents!