An outbreak of vacancies on prime commercial blocks in the heart of Park Slope has brokers and store owners questioning whether landlords’ high rents are to blame.
On one block between 2nd and 3rd streets along bustling Seventh Avenue, a sandwich shop, a used bookstore and the popular 2nd Street Café (which underwent a major renovation last year) have all closed in recent months.
Nearby, owners of Maggie Moo’s ice cream shop hung up their scoops last August, and the site of a former D’Agostino grocery has been vacant for nearly a year after the store spent 16 years in the neighborhood.
Rents along Seventh Avenue have risen to as high as $150 a square foot, said Walston Bobb-Semple, a principal broker with Urban View Realty in Brooklyn, and that’s a lot more than many small business owners can afford, he said.
“What I’ve noticed in the last year or so is that the Monday-through-Thursday traffic is not there for the restaurants, and in particular, the average retail shop can only bank on weekends for shoppers,” Bobb-Semple said. “So they can’t make ends meet.”
He and other longtime residents said they are worried that Park Slope is slowly losing more than cafés and bookshops along Seventh Avenue: It’s losing its character.
“I think the landlords and merchants along Seventh Avenue need to take a long, hard look … and realize that the strip needs a broad mix of businesses to maintain a vibrant commercial corridor,” Bobb-Semple said, echoing a common complaint that many mom-and-pop stores in the area have been forced to make way for cell phone stores and bank branches.
Semple speculated that landlords are betting that restaurant owners from Manhattan will come to the neighborhood and think the going rates are a bargain.
Migrating off Seventh
One side effect of the higher rents on Seventh Avenue: New stores for the hip young crowd are migrating beyond Seventh Avenue and blossoming along Fifth Avenue, where rents run about $65 to $85 per square foot, Bobb-Semple said.
Marc Garstein, president of Warren Lewis Realty, estimated that the owner of a 1,000-square-foot store in central Park Slope probably pays more than $10,000 a month in rent. So it’s no surprise to him that Bank of America is expected to move into the space once occupied by D’Agostino at Seventh Avenue and 6th Street. Few others could afford the space, he said.
“Once the rent gets up to $10,000 or $11,000, it doesn’t pay to be there,” Garstein said. “And the landlord is also entitled to make more money.”
Tempo Presto, a sandwich shop, closed in December, and Seventh Avenue Books soon followed. It was right next to another used bookstore, Park Slope Books, and down the street from a behemoth in the book business, Barnes & Noble. But the store closing that received the most attention from residents and blogs was 2nd Street Café, which closed in January.
“It was a shock. It was a place everybody went to, and they just did a renovation,” said Joel Rivera, a manager at Tarzian Hardware, located next door.
It’s unusual to have so many closings at the same time on the busy commercial block, said Barry Lipsitz, landlord of both Seventh Avenue Books and 2nd Street Café. The used bookstore, he said, paid about $7,000 a month and the café about $11,000.
He said the simultaneous closings are due to many factors: The used bookstore, for example, couldn’t compete with Barnes & Noble. But he said he doesn’t know why the café closed. He speculated that perhaps the renovation was too costly or wasn’t attracting enough customers.
“It was very sudden,” Lipsitz said. “They just one day closed, just like that. I had no
inclination about what was happening.”
Since then, several restaurant owners have called to ask about renting the spaces, Lipsitz said, along with many other types
of business owners, such as jewelry and craft makers. He noted that he’d like the new
tenants to be local business owners.
Park Slope Books is also closing in the coming weeks, but high rents are not the prime factor, said manager Tracy Walsh. The rent has always been high, she said.
Instead, the used bookstore is consolidating with its Brooklyn Heights branch
because it now sells more books online than it does in the store.
“Our income isn’t coming from the bricks-and-mortar location anymore,” Walsh said.
Rivera said he’s not worried about the
future of Tarzian Hardware, in business since 1921. It’s one of the only hardware stores in the neighborhood, and its owner, Harry Tarzian, also owns the building. “We’re not going anywhere,” he said.
Back from the brink
Difficulty paying rent was just one of the reasons why Community Bookstore on Seventh Avenue almost closed a year ago, said owner Catherine Bohne. But she wasn’t going down without a fight. The bookstore, open since 1971, is an institution in a neighborhood known for its literary denizens.
Bohne has worked there for nearly 20 years. “There was a voice in the back of my head that said I don’t have the right to take this away,” Bohne said.
She spread the word that Community Bookstore was in trouble, and the neighborhood rallied to her aid. Financial advisors donated their time and helped her come up with a new business plan. About a dozen people invested in the store, too. Sales are up 40 percent since last year, Bohne said.
Last November, Bohne worked with the Civic Council, a local nonprofit organization, to help organize a “Buy in Brooklyn” campaign, with a party for merchants at the Community Bookstore. On Dec. 13, the group sponsored the first-annual Snowflake Celebration, a local shopping event with more than 150 participating stores.
Bohne plans to work with other small business owners to promote ideas such as commercial rent controls and requiring a set time period for lease negotiations so that tenants aren’t kicked out with only a few weeks’ notice.
She was lucky that her landlord was also the former owner of the bookstore.
“She was understanding when things got tough,” she said.