WNYC Radio Reports On New Roosevelt Island Cornell Campus and Revitalization Of Main Street Retail - We're A Captive Retail Audience, Like Airports, Says Hudson's David Kramer

Main Street Image Of Roosevelt Island Is The Village From Glark

According to WNYC radio:

... “If you walk down Main Street you will see shuttered shop after shuttered shop,” said Matthew Katz, president of the Roosevelt Island Residents’ Association and one of RIOC’s biggest critics. “Why? Because all of those shops, their landlord was RIOC. And RIOC did not know how to be a commercial landlord, and it did not want to be a commercial landlord. “...

... “If anything the retail should be more successful on an island, which is an island,” said David Kramer, principal at the Hudson Companies. “It’s a captive audience. It should do well like retail does in airports.”

Carl Weisbrod, a long-time resident of Roosevelt Island and senior partner at HR&A Advisors, is one person who is confident about the impact of the tech campus.

“It will definitely affect retail,” he said...

... The prospect of the new business the campus will bring, and the presence of an experienced private developer, may begin to pay off soon. The Hudson and Related Companies are in negotiations with five new stores, according to Kramer, with the first new stores expected in the summer.

The impact may be less positive for existing stores, however. Trellis, the neighborhood diner, is one of three stores that the Hudson Companies are negotiating with; they’re likely to face higher rents.

Click here for the entire WNYC article and below is the radio report.



I've heard from a reliable source, though unconfirmed from Hudson/Related, that one of the new Roosevelt Island Main Street Stores is likely to be a Dunkin Donuts/Baskin Robbins shop.

Now, if we can just get the Mobile Food Trucks by the subway,  Roosevelt Island residents may soon have some good retail choices some of which were suggested by this 2009 Main Street Retail Study.