Boerum Hill's Fawkner Suddenly Closes On Smith Street

BOERUM HILL, BROOKLYN — The owners of four popular Brooklyn bars have closed their most recently-opened venture, a gastropub on Smith Street, Patch has learned.

Organizers of a comedy show that is hosted regularly at Fawkner, which has been open at 191 Smith St. since 2015, told fans that the show would not run as planned on Monday night because the eatery has closed down, according to an email sent to SAVAGE Comedy subscribers.

The sudden closing doesn't seem to have made it onto Fawkner's social media pages, which haven't been updated in weeks, or website yet. The owners did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Patch.

The bar, owned by City Farm Corp., was heading toward its fourth anniversary of opening at the Smith Street spot, which used to be the Irish pub Ceol before it shut down in 2014.

City Farm Corp. also manages The Bell House, Union Hall and Floyd.

If the eatery has closed down, it would be the latest in several years of turnover on the street, which had become a popular restaurant destination.

A report by DNAInfo back in 2016 found that more than a dozen restaurants and stores had closed on Smith Street in just a year. Owners then told the outlet that rent hikes, a decline in foot traffic and newer chain stores coming in had forced many local spots out of business.

Fawkner was featured in that report as one of the few new restaurants that had opened up on the street amid the closures.

The street was included in a recent study of storefront vacancies by the Department of City Planning, which analyzed 24 different corridors throughout the city for their storefront vacancy rates in 2018.

Smith Street was deemed one of the "Hot Spots" for vacancies, or a street that has a large percentage of vacancies but is expected to fill up soon. The "Hot Spots" also included Park Slope's Fifth and Seventh avenues, Bedford and Grand avenues in Williamsburg and Fulton Street in Bed-Stuy.

New and upcoming eateries on Smith Street also appears to show that the restaurant scene is bouncing back.

Among the new businesses on Smith Street this year are a new Indian-spice focused ice cream shop and a second location of Peruvian eatery Once, which Food and Wine reports will open in October. Restaurants on Smith Street were also among the only Brooklyn eateries to make it to the James Beard award finals earlier this year.