NYC DCP

There’s good news and bad news. Read on.

In January 2022, I updated a post on the people and places we had lost in 2020 to total the closed storefronts: 72 closed between late fall 2019 and January 2021. By January 2022, 28 more had closed, giving us a total of 100. See that list here.

So for today — and I will update this in the coming months with a detailed report (I am getting a college intern from Ohio Wesleyan who is going to walk the blocks for me) I scoured the “New Kid” listings back to the start of 2022 to create the list below: 87 new storefront openings, and this list does NOT include the galleries east of Broadway (and in fact it only hits a couple of the ones ON Broadway, since I have not kept up with those openings).

But wait, there more. The Department of City Planning hired a contractor in 2023 to map pretty much every storefront citywide, categorized by use. See that here. They then compared things to 2019, the earliest data they have, and prepared a report on the state of storefronts citywide. Some factoids:

• Vacancy rates in the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island are below 9 percent
• Manhattan has the highest vacancy rate at 14.2 percent, down from 15.7 in 2023 Q1
• Overall, more storefronts are closing than opening, by a difference of about 1 percent

Here comes the bad news: Lower Manhattan has the highest vacancy rates in the city, with the Financial District/Battery Park City coming in as #1 (note that this is a huge area that includes the Seaport), Tribeca as #2 and Chinatown as #3:

• Tribeca/Civic Center: 21 percent
• Financial District/Battery Park City/Seaport: 24 percent
• Chinatown/Two Bridges: 20 percent

We also have the densest clusters of PROLONGED vacancies — stores that have been empty since 2020 Q1.

Some other factoids, which we could have guessed:

• Retail spaces are selling more services and less goods
• Lower Manhattan is among the neighborhoods with the lowest increase in food & drink establishments

Another detail they have two decades of data on: the number of restaurants citywide has doubled to 22,000 since 2000.

They also looked at the percentage of New Yorkers working from home, which is 13 percent overall, but higher Downtown — at around 20 percent. That should be a boost for neighborhood storefronts in places like Park Slope, but not necessarily for us, where we lost thousands of commuting workers. Before covid, Tribeca had 5k to 20k MORE workers in the neighborhood than it does now. Foot traffic is still 20 percent lower than it was in 2019.

So in conclusion: no huge shocker, covid took a toll on neighborhood storefronts and because of remote work, we have not really bounced back. Turnover here is high, which can sometimes be a sign of a vibrant economy, but vacancy rates remain constant — a sign of unhealthy market pressures.

Here are the New Kids of 2022 – 2024.

SHOPPING
Greenwich St. Jewelers
Aztech Mountain
Colony Gallery
Thank You Have a Good Day
Willow + Zoey
Baboo
Kathy Kuo
Tea Dealers & Ceramics
Alto on Chambers
Birch Coffee
Ole & Steen
Zadig + Voltaire
Emilia George
Elyse Walker
Metal Alchemist

SERVICES
Raquel New York
NYLO
Happy Tails
Club300
Wundabar
Action Black
Ritual Dental
Sugared + Bronzed
StretchLab
Laura Gonzalez
Happier Grocer
Lotus Method
Remedy Place
TD Bank
Unlimited Biking
REE Nail
TRNK
Aida Bicaj
Fancy Apple Bike Rental

BARS & RESTAURANTS
Little More
Upon the Palace
Paros
TAQ
Tsubame
All Blues
Eulalie
Mostrador
Tara Kitchen
Caliza (closed)
Bar 135
Fouquet’s hotel + 3 restaurants
Warren Street Hotel + restaurant
Chambers – sort of, since it was Racine’s with the same crew
Smyth Tavern
Smyth Bar
L’Abeille
L’Abeille à Côté
Sushi Ichimura
Blue Bottle
Blank Street Coffee
File Gumbo Bar
Della’s
Chun Yang Tea
Holywater
Van Leeuwen
Fonda
Ito
Hello Vietpho
Bondi Sushi
Saint Tuesday
Stafili Wine Bar
Argo
Burger Village
Matto
North Bar
Warren Peace
787 Coffee

DELIS
Brooklyn Bread
Vineyard
Tribeca Deli & Grill
Heavenly Market
Olive Branch
Tribeca Bites

KIDS
RocketClub
Coder School
Rosie’s Kids Cuts
Two Kids and a Dog

GALLERIES
too many to name! Here are just a few…
Marian Goodman
60 White – Lio Malca
Friedrichs Pontone
125 Newbury
Almine Reich