The retail vacancy rate across the city hit just over 11% this quarter — a slight drop from what it was last year, according to the most recent data from the city’s Department of Small Business Services.
The department presented the data during a City Council hearing on Wednesday.
Out of the 144,359 storefronts across the five boroughs, the latest tally of those that are empty was 16,384 — or 11.3% — according to Calvin Brown, deputy commissioner at SBS for the neighborhood development division, citing data from an independent vendor. The most recent comparison is from the third quarter of 2023, when the vacancy rate hit 11.6%, the agency said. Brown could not provide the average length of a storefront’s vacancy.
Manhattan is following the same citywide trend, despite being notoriously slow to recover from the pandemic and home to the largest swaths of vacant commercial corridors. Today in the borough, the vacancy rate is 15%, a small decline from 15.7% during the third quarter of 2023, according to Tian Weinberg, the chief of staff at SBS.
Picking up some of the slack are brick-and-mortar shops that are immune to being replaced by online retailers, according to Weinberg.
“Vacancies are being filled by a variety of industries, including e-commerce-resistant businesses such as juice bars, sports stores and coffee shops,” she said. “Grocery stores are up 11%, and our nightlife is up an impressive 17%.”
Still, the highest vacancy rates are consistently in Manhattan, with Community District 1 — encompassing the neighborhoods of Battery Park City, the Financial District, South Street Seaport and Tribeca — hitting 22%, according to Bronx Councilman Oswald Feliz, chairman of the Council’s Committee of Small Business.
The numbers stand in stark contrast to what they were before the pandemic, though the vacancy rates started rising before Covid-19 hit the city. In 2007, only 4% of storefronts were vacant citywide, rising to 6% in 2017 and nearly 8% in 2019, said Feliz. He cited data from the Department of Finance.
Julianne Cuba , 2024-04-17 19:39:40
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