Patch Study Finds 43 Stores Empty On Park Slope Main Streets

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — A longtime laundromat. A 1960s pottery shop-turned jewelry store. A staple neighborhood gay bar. A celebrity chef's restaurant. The "Cheers" of Park Slope.

Park Slopers are seeing dozens of stores they were used to passing for years, or even decades, turn empty this past year. Some fill with construction crews and return as new businesses.

But many, it seems, stand empty for months, a blight of usually vibrant main streets.

But how much turnover has there really been on Park Slope's main corridors? Is there something new going on, or is this the typical cycle of the market?

Patch delved into the storefronts currently standing empty on Fifth and Seventh avenues. Here's what we found:

How many vacancies are there?

(Red marks a vacant space, blue marks a space that has secured a new tenant but not opened yet.)

In a walk through the neighborhood, it might be hard to tell which boarded up storefronts or empty spaces are actually vacancies. Several stores that appear to be unusued are actually private businesses, storage for another business or just undergoing construction.

Patch worked with Mark Caserta, executive director of the Fifth Avenue Business Improvement District, to get a handle on which storefronts were actually vacant on that corridor. In all, there were 27 vacancies on Fifth Avenue with another 18 storefronts that have secured a new tenant but haven't reopened yet.

On Seventh Avenue, Patch counted 16 vacant spots, though there isn't a business district to double check those observations with.

The map above shows each of the empty storefronts, including those that have secured a new tenant. For each, we included any available information about what was there beforehand, what will move in and some notes about why the business might have closed.

(Anna Quinn/Patch)

Is this normal?

In short, the vacancy rates in Park Slope are high, but they are not the highest they've ever been nor the highest in the city. Experts also predict that it's one of several neighborhoods where storefronts will fill up again soon.

On Fifth Avenue specifically, Caserta said the vacancy rate was most recently at its highest when the Great Recession hit in 2010 and about 11 or 12 percent of all businesses were vacant.

It dropped as low as 5 percent about four years ago, and now hovers around 8 percent, he said.

"We're sort of in the middle of the road," Caserta said. "It's not where I want it to be, but I'm starting to see rents coming down on commercial properties. There's spaces filling in."

High rents — which several Park Slope businesses have told Patch was the reason they shut down this year — have indeed started going down in Park Slope and several other neighborhoods with similar vacancy problems, according to the Department of City Planning.

Park Slope was one of 12 neighborhoods that the department identified as a "Hot Spot" in a recent study of 2018 storefront vacancies released last week.

Hot Spot neighborhoods are parts of the city that saw an uptick in vacancies because of high rents after the recession, but are expected to fill up as rents go down.

"Brokers active for many decades have suggested that the market will adjust and vacancy and rents will decline, having previously observed similar market cycles," the department said.

In that report, Park Slope's Fifth and Seventh avenues had a combined vacancy rate at 11.2 percent in 2018. This was the same or lower than 14 of the 24 spots the department analyzed in the study, though still higher than the citywide average for that year, which was 8.9 percent.

(Anna Quinn/Patch)

Why are they vacant?

The reasons Park Slope businesses have been shutting down seem to be the same obstacles that have businesses all over the city struggling to stay open.

Although rent prices may be on the decline, they were still the reason several longtime businesses in Park Slope closed this year.

That was the case for Excelsior, the Fifth Avenue gay bar that had been in the neighborhood 20 years, and Old Carriage Inn, which had been open for 35.

But owners, at least at Excelsior, also pointed to another ballooning cost that has recently been burdening businesses throughout the city — property taxes. The average tax bill for a retail parcel jumped more than 68 percent from 2009 to 2018, or more than $30,000, according to the city Department of Finance.

Caserta said it's been similar, if not worse, for many Park Slope bussiness owners.

"I know some businesses that have basically added a zero (in their tax bill)," he said. "With taxes, there is a challenging environment right now."

High tax bills can also really harm a business when they are dealing with other expenses, like fees for not closely following regulations, the added cost of new legislation like paid sick leave or increased minimum wage or lawsuits, Caserta added. He said one of the Business Improvement District's jobs is to help new businesses navigate obstacles like the complex regulations.

"It's never one thing — it's all this stuff coming together," he said. "If you have a business plan and throw all these things together against you, it's very difficult to overcome."

Trends in the retail market have also put a strain on certain types of businesses.

Caserta said some smaller shops, like Duman Home on Fifth Avenue, have closed because more people are buying things online instead of from local stores. Some Fifth Avenue businesses have even noticed a trend called "show-rooming," where customers come in and take a picture of things to go buy online later.

"People in the city love to eat and go out for drinks, the question is do they love to shop small and locally anymore," Caserta said.

Some larger chains are also not immune to that shift, Caserta added. A few storefronts on Fifth Avenue stand empty because nationwide retailers like Payless Shoes, Fabco Shoes and Petland have either closed down completely or scaled back their stores.

That trend has led some Park Slope stores to change the way they do business.

Seventh Avenue clothing and toy store BEVA recently closed its doors to focus only on an online version of the store. The Clay Pot, a Seventh Avenue jewelry store that had been around since 1969, closed to focus on its online brand and its second location in Manhattan.

Some businesses, though, have found ways to adapt without shutting down completely.

Facets, another jewelry store on Seventh Avenue, actually expanded their business just this month. Owners Lenny and Irina Sulay said the secret has been keeping up an online presence while simultaneously offering something that customers can only get in person.

Since they opened in 2001, the jewelry market has shifted more toward custom designs and fine jewelry or family heirloom restoration, coincidentally the kind of services that require a person to come into a store. Those are the types of services the Sulays have expanded with their new space.

"The key is to not run from it...It’s where the market is right now," the Sulays told Patch. "These lasting connections, along with our personalized service and one-of-a-kind pieces that online retailers just can’t match, create loyal customers."

(Anna Quinn/Patch).

What businesses are moving in?

The loss of one neighborhood favorite also comes with the possibility of another moving in.

Nearly half of the now-empty storefronts Patch looked at had new businesses on their way, meaning the vacancies haven't discouraged some new business owners.

For at least one new Fifth Avenue tenant, Miss American Pie, the vacancies were too much of a moving target to stop her from settling in Park Slope. Almost all of the nearby shops that were vacant before she signed the lease at 86 Fifth Ave. in April are now occupied, owner Lindsey Hill told Patch. Miss American Pie opened last weekend.

"There are too many variables for me to make a decision based on that," she said "It didn't even really occur to me as a negative thing."

As for what kind of businesses the other storefronts will be, all but a few exceptions are food-related, with everything from a chocolate shop, to a jazz cafe, to an artisan bread store on their way.

Most of those new restaurants, bars and food shops will move in where food-related businesses already stood before them. But, a few, like a pretzel chain that will open in an old laundromat, will change the type of business.

Caserta said that within the trend of new eateries, there is also a growing number of small chains coming to Park Slope. Businesses with other spots around the city or the country, like Kung Fu Tea or Sweetwaters Coffee and Tea, have set up shop on Fifth Avenue, too, he said.

"There aren’t a ton of locations of these places, so they fit in well," he said.

Ultimately, Caserta said controlling vacant storefronts starts with understanding where and why they exist. He is working right now with a city task force on storefront vacancies that hopes to create a system for keeping track of them.

"The point is to try and figure out, 'What are the trends?,'" he said. "What do we know? And, what can we be doing to get out of the way?"