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Perpetuum Café Has Closed
Perpetuum Café, which opened at 200 Church in January of 2017, has closed. It’s not a surprise, as there had been a listing for the establishment a few months back. It said that the owner was looking to relocate, but the Perpetuum Café in Chelsea is still open. The space joins the former Birdbath bakery next door on Tribeca’s long list of vacant storefronts.
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What an unfortunate name for a place that lasted mere months.
With so many vacant storefronts in Tribeca and throughout NYC perhaps the De Blasio administration could provide tax or other incentives for new and expanding stores.
That would be fine, except this administration does not understand how incentives work. Here’s what De Blasio said at the end of March on WNYC:
“On WNYC he said, ‘I am very interested in fighting for a vacancy fee or a vacancy tax that would penalize landlords who leave their storefronts vacant for long periods of time in neighborhoods because they are looking for some top-dollar rent but they blight neighborhoods by doing it.'”
This still does not help the store operators being strangled by regulatory delays and over-enforcement by Dept of Buildings, Dept of Health, Dept of Consumer Affairs, etc. No one who hears about this red tape is encouraged to open a store in NYC. Merely taxing things does not always discourage them.
This administration proposes to open “safe” heroin injection sites. Maybe that could occupy some vacant stores. Today’s NYT: “’After a rigorous review of similar efforts across the world, and after careful consideration of public health and safety expert views, we believe overdose prevention centers will save lives and get more New Yorkers into the treatment they need to beat this deadly addiction,’ Mr. de Blasio said in a statement.”
Whether or not this reduces overdose deaths or HIV infections, which it may, why should one expect providing safe injection sites for drug users will actually *reduce* the number of drug users?
People and companies are rational. If there is a fee or penalty for vacant stores they will be incentivizing low quality stores and not the types of tenants that will have ties to the community and that will improve both the spaces and the neighborhoods they serve.
Or you will get this:
“Adam Ottavino Rebuilt Himself in a Vacant Manhattan Storefront”
By Travis Sawchik
fangraphs.com
“Between West 124th and 125th Streets on St. Nicholas Ave. in Harlem rests a street-level commercial space situated between a Dollar Tree and a Chuck E. Cheese’s, and it is where [professional baseball player] Adam Ottavino might have saved his career last winter.
“The space was a solution to a problem. He lived in the city in the offseason with his wife and two-year-old daughter. In previous offseasons, he had traveled out to Long Island to work and throw at a facility, but the commute and practice time away was beginning to strain his family. […]
“Ottavino, a Brooklyn native, required a productive offseason. He was left off the Rockies’ Wild Card roster weeks earlier after an awful 2017 season when he walked nearly seven batters per nine innings, leading to a 16% walk rate. He was in the final year of his contract. He had spent some time at Driveline Baseball after the season ended. He thought he had now had some solutions. He had bought tens of thousands of dollars worth of equipment with which to try and make himself a better pitcher. But he needed a place to experiment.
“His father-in-law, a real-estate developer, had an idea. He had a vacated commercial property, a former Nine West shoe store, that rented at $22,000 per month. He would allow Ottavino to use the space for four months for free that winter as a high-tech, makeshift throwing facility. It was a block from the ‘A’ and ‘C’ trains that would allow for him to have a short commute back into the city.
“Ottavino recalled his father-in-law’s rationale behind the generous offer: ‘Because I love you, but also because you’re going to get me a Nolan Arenado-signed bat.’
“Ottavino got the bat. Then he went to work in the Harlem commercial space. He plastered black paper on the storefront, ceiling-to-floor windows, to conceal what was occurring inside. Ottavino wanted to keep out prying eyes. The vacant space was empty save for some curious items.
“‘It was funny, there were people out there all day looking in,’ Ottavino said. […]
“His father-in-law’s narrow commercial space, at 80 feet deep, was perfect for a pitching mound. Ottavino outfitted it with a store-bought mound, a strip of artificial turf, netting, and, of course, his cameras. It was the ultimate urban throwing space. How many indoor pitching facilities were there in Manhattan? There certainly couldn’t be many. […]
https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/adam-ottavino-rebuilt-himself-in-a-vacant-manhattan-storefront/
the rent was too high. no pedestrian traffic. Even Starbucks would probably fail there.
This is excellent news. We make sandwiches. Also we have hard boiled eggs.