Starbucks Closing 600 Stores Nationwide - Please Howard Shultz, Do Not Kill Roosevelt Island's Hope For Retail Amenities!
Starbucks will be closing over 600 of its stores this summer though particular store closing locations have not yet been announced. According to the Seattle Times:
About 200 of those will be directly operated by Starbucks, with the rest managed by other companies like bookstores and airport concession firms.And:
About 70 percent of the stores closing had opened since October 2005. That means Starbucks is shuttering about 10 percent of the 4,081 U.S. stores opened since then.I certainly hope that our Roosevelt Island Starbucks will not be among those closed. If so, it will be a huge setback for the development of any additional retail amenities here on Roosevelt Island. The Real Deal reported in December 2007 that before Starbucks came to Roosevelt Island:
"They probably made some poor real-estate decisions, and when they opened stores in fiscal 2006, they probably didn't anticipate how tough the economy would be and how the brand would be struggling," said John Owens, an analyst at the research firm Morningstar in Chicago.
"It looks like East Berlin before the wall fell," said Andrew Oliver, executive vice president of Cushman & Wakefield Sonnenblick Goldman. For years, there was only one chain store, a Gristedes grocery, and much of the remaining retail was service-oriented: a diner, a Chinese takeout joint and a thrift shop, among others.Howard Shultz, please don't close the Roosevelt Island Starbucks!
This fall, however, the island became home to a Duane Reade, which followed on the heels of the opening of the area's first Starbucks. Both are tenants in a Hudson Companies/Related Companies complex, and part of a new wave of retail space that brokers say is changing the island.
6 comments :
If the RIOC would get its act together and lease out the vacant retail space on Main Street I would not mind for Starbucks to go away and replaced with some local coffee shop. That would be awesome.
Goodbye Starbucks, hello Dunkin Donuts!
As long as the Dunkin Donuts will come with a Baskin Robbins I am all for it.
How about a Baskin Robbins instead? Heard from reliable sources, Starbucks isn't doing well in Seattle like it used to be. Cafe Ladro and Peet's Coffee & Tea are now stealing the limelight.
The problem I see is that if Starbucks can't make it on Roosevelt Island(and there is no indication that is the case or that they are planning to close the Roosevelt Island store) what makes anyone think that a less deep pocketed retailer such as an independent coffee shop or Dunkin Donuts can?
I like this Starbucks and think that they are a great addition to the Island.
GOOD NEWS!!
Starbucks officially released their Store closing list and the Roosevelt Island store is NOT on the list!
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