Mom and pop stores are part of the glue that holds neighborhoods together. They anchor the local economy; they play a role in neighborhood life; and they help create a sense of place.
In some parts of the city, like the Upper West Side, chain stores have practically been zoned out to protect neighborhood businesses, but, as these communities have learned, re-zoning may not be enough to save the neighborhood's small businesses. And sometimes, re-zoning is what drives them out.
In a study summarized in this Daily News op ed, a Hunter College research team studied 10 years worth of business directory data, mapping commercial changes in Brooklyn from 2002 to 2012, to find out where and why small businesses were displaced. The team learned that, although big box stores chip away at Mom and Pop's profits over time, the biggest problem by far for Brooklyn indie business owners has been their wholesale displacement from areas of the city due to "slash and burn" re-zoning for private development.
When commercial space is expanded through re-zoning, it gives landlords incentive to drive out their existing commercial tenants in order to sell or re-develop their properties. If the re-zoning includes big commercial storefronts, existing tenants will be replaced by big national chain stores.
The Bloomberg administration re-zoned big swaths of Brooklyn in an effort to expand their economic growth potential. A re-zoning in downtown Brooklyn in 2004 wiped out an entire row of thriving independent restaurants and stores to make way for high-end chains. It was the city that turned Fulton Mall into a high-end retail strip.
This kind of displacement isn't inevitable, the authors say. Essex Crossing, a huge re-development proposed for the Lower East Side, carves out rent-stabilized space for existing Essex Market tenants. And there's no reason why this kind of accommodation can't become a part of every commercial development subject to public review.
But in Brooklyn, it's not just re-zonings that have displaced established small businesses. In neighborhoods like Williamsburg, where 90% of bars and restaurants have opened within the past 10 years, the exploding nightlife has pushed out the bodegas, dry cleaners, small clothing stores, hair salons, florists, and funeral homes that once served the Puerto Rican and Dominican populations still living there, cutting the number of Hispanic-owned businesses in half.
Small business owners can't defend themselves against this kind of rapid commercial turnover. Their landlords can easily replace them with tenants who can afford to pay higher rents.
It's time, the authors say, for the deBlasio administration, which has so far focused only on affordable housing and preventing residential displacement, to look at ways to protect the city's small business owners.
The City Council is considering a bill: the Small Business Jobs Survival Act, that could help level the playing field for small business owners by extending commercial leases and offering them some protection against rent gouging and extortion.
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