Streetlevel: Miriam on Court Doesn't Make It
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.
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.
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…
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.
“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.
“It’s partly the fault of people eating in, but more the fault of greedy landlords who have raised the price of rent for commercial spaces like this to a level that businesses just cannot support in a flat or down economy.”
Can the landlords afford their mortgages, taxes, building maintenance without charging such rents? Seems like the whole point of this downturn is that people overextended themselves. So if you need a certain rent to make your loan payments, then you have to get that rent.
It’s partly the fault of people eating in, but more the fault of greedy landlords who have raised the price of rent for commercial spaces like this to a level that businesses just cannot support in a flat or down economy. As incomes and the economy in general have been falling over the past year (or more) landlords have been increasing rent equally or more as fast. What would be the rent on this space today? $10,000/mo? higher? You have to sell a hell of a lot of food, misc merchandise, etc to pay those kinds of rents, and it has become this way all over the city in the past couple years. What would this have rented for 3-4 years ago? 1/4 the current price? Once all the landlords putting everyone out of business are sitting on empty buildings and vandals and squatters take them over, maybe they will think twice about those asking rents and let someone move in who can actually make a business and survive. Until then, hopefully the landlords will go bankrupt for they way they have been so greedy. What goes around comes around.
fine by me, that place was wayyyy over price. buhbye!
the issue isn’t the consumer so much as it is the supply chain. there is no short term credit right now from suppliers or banks. unless of course you are a bank and can issue debt backed by the govt and then use that money to buy treasuries. what is our country coming to?
I never use restaurant closings as economic barameter.
Even in best of times the chance of success of restaurant is pretty dismal. Better to by lottery tix than invest in that business.
This one was always inferior to the one on 5th Avenue.
Not sure why.