Wednesday, May 29, 2024

TImes Square-friendly business is now up and running on Union Square

NYC Convenience Gifts, a Times Square-friendly business, is now open on the SE corner of 14th Street and Fourth Avenue. (First mentioned here.)

Step into NYC Convenience Gifts and discover a treasure trove of NYC-licensed products, each a unique piece of the city's charm. They have everything from mini license plates to magnetic bookmarks, mugs to hats. And that's not all — the place also offers a range of vaping products and ice cream and luggage...

... and that's just what we saw from the windows. 

Speaking of windows, the army of handless "Children of the Corn"-ish mannequins give us the creeps...
The last tenant, the oddly configured Walgreens, closed here in February 2022. 

It's a vast space, and we wondered what might eventually move in... the Walgreens was renovated and expanded into the space above the quick-serve restaurants on Fourth Avenue back in 2010... (this far-flung layout is what we meant by "oddly configured.") 

Previously on EV Grieve:
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6 comments:

  1. Sleepless in EVMay 29, 2024 at 8:30 AM

    If Apple Bank and Walgreens found this massive location to be undesirable, how on earth is this trinket shop going to last?
    I thought the invasion of 7-11's was an East Village low point, this takes it further down the road to being a trashy tourist spot.
    I can't wait for the "Elmo's" and Disney/Pixar characters to begin setting up shop.

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  2. noble neolaniMay 29, 2024 at 9:41 AM

    Due to the "fleecing" of the East Village, not the lack of affordable housing but the low standard of personal style, I think this store fits right in.

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  3. PatMay 29, 2024 at 12:37 PM

    Thank God, we needed this!

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  4. Liam RMay 29, 2024 at 3:36 PM

    This must be a money laundering front. There's simply no other way this exists.

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  5. nutbeemMay 30, 2024 at 8:53 AM

    These places are showing up all over NYC, and increasingly in areas that could only very optimistically be described as tourist destinations. An entire block of 6th avenue in the 30s is now filled with souvenir shops, each one identical to the next, and with only a trickle of retail traffic.

    I can't see how they can be breaking even. The low rents help, but they still have to keep paying those rents every month. Maybe souvenir junk is a high margin business, but I have a gut feeling that something else is going on.

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  6. XTCMay 30, 2024 at 10:15 AM

    Souvenir junk is a huge business but not sure how many tourists come down to the EV buy these shits. Given the foot traffic a place like this makes sense in the Times Sq/ Herald Sq area. I guess it's close enough to lower Broadway to pull in the out of town schmucks to grab a bunch of NYPD t-shirts and Donald Trump bobble heads. To be fair the the laser etched glass skylines are pretty cool.

    ReplyDelete

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