An employee told EVG regular Gojira that April 20 is the store's last day ...
As we previously reported, eight parcels consisting of 222 Avenue A and 504 - 530 E. 14th St. (excluding No. 520) were leased for a 99-year period by the respective owner of East Village 14 LLC.
After Rainbow goes, the remaining businesses will be Rite Aid, the laundromat, which multiple readers have said will move to Ray's old space at East Side 99-cent store toward Avenue B, and the dearly beloved Blarney Cove. But for how much longer?
Previously on EV Grieve:
East 14th Street exodus continues
Conspiracies: What next for 14th Street and Avenue A?
Those ongoing rumors about the future of East 14th Street between Avenue A and B
Petland is moving away from East 14th Street, fueling more new development rumors
[Updated with correction] 8-lot parcel of East 14th Street primed for new development
Bargain Express has closed on East 14th Street
The disappearing storefronts of East 14th Street
That stretch of 14th Street is exactly the "strip mall" that so many people condemn as "suburban".
ReplyDelete@shmnyc, I beg to differ. This row of Taxpayer buildings (look up the definition) served as the core of retail business for Stuyvesant Town's south side for over 50 years. The Rainbow shop has only been there for a half dozen years was preceded by Bloom & Krup Appliances, but the building was built as a home for F.W. Woolworth which occupied the building for (probably) 40 years. The only other national chain was RiteAid, and in that opened well before the proliferation of chain drug stores happened in Manhattan. That row of buildings hosted supermarkets, discount stores, toy stores, video store, kids clothing stores, hair salons, record stores, pizza places, a bialy store (Kossars) a large representation of typical NYC businesses. There's a lot of neighborhood history on that block, and your comment, dismissing it as "suburban strip mall" is really far from accurate.
ReplyDeleteThe long row of condo towers that will replace it will certainly be different than what has stood. And time marches on.
hahah sorry but woolworth is not a suburban chain store? it was the granddaddy of suburban chain stores except with segregated lunch counters
ReplyDeleteand Bloom & Krup Appliances they were always rude and way over priced
now Rainbow which is a tacky and cheesy cloth store that was always empty everytime I passed it.
I say good riddance .
Anonymous 8:23: Strip malls have nothing to do with chains/non-chains; it describe the arrangement of the buildings. "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."
ReplyDeleteI fondly remember the Kossar's -- it was 24 hours, really just a bagel factory with a take-out counter for locals -- and the card shop, two greeting cards for $1, crazy cards he must have got from some last-year excess, but you could find great items among them. Everything was so unbelievably cheap there, the place was always busy. For a while there was a discount supermarket. This is going way back. I don't think they had a fridge, you had to buy whatever was there that day -- sort of like the old 9th Street bakery that would sell you yesterday's roll for a nickel. That strip was unlike any place in the world. Run-down, crazy place, facing Stuy Town's respectable uniformity, it was the starkest contrast.
ReplyDeleteAgree w/ Rob....that strip was not 'normal'. I will miss it when it goes. End of 14th is one of the last bastions of Weird NYC.
ReplyDeleteI love the Blarney Cove.
ReplyDeleteThat is all.
:(
@ Goggla
ReplyDelete+1
There was also a Chemical Bank; the supermarket was Red Apple, and at one point they renovated it and put in freezer units to compete with the Gristede's on 14th and 1st. Bloom & Krup moved to 14th Street from the 1st Avenue storefront where No Relation currently presides when the Woolworth's shuttered in the early '90s. It's always been a changing panoply of sometimes good, sometimes crappy, sometimes interesting, sometimes "meh", and often unique storefronts, but I have no doubt that once all those "useless" little places are torn down, a far less interesting and unique set of retailers will move in and turn what was still a tiny slice of old New York - good, bad, or indifferent - into just one more unexciting, bland streetscape. Why anyone would want every single area of this city to look exactly like every other truly baffles me - this is not what New York ever was in its history, and it lessens our greatness and singularity to be so now. The best analogy I can think of is the difference between mutts and purebreds - mutts, with their crazy mix of lineages, are very often stronger, healthier dogs that the more fragile purebreds, who come from basically the same lines over and over. Take out the mom and pops, bring in the chains, and you rob the city of the strength diversity brings. Why should this be acceptable, and in some cases, even hoped for?
ReplyDeleteGojira, When you say "Take out the mom and pops, ... and you rob the city of the strength diversity brings." What strength are you referring to? It's not the strength to survive.
ReplyDeleteah, the overwhelming ignorance of some! For over fifty years it was an urban Main Street providing for the needs of working class locals. Just the right mix of odd and necessary stores. And NO - Woolworth's was NOT suburban - it was the anchor for many a Main Street - and the anchor store for many, many NYC neighborhood shopping streets. Miss the old Fifth Ave Woolworth's, and the 34th St Woolworth's as well.
ReplyDeleteNo strip mall was 14th St!
@ Peace Eye Booknik
ReplyDelete+1
I had a ton of favorite stores on that block between A&B, JoJo's, Prince of Pizza, John's Bargain Store, Kossars, the Zeppole pizza place. Great block.
And just try walking into a CVS to buy a canary !!
they have one that takes 2 c-batteries to chirp.
ReplyDeletethere was a fun little toy & hobby shop near the middle of the block in the late 1950's, but the name eleudes me. It had a great model railroad section, and was run by a large, gruff old man who once you got to know him was a delightful raconteur...
ReplyDeleteSo again, the block has always had its quirky nyc charm.
by the way, its a little off topic - but anyone remember the big dust-up at Old Stanley's the night of the Kennedy assassination?
@shmnyc - I would be curious to know what kind of "strength" you think is signified by having a smaller and smaller number of chain stores replacing the wide range of establishments steadily being driven out of the city thanks to landlord greed and city laissez-faire. With each one that goes our options shrink, until the time may come when we have the choice of nothing *but* sterile megacorporations - hardly an appealing future. The foundations of buildings are built wide and strong for a reason - to support their edifices; build them too narrow and they lack strength, and their edifice collapses. It is not "strength" when a small, fixed number of like corporations who have far more tax advantages and money than one-off stores can drive out all non-corporate competition; not only do you lose a lot of local color and flavor, but the uniform range of products being offered have relevance to less and less people. If there is no balance, then the whole system goes out of whack, and that's what's happening in NY today - our foundations are narrowing. That does not seem to bother you. It does me.
ReplyDeleteYeah they lack the strength of tax breaks and giveaways that big chains have. Is it that Businesses that survived for decades suddenly don't have strength or is it the ridiculous jacked up rents that NO ONE can support except chain stores or bars for college kids and Carrie Bradshaw wannabes?
ReplyDelete