An excellent piece just came out from the New Yorker magazine about how high commercial rents are negatively affecting wonderful neighborhoods throughout NYC, including the West Village. It also features some solutions for this issue, including this blurb:
> If high-rent blight hurts New York’s municipal economy, what, if anything, might be done? Because the problem is tied almost inextricably to the value of New York real estate generally, there are no simple fixes. The #SaveNYC movement and the Small Business Congress NYC advocate the regulation of lease renewal. They support a bill written by the small-business advocate Steve Null that tries to limit rent spikes by making commercial-lease-renewal disputes subject to mandatory mediation and arbitration, like some baseball salaries. Gale Brewer, the Manhattan borough president, supports a different regulation of lease renewals, coupled with zoning rules, that encourages landlords to quit waiting for the jackpot and to start renting. Some, like Moss, want to fine landlords who leave storefronts abandoned, in the hope that they’ll then rent to smaller, quirkier companies instead of Chipotle. There may also be other original solutions to the specific problem of high-rent blight, such as, perhaps, finding ways to let pop-up stores use abandoned spaces on a seasonal basis. <
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/why-are-there-so-many-shuttered-storefronts-in-the-west-village?mbid=rss
