Retailers Rethink Pandemic-Battered Manhattan

In the heart of Manhattan’s garment district, a once-busy Starbucks on a corner of Eighth Avenue and 39th Street sits empty. Just down the block, a Dos Toros Taqueria that opened just three years ago is now closed. And Wok to Walk, which once served steaming containers of noodles mixed with chicken and vegetables to a bustling lunch crowd, is also shuttered.

While the Delta variant of the coronavirus has again delayed plans by many companies to bring employees back to offices en masse, workers who have been trickling into Midtown are discovering that many of their favorite haunts for a quick cup of coffee and a muffin in the morning or sandwich or salad at lunchtime have disappeared. A number of those that are open are operating at reduced hours or with limited menus.

With the pandemic keeping millions of New York City office employees home for the past year, restaurants, coffee shops, apparel retailers and others struggled to stay afloat.

By the end of 2020, the number of chain stores in Manhattan — everything from drugstores to clothing retailers to restaurants — had fallen by more than 17 percent from 2019, according to the Center for an Urban Future, a nonprofit research and policy organization.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/business/retail-vacancies-midtown-manhattan.html