Five words above the doorway at the Bowery Poetry Club and Caf say it all: “Everything is subject to change.” Thanks to the booming real estate market of the last few years, retail business along the Bowery is no exception.
Luxury hotels, trendy restaurants, upscale boutiques and a new art museum are redefining a wide avenue best known for flophouses, homeless missions, restaurant supply and lighting stores, and CBGB, the nightclub that was the cradle of punk rock. It closed last autumn.
The new cachet comes at a higher price for store owners, though. Retail rents along the Bowery have risen significantly in the last three years, from around $75 per square foot to $125 to $150 per square foot on average, said Richard Skulnik, a retail broker with Ripco Real Estate. Some businesses even pay as much as $200 per square foot.
“The Bowery is at the center of five great neighborhoods,” Skulnik said. “It’s just natural this is happening.”
While some oppose the changes transforming their neighborhood, Skulnik and others bet that the Bowery will thrive. It could become the art world’s alternative to Chelsea, and the cornerstone will likely be the New Museum of Contemporary Art, which opens in December at 235 Bowery between Stanton and Rivington streets. It will have galleries, a theater, a store, a cafeacute; and a top-floor event space with roof terraces.
It may take a few years, though. Next door to the Bowery Hotel at 335 Bowery and East 3rd Street, where guests pay as much as $750 a night for a suite, men gather to smoke and talk outside Renewal at Kenton Hall, a recovery center for alcoholics. A few homeless people take an afternoon nap on piles of broken-down cardboard boxes. Early next year, they’ll have the option of paying $7 a night to sleep in a 66-square-foot room at the renovated Andrews Hotel, one of the Bowery’s last remaining flophouses.
But change is already under way. Only a block away from the former CBGB, celebrity chef Daniel Boulud is planning to open DBGB (Daniel Boulud Good Burger) at 299 Bowery sometime next year. It will feature $29 hamburgers stuffed with foie gras and truffles. Diners at Gemma, the Bowery Hotel’s new Italian restaurant, can already enjoy fried squash blossoms or sea bass with capers and grapefruit.
Meanwhile, a few blocks north, between 5th and 6th streets, construction is slowly proceeding on the 23-story Cooper Square Hotel, another high-rise luxury establishment slated to open early next year.
Hip fashion designers are arriving on the Bowery, too. Favorita Espresso Machines is now Patricia Field, which sells trendy clothes, costumes and lingerie at 302 Bowery. Two years ago, it was one of the first forays into high fashion on the Bowery.
And in a few months, Blue & Cream, a high-end designer clothing store with locations in East Hampton and Southampton, will open its first Manhattan store at the Avalon Bowery on the north side of Houston between the Bowery and Second Avenue. The neighborhood’s edgy, still untamed atmosphere was a big draw for Blue & Cream owner Jeff Goldstein, said Skulnik, who helped negotiate the long-term lease.
“Jeff didn’t want to be the 15th shop on the block,” Skulnik said. “He wanted to be one of the first, and to play a role in bringing other fashion to the neighborhood.”
And more fashion tenants are coming. Designer John Varvatos plans to open a boutique in the former CBGB space in the spring.
The asking rent for Blue & Cream’s new store was $100 a square foot, still relatively cheap for the area, said Skulnik. Some building owners along the Bowery hold out for rents as high as $200 a square foot, especially north of Houston.
Those spaces sit vacant longer, but owners are often willing to wait, and eventually, they’ll get it, Skulnik said. When they do, it’s likely the new tenants will sign much longer leases. Blue & Cream signed a 10-year lease, Skulnik said, and other new stores are doing the same.
“They want at least a 10-year lease to make sure their investment pays off,” Skulnik said.
The changes are having an impact on the long-established restaurant supply stores, said Hector Ramirez, who has worked at Roger & Sons Kitchen Equipment at 268 Bowery for five years. The store, open for more than 70 years, gets less foot traffic these days, he says, but it’s still surviving despite slower business, Ramirez said.
A few lighting and restaurant supply stores have relocated farther south along the Bowery or along side streets, Skulnik said. South of Houston, lighting fixture and restaurant equipment stores dominate, as they have for decades. Business owners still pay around $50 per square foot, and less if they’ve been in the building for years. But that will likely change as younger generations take over their families’ businesses and decide to sell, Skulnik said.
Some long-time Bowery residents aren’t happy with the changes. To them, the slick new high-rises seem out of place in a neighborhood made up of low-rise brick buildings. They worry that small mom-and-pop delis, grocery and hardware stores will be forced out by higher rents. They also worry about increased foot and motor traffic.
Community Board 3 is working with residents to form the Bowery Zoning Committee, hoping to convince the city to limit the size of new developments in the neighborhood. They recently held a community forum to discuss the issue after the city didn’t include the Bowery in its proposed rezoning of the Lower East Side, which is currently in the early stages of public review.
“I’m sure the city sees all this as increased revenue,” said district manager Susan Steiger. “And development brings revenue. But there does not seem to be a plan. If there is one, it certainly doesn’t involve the community.”
Boosters of an upscale Bowery such as Skulnik are aware of residents’ concerns. But Skulnik believes small businesses will survive and in fact prosper from the changes.
“I’m a believer in a neighborhood having a good mix of everything,” he said. “That’s what makes a good neighborhood, where residents are able to get everything they need within steps of their front door.”