From the April issue: Through the years, Seventh Avenue in Park Slope has been something of a model retail corridor.
In a neighborhood that prides itself on shopping locally and eschewing national chains, residents have enjoyed that the 17-block stretch between Flatbush Avenue and Ninth Street in particular was packed with a slew of mom-and-pop shops, local restaurants and trendy boutiques.
And as the strip grew in popularity over the decades, landlords could count on keeping their ground-floor spaces filled fairly easily — at increasingly robust rents.
But in the last year, a wave of closures has resulted in a patchwork of dark storefronts, the likes of which have not been seen for decades, residents and brokers say. [more]
