Friday, March 4, 2011

An empty feeling

From New York Magazine:

An empty storefront is a bummer, especially when it sits for months, depleting the block of its vibrancy. “It doesn’t continue to provide the kind of animated street life that most people like about cities,” says urban planner Ethel Sheffer. Vacancies in older buildings have that effect, but when they’re found in new developments, the feeling is perhaps even more pronounced...

In Manhattan alone, at least 46 condo buildings built or converted in the past five years have 69 empty retail spaces, according to PropertyShark.com, and that’s not counting new rental towers. Brooklyn’s condo-fied neighborhoods have them, too.

The reasons for the lingering vacancies are manifold. Hobbled by the recession, the ground-floor retail market is still righting itself. The banks and Duane Reades of the world that once reliably colonized such spaces are today less acquisitive, say brokers, and discount-apparel retailers like Filene’s Basement and Daffy’s, which have stepped in to fill the vacuum, want pedestrian-heavy addresses—which wasn’t a prerequisite for the condo parts of these towers. Meanwhile, some merchants have taken the opportunity to trade up to previously unaffordable addresses, further hampering developments in less-proven locations.

Then there are the developers with suitors for their storefronts who choose to demur, lest retail tenants interfere with sales momentum. (In this market, condo buyers balk for reasons big and small.) For those going uncourted, slashing rents is a fix with risks. Condos are expensive to build, and that was especially so during the boom years, when all these buildings went up; since retail leases typically last a decade or more, it can make sense to wait for prices to turn...

That’s the business end; on a psychic level, these empty spaces follow a whole different math. Whereas an old boarded-up building, abandoned after its better days, speaks of a slow-motion subtraction, these luxury-wrapped shells are a reminder of an era of exponential promise suddenly cut short. The longer they sit unused the further away the fizzy times feel.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

So "Queens West" ain't going exactly "gang busters" like its developers had planned...eh?

We told youso on "Queens Crap" about 2 1/2 years ago!

You misguided hipsters ought to unload your condos now before things get even worse.

Take the loss and take your leave of the "big apple".

Pittsburgh sounds nice to me. I've already sold and am packing up my business.

Anonymous said...

No surprise. There is empty retail in mid-town Manhattan that I've been walking by for 6 years now, and in my opinion will NEVER be filled again. Huge spaces once filled by banks, travel agencies, book, video, clothing stores, etc.-- the internet (and the economy) has changed everything about the way we shop (and don't shop!).

Anonymous said...

Rockaways south of the A train between 33rd street and 55th street has an unwarranted amount of vacant space.

Anonymous said...

omitted were the ground floor store spaces of the empty condo's on the Crescent Street approach to the Queensboro bridge,in L.I.C.

Anonymous said...

let the homeless move in to them. a perfect solution.

Anonymous said...

Look at the blocks along 1st Ave & 2ond Ave in the 50 & 40 all empty - landloads are asking unreasonable rents - they will stay empty unless they cut their asking prices by 50%. Condo developments factored in A class retail and those are not materializing anytime soon, thus they will turn into cheap food stores selling 10$ sandwiches (English chain shops)

Anonymous said...

Glad to see our politicans who gave the developers our taxes and tax breaks are now wiseing up and stopping the giveaways ... by closing schools and hospitals and firehouses.

No problem. Go ahead and vote them back into office with huge majorities.

Anonymous said...

I never understood why landlords would rather keep retail space empty - asking for an absurdly high rent rather than lowering the rent to the point where they would have a tenant.

Anonymous said...

Can't wait for the Wall Street criminals to start lending again.

Maybe we can get to 75% vacancy rates, oh boy!

We well never learn from our mistakes.

Anonymous said...

I never understood why landlords would rather keep retail space empty - asking for an absurdly high rent rather than lowering the rent to the point where they would have a tenant.

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It's called "warehousing".

It's a tax write-off. This is NY - You're not in Kansas anymore, Toto!