What Exactly Is the Rent on 7th Ave, Anyway?

7th Avenue Landlords of Park Slope, what are you doing, dudes?

How many cellphones or cups of coffee would you need to sell, how many toes would you need to polish to pay the usurious commercial rents of 7th Ave? One recent listing in the NY Times: "Commercial space in PRIME South Slope! 1,600 sq ft: bargain-priced at only $15,000 a month.

A relative deal, this Craigslist classified: $7500/month for 1000 sq feet.

A 2008 article on the Real Deal said that rents along Seventh Avenue had risen to as high as $150 a square foot. That was the year when my belovedly mediocre Second Street Cafe went down for the count.

There are vacant storefronts on virtually every block of 7th Avenue and it's getting kind of depressing. Has somebody done a count? 

I think we need to come up with some better business plans for the shopkeepers of Park Slope than the same old shoes, cellphones, and wife shops.

Show me your best new store ideas and maybe we'll send them to the Chamber of Commerce, which Erica was actually invited to join a few months back.

[ed note: we already have a good list started in Coming Soon to Park Slope].

The Neergaard House!: 234 8th Ave

image via BrownstonerI've always wondered wtf the deal was with this place. It's like a real house! Just chillin on 8th Ave.

Our dentist is across the street (greatest dentist in the history of the universe: Dr. Rosenkranz!) and also I walk by all the time. Someone told me they give out killer candy on Halloween.

Brownstoner has a whole big post about how the house was originally built by the Neergaard family in 1913 (as in Neergaard Pharmacy) and designed by Architect Aymar Embury.

Brownstoner has way more scoop too, so click on ovah.

(via Brownstoner)

HAY Center Slope, You Ready for a New Neighbor? [Movin' on Up]

So, tomorrow marks one week until the keys to my new place are in my hands--and I'm officially a center-Sloper.  (Don't worry, Gogo, I'll still captain the South Slope decathlon team; I'm only a few blocks above 9th.)  Yes, the lease was signed (DISH. WASHER.) and as I begin my intrepid trek from my quiet South Slope place that's dangerously close to one bagel place up to my new studio alarmingly closer to yet another bagel place, I'd like to pay homage (and say FU) to the things I will no longer be right next to.

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New GAP Coming to Park Slope?

Erica, in her new incarnation as organized madam of now TWO blogs, shot her unstaff an email yesterday asking if any of us wanted to do a post about the new plan for the GAP in Park Slope.

Hallelujah!

Finally, an affordable place to buy clothes that doesn’t entail my spending another moment at the dreaded Atlantic Center.

Me, me, me, me, me! Choose me, Erica. I wanna write it.

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MOVIN' ON OUT...MAAAYBE?

So, the time has come: I think I'm looking to move. But don't cry, Park Slope--I will still be in you, and actually, I'm trying to stay within a stone's throw of my current place. (Though access to a fucking express train would be the stuff dreams are made of.)  And so I need yer help, friends.

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