Pinch (with the help of EV Arrow) points to the work permits... where we see that a Panda Express is coming to this storefront...
This marks the latest outpost for the quick-serve Chinese restaurant chain that launched in California in 1983 ... with more than 2,000 locations today (with a handful around NYC).
An AT&T store was here for a few months... taking over for the Vitamin Shoppe.
And as a P.S. for the SW corner... a Citi Bike docking station was installed here at the start of the year as part of the EV expansion... 
Thanks to Pinch for the Citi Bike pic!
Panda express... New York, you're breaking my heart.
ReplyDeleteJust what the EV needs, a fast food Chinese place in a neighborhood full of interesting Chinese restaurants
ReplyDeleteHope Mee Noodle on 1st between 13th and 14th survives this. They are a landmark and anchor to the neighborhood.
ReplyDeleteWhy does the city grant these chain restaurants to come into our neighborhood ? soon we will nothing but a strip mall madness
ReplyDeleteNo. You will just have more empty storefronts which become magnets for crime.
DeleteThere is consistent violence on those corners and used needles on the floor but Panda Express is where we should draw the line? I grew up here and I’m not a huge fan of box chains either but that prime corner space needs a solid business. I dont love Panda Express but its solid.
ReplyDelete14th and 1st is such a tragedy right now you could put a Walmart/Amazon/Dicks Sporting goods/Cracker Barrel mash-up there for all I care. Just as long as you get a business that is going to tell the violent folks who congregate outside to move on so I can walk around that part of my neighborhood with my kids without it feeling like a minefield. Also agreed, Mee Noodle is great. They'll be fine. If 5,000 smoke shops can somehow survive in the same 3 block radius, 2 Chinese restaurants can too.
I have to admit I avoid that intersection at all costs
ReplyDelete10:08am is so right. Better to have this space occupied, lit, and trafficked than having the corner desolate and taken over by homelessness and drug use.
ReplyDeleteOnce again, Mee Noodles has to deal with a being pushed around by a big national chain. First it was Starbucks stealing their spot on the corner on 13th St., now Panda Express? But guess what? Mee Noodle will win because their food is better. I just wish they would bring back table service because eating their food in the restaurant is better, plus you get free hot tea.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who is a graduate of Immaculate Conception and Stuyvesant High (when it was on 15th St and 1st Ave) and a life time resident of Stuyvesant Town, 10.08 AM's post is spot on. Mee Noodle and NO. 1 will be fine. The current situation on all four corners of 1st Avenue and 14th Street is not sustainable. This is far from the total solution but it helps.
ReplyDeleteI am not fan of fast food joints, but anything is better than nothing on this corner. I haven't seen it this bad with scary guys in over 30 years.
ReplyDeleteI agree, better than it being empty. Not perfect that's okay.
ReplyDeleteTo those who think Panda Express will move them along. WRONG. These places become MAGNETS for the burnouts and Losers of the world cause they're cheap and the food is gloppy.. They will congregate in-front, set up shop and beg as you go in. And the NYPD will do NOTHING.
ReplyDeleteWhile I don't have quite the catastrophic view some commenters do, I agree that at this point even a chain is preferable to a vacant storefront. I don't think Mee and Panda Express are even aiming at the same audience (i.e., as a grown person, I would eat at Mee even if it's not my ideal but I'd have to be dead broke to go to Panda Express).
ReplyDeleteI live on First Avenue but I use the Avenue A L train subway entrance just to avoid this intersection. It's bee depressing for as long as I can remember.
ReplyDeleteConsidering the shelf life for places in Manhattan, this Panda Express will be gone in a few short years and something else will replace it. The saddest thing is that nothing lasts in today's NY. On a related topic, how many years has the old B. DALTON on 6th Avenue and 8th street sat empty? That area has become such a desolate wilderness. TLA video, the recording studio, Gray's Papaya, the shoe stores, etc... now you can just see tumbleweeds.
ReplyDeleteAnyone living there now could you tell me is it really any worse than it used to be before Bloomberg? I lived on 14th between 1st & A above the Barber Shop back in the 90s - homeless used to come sleep in my foyer and smoke in my doorway.
ReplyDeletewow I knew it was bad but these comments will really hammer it home. Has anyone had any luck with getting any of our representative/council people to answer e-mails on this issue?
ReplyDeletePretty much EVERYTHING has gone back to the way things were before Guiliani took over. Bloomberg did a GREAT job of prettifying the city (yes and favored the Rich) and then Mayor D'Assio singlehandedly destroyed it.
ReplyDeleteAnd don't forget that Dim Sum Go Go is opening on this block as well.
ReplyDelete@I Hate New Things. B. Dalton was taken over by Barnes and Noble, and that store on 8th St and 6th avenue closed in 2012, and has sat vacant for 10 years. I feel sad every time I pass that corner, and it makes no sense that the place has sat empty through three Mayors and Presidencies. Movie reviewer Roger Friedman worked there back then and has the best account of the history of booksellers in New York:
ReplyDeleteBarnes & Noble Closing Greenwich Village Store, Their Destruction of Book Biz Nearly Complete
Roger FriedmanNovember 29, 2012
"A sign has gone up in the window of the Barnes & Noble on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Eighth St: they are closing on December 31st. In the mid 1980s, Barnes & Noble swallowed up Marboro Books, Bookmasters and B Dalton, among other booksellers. They killed off small booksellers all over the country, eventually destroying business for many beloved New York landmarks like Colosseum, Books & Co., Gotham, Doubleday, and many others. St. Marks Bookstore, in its reduced form, is rumored to be downsizing and moving again.
B&N wanted to rule the world. They took over the B Dalton store at what used to be the gateway of Greenwich Village, but also added a behemoth store at 21st and Sixth (now gone), Lincoln Center (now gone), and downsized the famous main store at Fifth Avenue and 18th st. On upper Fifth Avenue, they ravaged Scribner Books, the best bookstore in New York, which became Rizzoli and is now a Benetton or some clothier.
Now B&N is in such reduced circumstances that they’ve slinked (slunk?) down Fifth Avenue from their original spot near 48th St. to something far less glamorous on the east side of the street near 45th.
I was working at the B&N outpost on Third Avenue and 59th St. in 1979 when the destruction began. I was in college, and had been reassigned from Marboro on West Eighth St. when B&N bought that chain and killed it. You could see the future: at that moment, truck drivers and maintenance people had been promoted to store managers by the hippie HR guy who thought it was all very funny. No one knew anything about books. No one cared. A customer once walked into our store and asked for “books by Singer”– meaning Isaac Bashevis Singer. He was directed by our night manager to the Singer sewing store on 57th and Third.
Among the stores B&N helped coax into oblviion was the legendary Wilentz Books on Eighth St. just a half block east of the red brick former Dalton edifice. For a while, Shakespeare & Co. has barely held on, on lower Broadway. Somehow, Three Lives Books–with different owners than the ones I knew–has clung to life in the West Village. But they are very small and off the beaten track. Otherwise, B&N has managed to wreck what used to be a thriving book life in Greenwich Village.
And now, come January 1st, there will be no book store in our neighborhood, known the world over as home to legendary writers from Mark Twain and Dawn Powell to Edna St. Vincent Millay. Congratulations to the Riggios. You ushered out an entire culture and it only took 30 years. Everything will be downloaded onto a Nook. The smell of books, the feel of them, the communal experience of choosing books from piles and stacks, has been decimated. Good work! (I can’t hold amazon accountable for this–they didn’t start with brick and mortar stores.)"
Thanks for your informative and great reply!
DeleteGovt restrictions in NYC are killing communal experiences. Technology would have killed bookstores if Amazon didnt.
DeleteWe can say Giuliani this and Bloomberg and De Blasio that but if we’re looking at the numbers, we can’t make blanket statements that things are like the 80s and early 90’s, especially when looking within a historical context. Just looking at data on murders from the NYPD for example, through both Bloomberg AND De Blasio we were at historically record lows.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, anything less than 500 murders per year was considered 45-50 year lows which has continued through 2020. Under De Blasio (and by way I thought overall he was ok but not great) we had years in the 200 and 300’s. Obviously, any murder is horrific but its important to look at these tragic deaths historically.
Yes there was an uptick in 2020 and 2021 but that has probably more to do with our world being upended in other ways. And more importantly, when we see these sensationalist headlines that say 30%, 40% no 50% increase in crime! we have to remember its 30, 40, or 50% against what was already historically low rates and technically continues to be.
Having said all that, I probably jinxed myself and will get robbed tomorrow haha. Also 14th and 1st sucks and something needs to be done about it haha.
"Pretty much EVERYTHING has gone back to the way things were before Guiliani took over."
ReplyDeleteIf you're going to panic that hard you might as well get moseying out to the suburbs.
NYC is a bellwether of social inequality. That's not DeBlasio's fault (and I'm not a fan). We're looking at the results of fifty years of deinstitutionalization and income stagnation, not to mention Bloomberg's cuts to housing programs. You don't end up a fifty-year-old unhoused person with an opioid addiction by accident or by character flaw. Those are systemic failures. Even if you think you can somehow aggressively police yourself out of the existence of these inconvenient people...deBlasio let the NYPD do pretty much what they wanted and Cy Vance Jr. was plenty aggressive in prosecution, so...why didn't it happen?
"These places become MAGNETS for the burnouts and Losers of the world cause they're cheap and the food is gloppy"
ReplyDeletePlease remember that not everyone can afford to live/eat the way YOU choose to. What's the difference between this or having Papaya (RIP) across the street?
So much NIMBY for anything that isn't in YOUR exact socio-economic range.
To the two Posters ripping what I wrote offering Nimby this Nimby that platitudes, I have LIVED on the Lower East Side my whole life and GREW Up on Avenue 'D' when not one of you would DARE to venture down there with your high and mighty sentiments. This is my experience and STREET knowledge of the Village. It got me through very rough patches in the neighborhood. Yes I have seen Guiliani clean up what looked to be uncleanable and Bloomberg prettify it while the last Mayor worked to destroy it. Please dont ME give the income disparity BS. I grew up VERY poor in a now TORCHED walk-up and made something of myself and built a career for myself. Others could have TRIED to do the same but CHOSE to smoke dope, hang out and PISS away their lives. Times to STOP giving people a PASS for atrocious and DANGEROUS behavior. This is why we are seeing people being hurt all over the city and country.
ReplyDeleteWasn't this once the home of a Love's drugstore? Late 1980s if memory serves. Plenty of chains in that spot over the years.
ReplyDeleteYes, in the early 2000s; don't know how far back it went.
DeleteIt is unhealthy food. Refined processed everything with sugar, salt and msg.
ReplyDeleteDelicious food at an affordable price! Sign me up!
ReplyDeleteAll this drama… I love Panda Express… been waiting for them to put one in a more convenient location than uptown… hopefully it will help clear up the neighborhood but for now does anyone know when it will open??
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, it looks like the place closed as soon as it opened. Once the "coming soon" signs came down, the locks on the door and the Fedex missed package stickers came up, and now that corner is nothing more than a homeless hangout. I don't even like Panda Express, but I'm still sick of all the businesses closing down in the neighborhood.
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