Bedford-Stuyvesant’s retail market is starting to heat up, with big and small tenants alike moving into the area, the Wall Street Journal reported. Recently large retailers, such as Walgreens, Sprint and McDonald’s, have expanded in the central Brooklyn neighborhood, as have small businesses like My Arena lounge, the Busy Bee Bagel Cafe and Alice’s Arbor, a new restaurant.
Walgreens recently signed a 20-year lease on a 20,000-square-foot building at Fulton Street and Nostrand Avenue. The company said that the store will have a 6,600-square-foot sales floor and that the rest of the space will be used for storage. “We’ve tried to become more flexible in recent years, going into urban areas with a more flexible store format,” said Walgreens spokesperson Michael Polzin.
Developer Joseph Ashkenazi of Ash Management Realty told the Journal that Walgreens is paying $45 per square foot in rent, significantly more than the area’s average asking rent of $20 per square foot, according to Douglas Elliman figures.
Industry analysts told the Journal that the retail boom in Bed Stuy can be attributed to the increased number of homebuyers moving into the area, often after being priced out of other Brooklyn neighborhoods like Park Slope. [WSJ] —Christopher Cameron