Been meaning to note this long read from Curbed titled "The story of a store."
The piece explores the city's retail vacancy or the "luxury blight" crisis ... with a focus 0n 441-445 E. Ninth St. (aka 145 Avenue A), the six-story building that Icon Realty bought in 2014 for $10.1 million.
As we documented at the time, the existing retail tenants that made up the charming row of storefronts on the Ninth Street side were either not offered lease renewals or given massive rent hikes.
Meanwhile, all but one of the new tenants (four of five) who rented the Icon-renovated retail spaces were gone within a year. The casualties included BeetleBug, the floral design shop, Mahalo New York Bakery and Gelarto.
Writer Neil deMause talked with one of those tenants, Isiah Michael, who opened the Classic Man Barber Lounge in 2018. Per the article:
An investment banker who’d gone to barbering school, Michael thought he could make a go of it in the paired storefronts, even if the rent was a bit higher than he’d anticipated.
"What we didn’t expect was the Icon variable," he says. A series of mishaps — malfunctioning air conditioning, a continually flooding basement, and an unannounced electrical upgrade that Michael claims cost him and his partner $30,000 in lost equipment and inventory — led to legal battles with his landlord, and ultimately an eviction notice last February.
When Michael offered to bring over a lease payment he had been withholding in a dispute over repair costs, he says, Icon “responded saying they were terminating the lease.”
You can read the post at this link.
As for this building, there are three new tenants on the way in: Ralph's Famous Italian Ices & Ice Cream ... Village Crêperie ... and Social Tees.
Hopefully they won't suffer from the "Icon variable."
Previously on EV Grieve:
• On East 9th Street Dusty Buttons is closing after 125% rent hike: 'Saying goodbye will hurt like hell'
• The Upper Rust is moving away from East 9th Street and the East Village
