Roll It Up appears to have closed at 63 E. Seventh St. between First Avenue and Second Avenue. It hasn't been open in at least two weeks, and the interior looks to have been emptied out.
The nautical-themed shop specializing in rolled ice cream opened on Aug. 26, 2016 ... then closed in November for the season... before reopening in April.
If this is a permanent closure, then this marks the second rolled ice cream casualty out of the three that opened last summer. Lab -320° closed in January after six months on St. Mark's Place. 10Below Ice Cream is still alive and well on another part of St. Mark's Place.
Rolled ice-cream and other treats are not the cause of our problems, they are symptomatic. It's what you get when you have 10,000 students living in dorms in the neighborhood and god knows how many more crammed into apartments. The balance of transient and permanent renters was destroyed, compounded by hundreds of liquor licenses and seemingly uncontrolled building. Going, going, gone.
ReplyDeleteThat place is doomed. I swear. Its one business after the other who opens and closes there.
ReplyDeleteThis place and others like it are dooomed from the start. Tourists, newer residents and many students want big chain stores, antiseptic cookie cutter environments, and shiny looking objects. Look at this place. No tourist would want to go in there, it looks like something out of the Gaza Strip or Delhi. Where's the Instagrammable Photo Spot? Most of these storefronts are too small, too old, in a word, too New York to attract tourists. As Sophocles said, its all transients now, making it harder for regular businesses to survive.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with the new Mallification Model is that there are only so many good spots for chain stores and tourist destinations available here, which means the EV can't even attract most of the tourist dollars other areas receive. Besides Superiority Burger, the only places with constant lines or crowds are Starbucks and the now closed McDonalds, and places that serve alcohol. Empire Biscuit tried and failed to crack the code.
The exception is Shake Shack, which will be just perfect for this healthy junk food eating, transient neighborhood, and will generate massive crowds, bringing garbage and rats along for the ride. But there aren't any nice shiny new Death Stars for these stores to occupy anymore. The EV really is finally turning into Midtown South now, and unless there is another real estate crash, we are stuck in between becoming the nice shiny new Times Square and remaining the crappy old Tompkins Square we know and love.
Giovanni
ReplyDeleteThere are shiny new retail spaces coming, the Steiner place on Ave, the Extel mega structure on 14th and who knows what is coming to E Houston in the next year or two. I agree I always thought our small 200-500 square foot space made us chain proof but I didn't figure in joining spaces as the new Starbucks did on St Marks and A. To make matters worse a shoe repair, tailor or other mom and pop who could flourish in these spaces are either forced out by nutty rents or Amazon has taken their lunch, and dinner.
all that but also.. the place kinda was terrible
ReplyDeleteGiovanni, I get what you're trying to say but this is a very poor example. This place was quite Instagrammable with all those planters and whatnot in the front window, and the neighborhood is still far from being entirely transient. I've lived in the EV since 1997 and consider myself a newcomer; my boyfriend and many friends have been here a lot longer than that. You're overlooking two rather obvious points about this place: 1) Businesses that aren't at street level are always at a disadvantage. A couple steps down or up tend to make a huge difference in foot traffic. 2) Opening an ice cream shop at the end of summer and trying to make a go of things throughout the fall and winter is as poorly-timed as a business venture can be. Like opening a soup shop in July.
ReplyDelete