Flower District, RIP

Manhattan’s flower district, on 28th Street, is not

long for this world. What the merchants needed – a whole city block

with easy truck access and non-astronomical rents – simply can’t be found

in these days of frothy residential real estate. It won’t be long until there

are essentially no street-level merchants (as opposed to retail stores) in Manhattan

any more: our wonderful island is becoming a place of office buildings and residences

up high, and retail at street level; nothing more. (So long as there is Lendy,

however, I still have hope.)

Of course, the fact that the flower merchants were highly competitive and couldn’t

agree on anything to save their lives hardly helped their cause. Renting a store

on 28th Street because that’s where the flower district already is? That’s easy.

Trying to coordinate a mass rental of storefronts somewhere else? That’s a collective-action

problem which was clearly beyond these überflorists.

At least the diamond district remains. Now there’s a business with

the money to stay wherever it wants.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.