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By: Benyamin Davidsons
Retail business in New York City’s underground subway system is still struggling.
As reported by the NY Times, the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, remote work trends, and online shopping continue to devastate retail stores located in NYC’s vast underground. About three-quarters of the retail spaces in the transit network are now vacant, per the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Ridership has increased steadily since the pandemic ended. In 2023, about 3.6 million people rode the subway every weekday, making a decent audience of potential shoppers to the beverage, food, clothing and gift stores located at the subway stations.
The underground retails shops used to be a boon for tenants, with newsstands and other retailers thriving and growing starting back in 1904. “It was phenomenal,” said Biana Todorovic, who was a co-owner of Tiecoon, a necktie and gift shop that closed during the pandemic after two decades in Pennsylvania Station and several years in Grand Central Terminal. “Each year we performed better than the year before, but I knew it would plateau at some point,” she said.
Overall, of the 195 retail spots, only 54 remain open, the MTA said. Per the Times, today, at the Columbus Circle underground station, only one of the 40 shops that opened eight years ago still remains open—namely Evan Feldman’s doughnut shop, Doughnuttery, opened in 2018.
“We are not going strong, but we still are making a go at it,” Mr. Feldman said, adding that his rent was reduced and that he added online deliveries to his business. “We are a little resilient.” Similarly, Fulton Center, the decade-old mall in a Lower Manhattan subway station, is close to vacant. In Midtown too, there are rows of empty storefronts at the Port Authority and Rockefeller Center stations.
These vacancies not only hurt potential business and the MTA, but also hurt riders. The empty storefronts creep in a sense of unease and leave the underground markets unkempt. In many cases, homeless people took over empty corners of retail areas and sleep in stairwells. Per the Times, the underground market is now under new management, which has added more security guards and has removed homeless people from the stairwells.
Some believe filling all these underground vacant stores in the near future is unrealistic. While one newspaper stand and a coffee shop may do viable business in the spots, clothing stores in the subway seem to be at a loss. “In the world of the New York City subway system, show me one person killing a lot of time,” said Marshal Cohen, a retail industry analyst at Circana, a market research firm. “Am I going to stop in the middle of my commute to try on a $200 pair of sunglasses?”
In 2023, the MTA collected nearly $53 million in retail revenue for its space, down from $72 million in 2019, it said. “We are trying to claw our way back,” said David Florio, the authority’s chief real estate transactions and operations officer.
