Bed-Stuy's First Starbucks Is A Cause For Celebration, Local Politicians Say

BED-STUY, BROOKLYN — In case you hadn't heard: Starbucks is coming to Bed-Stuy. The somewhat apocalyptic yet mostly inevitable news broke late last month to a varied chorus of old-timer groans and landlord high-fives and NIMBY rants (and surely some secret jigs among the closeted Starbucks addicts of the neighborhood). But elected officials, not to mention the company itself, have stayed relatively hush-hush about the big move-in — 'til now.

“I’m excited to welcome Starbucks' new store to Bed-Stuy,” Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said in a press release disseminated Wednesday by the Seattle-based coffee chain.

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"This store will brew the next generation of leaders in Bed-Stuy," Adams said, "and ensure that area youth will have a venue to access resources, meet new people, and get the skills they need to enter the job market, all while enjoying a cup of coffee.”

In the same statement, New York City Council Member Robert Cornegy, who represents parts of Bed-Stuy and Bushwick at City Hall, said he, too, considers Starbucks a "welcome addition to our community."

And here's official comment from Carla Ruffin, Starbucks' regional director for Brooklyn:

“We believe Starbucks can play a meaningful role in creating job opportunities, while supporting ongoing efforts to drive economic revitalization. As a Brooklynite, I am proud to see Starbucks making a long-term investment in Bed-Stuy in the form of a new store, and serve as a warm and welcoming place for our Bed-Stuy customers to come together over coffee. We look forward to working with the community in the months ahead to support economic development and open the kind of store Bed-Stuy residents can be proud of.”

Others in the community are somewhat less jazzed.

But no matter which side of the debate you fall on, more knowledge can only mean more power, right?

So here's a roundup of everything we know so far about Starbucks' new outpost in Bed-Stuy.

• It should open sometime within the next year. "We don’t have an official date but can confirm it’s slated for Spring 2018," a Starbucks spokesperson told Patch via email Wednesday.

• It'll be located in a 2,235-square-foot storefront at 775 Broadway, right across the street from the Woodhull Hospital complex on the corner of Broadway and Marcus Garvey Boulevard.

• Its building, which has famously housed the iconic Fat Albert Warehouse for the past three decades, sits directly beneath the elevated J train tracks that divide Bed-Stuy and Bushwick.

• It's unclear how long Fat Albert will remain Starbucks' neighbor. However, real-estate brokers say Fat Albert's 10,675-square-foot space is for sale. And according to a recent report in the Commercial Observer, the store's owner and founder, Albert Srour, is ready to retire. (Patch could not get a hold of Srour to confirm. A woman who answered the phone at his warehouse Wednesday said only, "I'm not giving any information at this time" — then hung up on us.)

• In an interesting twist, Albert Srour's son Jack, president of the trendy Brooklyn co-working space BKLYN Commons, began renting the building's upper floors for his business last year (along with space in another of his dad's Fat Albert buildings, down in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens). So if you do stop by Bed-Stuy's new Starbucks, you'll likely find yourself elbowing past a bunch of co-working types — along with the usual Broadway drifters, of course.

• The Bed-Stuy location will be one of Starbucks' growing set of at least 15 so-called “Community Stores," a special model of coffee shop with built-in benefits for "underserved communities" where the company decides to open. (Including Queens, Ferguson, Chicago's Southside, East Baltimore — and, now, Bed-Stuy.)

• Under this model, the Bed-Stuy shop will be "hiring locally, partnering with local nonprofit organizations to provide in-store job-skills training for youth, and working with local women- and minority-owned contractors, suppliers and vendors," according to Starbucks.

• Starbucks' other feel-good initiatives at its new Bed-Stuy location will include hunting down "a locally sourced product to feature in the café" and creating a "unique in-store job training space" where 16- to 24-year-olds "who face barriers to employment and opportunity" can enroll in multi-week programs.

• When no training programs are in session, this same space "will be available for local groups to use for meetings and dialogue — serving as a hub for members of the community," a Starbucks spokesperson said.

We'd love to hear your thoughts: Will the new Starbucks on Broadway be good or bad for Bed-Stuy? Let us know in the comments below, or in an email sent to simone.wilson@patch.com.

This story has been updated. Renderings courtesy of Kassin Sabbagh Realty