First came the Gap. Then came chain drugstores and branch banks. Now comes the next retail cycle: nothing. kvelsey reports on dark stores — spaces used by grocery-delivery apps as warehouses that aren’t open to the public — opening on the Upper West Side
Photo: Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images For a while, it seemed as if the retail situation on the Upper West Side couldn’t get any worse. Pharmacies and bank branches were hogging such huge swaths of the once-varied streetscape that, in an attempt to liven things up, the City Council passed a bill requiring at least 50 percent of a store’s street-level walls to be transparent. Watching customers queue up for an ATM is, if not exactly interesting, at least better than staring at a dead wall.
Dark stores, being more sidewalk deadening than even the branch banks that close early in the evening, pose a particular threat to some of the only stores that have, until now, remained largely unscathed by the previous retail cycles: groceries and bodegas, said Gale Brewer, the Upper West Side’s longtime and once-again councilmember. “I don’t know if what they’re doing is legal, but I do know I want my grocery stores, bodegas, and delis to survive,” she said.
Then in the aughts, the bank branches and drugstores arrived, renting the oversize ground-floor retail spaces in the new condos rising along Broadway, spaces too large and expensive for independent businesses. It seemed unlikely that they were turning much of a profit either; it was widely suspected that they were claiming territory and renting the equivalent of very expensive billboards, perhaps with the idea of driving out competitors over time and claiming the whole area for themselves.
There was hope, early in the pandemic, that maybe the next retail cycle would be better than the last. Rents would fall, went the thinking, and mom-and-pops would flourish again alongside a pared-down selection of chain stores people had grown to appreciate. The vacancy rate on Amsterdam Avenue dropped from 9.6 percent at the start of 2020 to 7.4 percent by year-end. The neighborhood added seven chain stores last year after losing 42 the year before.
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