This news totally made my day! Read the owner's (Noëlle Santos) poem "The Bronx is Burning with a Desire to Read": http://www.thelitbar.com/odetolitbar.
How can the HN crowd help independent bookshops like these? Schedule a meetup at the venue? Help with the webpage? Free cloud hosting? Help with the books and/or legal?
Apart from buying things? I'd think that helping people discover shops would be tops. Leave positive Yelp & Google reviews, tell everyone you know about the shop.
Mostly walking in to their shops with your feet and handing them your money though.
Beyond your good suggestions of leaving good reviews and telling others, I'd suggest buying gift cards from these shops for people you need presents for, thus forcing them to patronize the shop at least once and upping the chances the store gets another regular.
Even if that’s not the intent of the gift giver, gift cards are always a net negative to the receiver versus cash, and a positive for the shop who gets cash before having to provide a product.
They may be a net negative versus cash, but they're still a net positive versus nothing at all — that is, it's a gift. There are all sorts of inefficiencies we engage in for the pleasure of giving and receiving gifts. Your attitude smacks of ungratefulness.
This is definitely my feeling, but e.g. my BIL prefers gift cards (NFL Shop and BWW when in doubt) over all other gifts including cash.
He doesn't like "stuff", but he's frugal and otherwise won't spend straight up cash on himself. Goes straight into savings.
I would never dream of getting him a gift card to help a shop, though. I get him gift cards for things I think he will enjoy but is too disciplined to spend money on for himself otherwise. It's actually a nice way to force myself to really think about him and "give an experience". Or, when I can't, some decent wings and a beer.
They're not a net negative if they help the person get over their resistance to spending money on something they want.
My idea of a good gift is something that a person wants, but can't justify buying it to themselves.
You could say that that's worth less to them than the equivalent amount of cash since they didn't make that trade, but it definitely doesn't end up feeling that way as the recipient.
I have a lot of vacant retail near me and they're nice spots, but the leases are all sky high. For whatever reason the folks making decisions about what goes in there are happy to sit and wait for yet another Noodles & Company or Chipotle, nails salon, but that's kinda it... and if not those places, empty.
I'd love to find good ways to encourage local shops and things beyond just the business with the highest margins.
Assuming people value the outputs of both businesses the same (i.e. the chain will get paid just as much as the independent business), economies of scale should let the chain have higher margins.
Here in Boulder, there's a number of retail spaces that essientially can't turn a profit on it's own. Just The North Face, Prana, or Freepeople want a Boulder location so bad for marketing purposes, they're willing to keep the store running at a loss.
I'd not considered that in a hot location with limited retail space that companies might occupy that space at a loss and treat it as a marketing expense. But upon further reflection, I have to assume that is the case for a lot of business in Times Square, for example.
> In addition, he says, banks will devalue a property if it’s occupied by a small business, and increase it for a chain store. “There’s benefit to waiting for chain stores. If you are a hedge fund manager running a portfolio you leave it empty and take a write-off.”
For me personally I'm making a decision about where to move after I graduate and I'm planning on living a little farther from where I work specifically to get away from all the samey chain restaurants (holy cow they're depressing) to be in a more densely populated area with more small businesses. I have a hard time imagining I'm alone.
Old suburban areas of the Northeast are largely immune to the bland sameness of franchised businesses that pervades the US. There is little space to build out and liquor licensing can be problematic for chain restaurants.
The owners of the building are sitting in the most enviable position in the economy — just by owning the asset, they will get money in the form of appreciation, from work done by other people.
The rent is the cherry on top and they’d rather just go for a contract with a safe mega corporation than deal with any actual work in interacting with a business.
Meanwhile, here in my town, the landlords run the place and got the opposite passed. Commercial retail properties are exempt from property tax while the property is vacant.
More. What they do is double the rent on businesses when their contract is up, and leave the derelict properties up as an example to the other businesses of "you have no negotiating power. We'll just leave the property empty if you don't pay up because it only has an opportunity cost"
A vacancy tax seems weird to me. It's effectively the same thing as a higher property tax, but with a discount for non-vacancy. That is, a discount for putting anything in that space. I just don't see why you would give out a discount without ensuring the use of the property is doing something that provides a public benefit.
> I just don't see why you would give out a discount without ensuring the use of the property is doing something that provides a public benefit.
Public benefit and the profit margin are inversely correlated. The idea that you can encourage any benefit without having public competition is laughable. There is no market effect that can encourage people to care about the public benefit over profits. The key is to remove the landlord from the equation entirely and de-commodify real estate, especially residential real estate.
I've been mulling this a lot for a while now. I see so much vacant space and wonder how much of a boon it would be to small entrepreneurs and communities if the market were optimizing for filling a larger share of rental space.
I suppose it might be disappointing if the rents dropped and all it lured in were payday loan shops, and I imagine any tax enough to effect behavior will also induce some landlords to just fake occupancy to dodge the tax without the liabilities/risks of an additional business running onsite.
I'm a little skeptical (but maybe not pessimistic?) about how plausible it is to engineer public-benefit outcomes for this kind of space?
The way I see, to care for vacant property, you need police, roads, and a ton of infrastructure. This is also needed for property that is used.
A non-vacant used property will provide a city with money in the form of sales taxes, jobs, growth, fees and in general prosperity. A town with a ton of small independently owned shops and restaurants (a side effect of forcing property on the market) is more attractive than one with strip malls filled with franchises. It will make people want to live there and drive prices up.
Why should a vacant property pay the same tax? It's taking up the same and paying less, in fact, in many cases, the vacant property is pulling down the value of the city. It's only fair for the vacant property owner to have to pay to blight his community. Such an arrangement is dealing with externalized costs, which is one of the best functions of government.
Assuming you're talking about money, actually no. Money doesn't have any associated geometry or topology, ie one bit of money, unlike land, is pretty much equivalent to another. It would be like "hoarding" a bunch of land in the middle of nowhere: only a problem if you're taking up a significant fraction of the global supply.
Nope. You hoarding wealth won't make the neighborhood less appealing. The hoarder is not free loading.
New wealth can be created, we don't need yours. If your investment real estate is contributing $1/square foot in property taxes but everyone else's occupied property is contributing $5/square foot in wages, sales tax, property tax and municipal fees... then it makes sense to charge the free loaders. This isn't even dealing with the blight and community development points. Just from a financial perspective it makes sense.
The way I see it; an added tax will just be an encumbrance on the budding entrepreneur, who worked two jobs, and begged to get the financing on that property. She has dreams, passion and a vision--she rolled the dice and will be bankrupt if she doesn't execute and have a bit of luck.
> which is one of the best functions of government
In a free society, perhaps the best function of government (which is nothing more than a random collection of random people) is to be as invisible as possible, and not to try to ram their (here again--this random collection of random people) agenda down everyone else's throat, every single chance they get.
And while I feel for the entrepreneur, this type of tax won't affect them if they lease it out.
There is no way for everyone to be happy. Needs have to be prioritized (like the need of the city to be prosperous over the need of the landlord to squeeze a few more cents out of a place)
Random people run for office and random people are elected. Some of these random folks Are even qualified for the posts they hold.
> this type of tax won't affect them if they lease it out.
That is simply not true. In your scenario my mythical entrepreneur has no choice, she can't afford to not lease it out to the lowest bidder.
> like the need of the city to be prosperous over the need of the landlord to squeeze a few more cents out of a place
You seem to have a bit of disdain for business owners and complete faith in your elected officials. My point of view is totally the opposite--it's the business owner's money, Not your elected random peeps money. Furthermore, do you think the business owner fervently desires her property be locted in a prosperous city--of course she does, but that doesn't mean she wants incompetent people who are smooth talking just wasting it.
> If you choose to state something that is demonstratively false
You appear to believe that there is a systematic method in place for people who may or may not decide that they want to run for a political office: I submit that no such system exists--it is truly hit-or-miss, and utterly indiscriminate, or to put it another way; random people run for office and some of them are elected.
Vacant properties have a lot of negative externalities -- higher safety risks, reduction in the quality of a neighborhood and in foot traffic (harming other businesses), higher incidences of squatting/homeless encampments, etc.
A vacancy tax is an attempt to correct for those externalities and encourage better behavior from landlords. This is a situation where just having something is noticeably better than nothing at all.
Why is uncontrolled growth better? Seems like it most often leads to waste. In the real estate context this manifests as ugly, unlivable spaces which become derelict as soon as the frenzy passes.
I didn't say uncontrolled growth was better, I said a vacant building tax would slow or restrict new development.
Of course there is waste, this is part of the cycle of boom and bust. The people that mistime the market will overbuild and lose their investment.
When the frenzy passes, house may stay empty, but the market will adjust. Fewer new houses will be build and people who stayed out of the market will have a chance to buy at cheaper prices.
No, the alternative is less careful controlled growth. Uncontrolled growth is impossible: you need unlimited labor.
The market controls growth. Of course many factors manipulate the market (interest rates...). Boom/Bust is always going to be a factor because it isn't possible to know perfectly how much space we need before we need it. Boom/bust isn't even all bad, those who need space after the bust can get it cheap and start something interesting that they wouldn't otherwise) - artists for example need cheap space if they are to start a studio.
Why ask why careful controlled growth is always better if you believe it is the only option? The market doesn’t control anything. The word control implies some sort of telos which is not present in an aggregate of individual purchasing decisions.
That sounds beautiful in theory. In practice, whoever has surplus capital controls it. Growth ends up a product of a few people's bets, and they can afford playing against the 'invisible hand' and making big mistakes. The human cost will be paid for by the communities where the game plays out.
Many people have surplus capital. They might not be willing to risk it, but they have it. I could cash in my retirement account for example. There are a lot of people who have this cash, and some make small bets all the time. Sure to do a large development costs a lot of money, but there are a lot of small projects that cost less, and they add up. 100 people putting in $5000 wouldn't be hard to find, and that can do a medium sized project.
> I didn't say uncontrolled growth was better, I said a vacant building tax would slow or restrict new development.
> Of course there is waste, this is part of the cycle of boom and bust. The people that mistime the market will overbuild and lose their investment.
> When the frenzy passes, house may stay empty, but the market will adjust. Fewer new houses will be build and people who stayed out of the market will have a chance to buy at cheaper prices.
Why would there be new development in places with high vacancy? Wouldn't the community want new development to be hindered if most of downtown is empty already?
Why not tax the place based on the land value regardless of how it is being utilized? If there are too many vacancies then it would indicate the tax is too low and should be raised (or that the valuation of the land needs to be redone).
> Problem is if landlords lower rents it reduces the computed capital value of the property. If there’s a mortgage this will trigger Bad Things.
> Btw I also think excessive rents are strangling society, but it’s not as simple as it seems to fix.
But if the property is vacant, isn't the effective rent $0? I have no experience with commercial mortgage lending and appreciate more details on the Bad Things and why they don't occur without repricing rent.
I'm not an expert on the subject, but I did learn this from a banker who is. So here's a simple and hopefully not too wrong description. Commercial real estate is an investment property, and it's expected to return some percentage. For argument's sake let's just say 5%. So if the rent is reduced, that expected return holds constant, meaning the capital value of the building drops proportionately. With a mortgage, this can bring the owner into negative equity, and banks really dislike that in commercial real estate. On the other hand, if a space is empty, but for lease at "market rate" then that continues to be the value used for computing the capital value of the property.
Of course this means in some cities you have entire blocks with half the store fronts for lease at "market rate" sitting there for years. This is clearly lousy for everyone, so these perverse incentives ought to be fixed, but to be honest I have no idea how to do that practically and equitably.
From your description, commercial real estate sounds like a bubble waiting to burst, in that vacant properties exist to prevent the mortgage from going underwater to protect the property owners.
That’s a pretty terrible idea. Sure, maybe in Manhattan where the economy is good that would work, but in less prospereous places that’s just regressive and will cause the economy to get into a death spiral.
Here’s how that would work:
1. A couple stores owned by a landlord close down due to a recession or something.
2. Landlord has to keep the vacancies for awhile while he finds other renters.
3. He get’s levied the extra taxes due to the vacant properties. Now he really needs to get it off his books or find a renter.
4. He can’t find a renter because the economy is bad. So he tries to sell the properties.
5. He either doesn’t sell it, or sells it a big discount because the buyer needs to price in the tax premium.
> That’s a pretty terrible idea. Sure, maybe in Manhattan where the economy is good that would work, but in less prospereous places that’s just regressive and will cause the economy to get into a death spiral.
> Here’s how that would work: 1. A couple stores owned by a landlord close down due to a recession or something.
> 2. Landlord has to keep the vacancies for awhile while he finds other renters.
> 3. He get’s levied the extra taxes due to the vacant properties. Now he really needs to get it off his books or find a renter.
> 4. He can’t find a renter because the economy is bad. So he tries to sell the properties.
> 5. He either doesn’t sell it, or sells it a big discount because the buyer needs to price in the tax premium.
> 6. Rinse and repeat.
If this is truly "rinse and repeat", since each subsequent sell results in a price discount, wouldn't the price eventually settle on what the market can bear?
Probably highly dependent on the location of the actual retail space though, a run-down mall that's been vacant since the 90's will still be considered in those calculations of total retail space even though its highly undesirable.
The owners generally bought the building with the work done by them or their parents did. It's an investment.
Also, the kind narrative you are proposing - and that is taking more acceptance in society lately - only makes building owners more weary and afraid of renting directly to someone that might decide they are entitled to the space without paying their due rent, so yes, of course they choose more and more to have the protection from a safe mega corporation.
> The owners generally bought the building with the work done by them or their parents did. It's an investment.
We aren't talking about the stock market here. If someone buys property that means someone else doesn't get it. Vacant properties have a negative impact on communities.
>The owners of the building are sitting in the most enviable position in the economy — just by owning the asset, they will get money in the form of appreciation, from work done by other people.
You mean like a savings account? Or a treasury bond? Or stocks? Or gold? There is such a thing as opportunity cost. The money that went into buying the property, as well as the money continually spent in maintaining it (from repairs, to taxes, to insurance, to advertising for renters, to managing renters) could have been spent on something else, like an index fund - which, without any effort, could net you a nice 7% return.
You're also missing the risk profile. Property values could crash at any moment, and take all the capital along with it. It happened in 2008 to many people. Could happen again at any time. Historically, real estate hasn't been the best store of value nor provided the best rate of return on your investment.
The "For whatever reason" is that the risk reward is not worth it to experiment with independents. Consumers have shown that they like the familiar by rewarding it financially. Real estate owners and fund managers aren't choosing to make less money, they just have data that shows what course of action likely leads to the highest returns. There are a few places with enough density and people that consciously like to go out and experiment with different vendors and whatnot, but not most places.
Yes, but if $chain does decide to open a location in the neighborhood in month 10 of that 2-year lease, it moves in to your competitor's building across the street, then you're stuck with the empty storefront again in a year while they have a nice indefinite recurring revenue stream.
Commercial leases are normally much longer than residential leases: 5-10 years is typical. Restaurants also normally require extensive renovations to the space, which then have to be ripped out at additional cost to make the space usable for the next tenant.
Many commercial leases will pay to make renovations up front based on signing a long term lease. Many of these renovations can be in excess of the entire first year's lease. These can be quite large expenses and the owner would need to make sure they could recoup the cost.
Some strip malls in less desireable areas work they way a residential lease would, but those wouldn't be the best place to do it.
>For whatever reason the folks making decisions about what goes in there are happy to sit and wait for yet another Noodles & Company or Chipotle, nails salon, but that's kinda it
Maybe the owners can't get anyone to rent the properties?
I doubt they are 'happy to sit and wait' for anyone. They still have to pay property taxes.
It probably won't for the long term. These "feel good" stories abound when times are good. Wait a few years and reality sets in ( even quicker if a recession hits ).
Maybe if they copy B&N's model and turn themselves into a coffee shop that sells books on the side, it might work. But they'd need the scale of B&N and locations near major universities with wealthy privileged students willing shells out lots of money for lots of books that their professors recommend.
In an environment of online shopping and expanding library services, bookstores face a lot of headwind. Why would you go to a bookstore when you can go to the library? Why would you buy can carry a bunch of books home when you can just order it online? If you can solve these problems, you could make a lot of money opening up bookstores all over the country.
It’s less than ideal. Even a small retail shop requires some new investment, and it’s probably coming from the landlord. Spending $100k minimum, probably far more, to outfit a space for a untested or low credit tenant is a gamble with very limited upside. That’s why landlords will sit and wait, and it’s not a pretty situation to be in as investor. A bookstore should be more doable, but it still requires someone to fill the store full of books that it believes it can sell. 10,000 books cost a lot to stock too.
At least in Toronto and Edmonton, the two places I have been involved with commercial real estate, I have never heard of a landlord footing the bill to outfit a space.
> At least in Toronto and Edmonton, the two places I have been involved with commercial real estate, I have never heard of a landlord footing the bill to outfit a space.
In the United States at least, many commerical real estate owners _will_ perform a build-out conditional on a lease agreement. Of course, if the business folds earlier than expected it is the real estate owners who have to eat the cost.
Have you considered that no one wants to open a local shop in the first place? Chains are the only people in the position to take on the huge huge risk of opening a store.
As a store owner, you have exposure to wage laws, property values, foot traffic, etc.
I would personally argue that you would have to irrational to open a mom-and-pop store in this day and age.
There are several libraries in the Bronx (33 by my count). But just as a bookstore isn't a replacement for a library, a library isn't a replacement for a bookstore.
Sometimes you want to own a book, be able to write it in, tear pages out, and make it your own.
Hey, none of that! Books are sacred! You can't desecrate a book by writing in it, and Logos forbid that you rip a page out and destroy the sanctity of the text!
This is great. At the same time, WTF...it took this long to bring a bookstore to the BX?? Living in Harlem in the mid 2000's I always wondered why there were no B&N around. What's strange is that Starbucks wasn't around either but then they opened up 2 on 125th and they were always packed, so I really don't buy the bogus argument that "there just isn't enough demand". I usually don't indulge in Schadenfreude, but I can't say I'm unhappy with the b&n closings and amazon beating them to a pulp (pun intended).
In high rent areas of the country, like New York, don't count on proving anything about the independent bookstore model that has been bankrupt for 20 years. Maybe first focus on the things you can control, like not chasing the world's largest book seller out of your city. Maybe start with that. With 25,000 more techies walking around, I'm sure the local market demand for books would increase not decrease.
So there just...wasn't one? The Bronx is 57 square miles, with a population density of 35000/sqmi. The town I live in is 58 square miles, with a density of <2000/sqmi.
I searched "bookstore" on google maps around my town, and quit counting at 13.
Can someone explain the benefits of living on top of one another in such a congested area when nobody delivers services even as basic as a bookstore, while my podunk place in "flyover country" has now 13x the number of available outlets for something like this?
There was one near co-op city, but it closed a few years ago.
There are also several specialty book stores, e.g. the NY Botanical Garden has a really good one, there is a Jewish bookstore in Riverdale, etc.
Because The Bronx was largely designed for residential housing, it's very easy to just hop on the subway or in a car and get to a bookstore in a few minutes. It's actually much easier to get from The Bronx into Manhattan or into Westchester, Fairfield County, New Jersey, etc. than it is to get to other parts of The Bronx. So other than that some people seem to be morally offended by the fact that there isn't a general purpose bookstore in the borough, there isn't really any especially good reason to have one.
"out of sight out of mind" is reason enough to have one. people may serendipitously walk into a bookstore and change their lives; doesn't work the same when commuting.
I imagine quite a few of those are either A) A place to get coffee and hang out B) Not making much money, but kept open by people who just want to own a bookstore.
A) is the model a lot of Barnes and Nobles are going with these days; they're attached to some sort of cafe and people leisurely walk around with their coffee and read whatever. This model doesn't make much money when people won't buy terribly overpriced coffee.
B) is all over Denver, with owners living in the buildings they run their bookstore out of. I have no way to confirm, but I can't imagine they're making much money.
It could be wifes of people who are making a lot of money, with the wife not having another career. The wife has something to do, and the husband has something to declare losses to pay less taxes.
Residents of the Bronx are still primarily disadvantaged minorities, many reliant on public services. Many NYCHA public housing developments are in the Bronx. The lack of things like bookstores reflects the lack of financial resources of the community.
> Residents of the Bronx are still primarily disadvantaged minorities, many reliant on public services.
This is probably true by total population, but not by block. That is, on most blocks most people are middle class. That's why there is no shortage of wine and tapas bars or whatever.
I think the real reason is that most independent bookstores are subsidized by the surrounding community in order to raise real estate values or add character to the town. In places like NYC these types of businesses often get subsidized by real estate developers who want to raise the rates in their surrounding apartment buildings, but most areas of The Bronx don't have dense enough cores for developers to make money on real estate speculation.
Mott Haven and Port Morris are some of the only areas where this actually works, so that's probably why the bookstore is going there rather than where the owner grew up or wherever.
> ...while my podunk place in "flyover country" has now 13x the number of available outlets for something like this?
There are many reasons why bookstores might choose not to set-up in the Bronx or now even in Manhattan.
Whatever the reasons, real bookstores everywhere are rapidly becoming nostalgic throwbacks to a different era.
They're not a "basic amenity" anymore. This will soon catch up with your (as you describe it) "podunk place in flyover country" just as surely as your town has left behind acid-wash jeans and mullets in the year 2013.
What’s the problem with Christian or comic bookstores?
Do the same problems apply to the Muslim or Jewish bookstore in my neighborhood? Should I be concerned with them - there’s funny symbols! (I don’t think there’s a Christian bookstore)?
Does St. Thomas Aquinas, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky belong in “Christian” bookstore, or in a “normal” bookstore?
If in a “Christian” bookstore, do you have a problem with Tolstoy?
If in a “normal” bookstore, is Tolstoy’s work no longer Christian?
Is “Persepolis” bad literature for being a comic book?
This doesn't surprise me at all. As a fellow podunk flyover-country dweller myself, we get so many benefits from everything being kind-of shitty, that no one seems to acknowledge.
A bunch of fun but barely-profitable things can exist here, that could never exist in a city, simply because of how hostile dense urban economics is to human beings.
> A bunch of fun but barely-profitable things can exist here, that could never exist in a city, simply because of how hostile dense urban economics is to human beings.
The same kinds of things can exist in dense urban environments when they're otherwise terrible places to live, like NYC up-thru the '90s.
I would say or write that they're 'aggressive', not hostile. There's lots of reasons why the (economics of the) same areas are perceived to be incredibly welcoming. Density itself is (or can be) amazing, e.g. more (potential) customers, many more competing employers.
A bookstore is not a basic. It is a nice to have, but not required. Maybe midwest culture values bookstores more than the New York culture? I wouldn't want to live there if that was the case, but that just shows my midwest cultural bias.
I hope we're seeing the pendulum swinging a little back. I'm not giving up my e-reader. But, there's a place for paper books and the culture they bring to a neighborhood.
I often wonder when reading articles on African American news, whether it's more than a concidence that areas with high concentration of African American population is lacking the same access to public institutions as the rest of America. For instance, why is there so many liquor and gun stores in the 'hood so to speak?
Really happy and proud of this owner for this initiative, but other than just being another Model Minority Today piece, the institutional racism evident in the US is clearly visible to me as an outsider, and it appears to me, a sly, covert, purposeful, institutionally enforced ignorance prevalent in American society as a result of Nixon's attack on ethnic political expression through a caricature that is the war on drugs, in accelerating their collective demise through economic and educational deprivation. It wasn't like African Americans weren't trying either, for example, there once was a thriving economy called "Black Wallstreet" that was destroyed by the white establishment.
It's not evident just from the treatment of African Americans throughout US history but other minorities. For instance, disarming Koreans who were defending their stores from looters, and letting the communities they built up burn to the ground, and only then, sending in the national guard, Japanese Internment Camps, more recently the plight of hurricane Katrina victim's treatment, kids of refugees and asylum seeking parents who are stuck in a privatized camp with reports of sexual abuse from the caretakers in the absence of their parents, are escaping an increasingly violent narco-economies in South America that were formed out of the same institutional deprivation and usurpation of national resources by American corporations throughout Latin American history, ex) United Fruits Company, comes to my mind.
>For instance, why is there so many liquor and gun stores in the 'hood so to speak?
Because they make money. I suspect you'll find many liquor and gun stores in poor red neck areas as well. You can blame outside forces all you want but at the end of the day multi-generational poverty causes and perpetuates many issues on it's own.
That's right. There's no conspiracy why people open liquor and gun stores and where they locate them, and no mystery. People open stores to make money. Greed trumps racism.
Good luck opening a bookstore anywhere. They don't make money anymore, and any business model that relies on pity purchases is doomed to fail.
Besides, there are already bookstores offering free books - public libraries.
"If you were around Manhattan in the 1990s, you hated Barnes & Noble the way you hated garbage strikes or Celine Dion. The chain seemed to expand on a weekly basis, and it got in the way — of the independent book stores it displaced"
I loved B&N in the 90s, and regularly went there to browse the stacks. They had the selection, and the independent book stores didn't.
"Those who lived in the Bronx couldn’t help feeling that the gatekeepers of cultural commerce found them unworthy."
More like they found the community didn't buy enough books for the bookstore to pay the bills.
122 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 193 ms ] threadHow can the HN crowd help independent bookshops like these? Schedule a meetup at the venue? Help with the webpage? Free cloud hosting? Help with the books and/or legal?
Beyond your good suggestions of leaving good reviews and telling others, I'd suggest buying gift cards from these shops for people you need presents for, thus forcing them to patronize the shop at least once and upping the chances the store gets another regular.
He doesn't like "stuff", but he's frugal and otherwise won't spend straight up cash on himself. Goes straight into savings.
I would never dream of getting him a gift card to help a shop, though. I get him gift cards for things I think he will enjoy but is too disciplined to spend money on for himself otherwise. It's actually a nice way to force myself to really think about him and "give an experience". Or, when I can't, some decent wings and a beer.
My idea of a good gift is something that a person wants, but can't justify buying it to themselves.
You could say that that's worth less to them than the equivalent amount of cash since they didn't make that trade, but it definitely doesn't end up feeling that way as the recipient.
They only exists, once sentimental hollywood affine people inherit money to waste. Once that money is spend they close. Buy a economics 1.0 book.
Same goes for not calculated fashion stores and other stores with sentimental value.
I have a lot of vacant retail near me and they're nice spots, but the leases are all sky high. For whatever reason the folks making decisions about what goes in there are happy to sit and wait for yet another Noodles & Company or Chipotle, nails salon, but that's kinda it... and if not those places, empty.
I'd love to find good ways to encourage local shops and things beyond just the business with the highest margins.
https://nypost.com/2014/04/26/the-hidden-proof-the-economy-i...
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/dec/24/new-york-re...
> In addition, he says, banks will devalue a property if it’s occupied by a small business, and increase it for a chain store. “There’s benefit to waiting for chain stores. If you are a hedge fund manager running a portfolio you leave it empty and take a write-off.”
It really sucks as it seems like economic activity just waiting to ... happen, but naw.
For me personally I'm making a decision about where to move after I graduate and I'm planning on living a little farther from where I work specifically to get away from all the samey chain restaurants (holy cow they're depressing) to be in a more densely populated area with more small businesses. I have a hard time imagining I'm alone.
The rent is the cherry on top and they’d rather just go for a contract with a safe mega corporation than deal with any actual work in interacting with a business.
Public benefit and the profit margin are inversely correlated. The idea that you can encourage any benefit without having public competition is laughable. There is no market effect that can encourage people to care about the public benefit over profits. The key is to remove the landlord from the equation entirely and de-commodify real estate, especially residential real estate.
I suppose it might be disappointing if the rents dropped and all it lured in were payday loan shops, and I imagine any tax enough to effect behavior will also induce some landlords to just fake occupancy to dodge the tax without the liabilities/risks of an additional business running onsite.
I'm a little skeptical (but maybe not pessimistic?) about how plausible it is to engineer public-benefit outcomes for this kind of space?
A non-vacant used property will provide a city with money in the form of sales taxes, jobs, growth, fees and in general prosperity. A town with a ton of small independently owned shops and restaurants (a side effect of forcing property on the market) is more attractive than one with strip malls filled with franchises. It will make people want to live there and drive prices up.
Why should a vacant property pay the same tax? It's taking up the same and paying less, in fact, in many cases, the vacant property is pulling down the value of the city. It's only fair for the vacant property owner to have to pay to blight his community. Such an arrangement is dealing with externalized costs, which is one of the best functions of government.
New wealth can be created, we don't need yours. If your investment real estate is contributing $1/square foot in property taxes but everyone else's occupied property is contributing $5/square foot in wages, sales tax, property tax and municipal fees... then it makes sense to charge the free loaders. This isn't even dealing with the blight and community development points. Just from a financial perspective it makes sense.
The way I see it; an added tax will just be an encumbrance on the budding entrepreneur, who worked two jobs, and begged to get the financing on that property. She has dreams, passion and a vision--she rolled the dice and will be bankrupt if she doesn't execute and have a bit of luck.
> which is one of the best functions of government
In a free society, perhaps the best function of government (which is nothing more than a random collection of random people) is to be as invisible as possible, and not to try to ram their (here again--this random collection of random people) agenda down everyone else's throat, every single chance they get.
Where I live they are elected.
And while I feel for the entrepreneur, this type of tax won't affect them if they lease it out.
There is no way for everyone to be happy. Needs have to be prioritized (like the need of the city to be prosperous over the need of the landlord to squeeze a few more cents out of a place)
Random people run for office and random people are elected. Some of these random folks Are even qualified for the posts they hold.
> this type of tax won't affect them if they lease it out.
That is simply not true. In your scenario my mythical entrepreneur has no choice, she can't afford to not lease it out to the lowest bidder.
> like the need of the city to be prosperous over the need of the landlord to squeeze a few more cents out of a place
You seem to have a bit of disdain for business owners and complete faith in your elected officials. My point of view is totally the opposite--it's the business owner's money, Not your elected random peeps money. Furthermore, do you think the business owner fervently desires her property be locted in a prosperous city--of course she does, but that doesn't mean she wants incompetent people who are smooth talking just wasting it.
If you choose to state something that is demonstratively false, then we can't converse. I truly wish you the best.
You appear to believe that there is a systematic method in place for people who may or may not decide that they want to run for a political office: I submit that no such system exists--it is truly hit-or-miss, and utterly indiscriminate, or to put it another way; random people run for office and some of them are elected.
I too wish you well... ttyl
A vacancy tax is an attempt to correct for those externalities and encourage better behavior from landlords. This is a situation where just having something is noticeably better than nothing at all.
Of course there is waste, this is part of the cycle of boom and bust. The people that mistime the market will overbuild and lose their investment.
When the frenzy passes, house may stay empty, but the market will adjust. Fewer new houses will be build and people who stayed out of the market will have a chance to buy at cheaper prices.
The market controls growth. Of course many factors manipulate the market (interest rates...). Boom/Bust is always going to be a factor because it isn't possible to know perfectly how much space we need before we need it. Boom/bust isn't even all bad, those who need space after the bust can get it cheap and start something interesting that they wouldn't otherwise) - artists for example need cheap space if they are to start a studio.
That sounds beautiful in theory. In practice, whoever has surplus capital controls it. Growth ends up a product of a few people's bets, and they can afford playing against the 'invisible hand' and making big mistakes. The human cost will be paid for by the communities where the game plays out.
In short I reject your pessimism.
> Of course there is waste, this is part of the cycle of boom and bust. The people that mistime the market will overbuild and lose their investment.
> When the frenzy passes, house may stay empty, but the market will adjust. Fewer new houses will be build and people who stayed out of the market will have a chance to buy at cheaper prices.
Why would there be new development in places with high vacancy? Wouldn't the community want new development to be hindered if most of downtown is empty already?
I want long term growth on a multi decade scale, ergo, I have to take lower immediate returns to support the ecosystem which generates those returns.
Your view is myopic, not perfectly rational.
And is an example of what goes wrong with hill climbing algorithms: local gradients can lead to globally unwanted outcomes.
Btw I also think excessive rents are strangling society, but it’s not as simple as it seems to fix.
> Btw I also think excessive rents are strangling society, but it’s not as simple as it seems to fix.
But if the property is vacant, isn't the effective rent $0? I have no experience with commercial mortgage lending and appreciate more details on the Bad Things and why they don't occur without repricing rent.
Of course this means in some cities you have entire blocks with half the store fronts for lease at "market rate" sitting there for years. This is clearly lousy for everyone, so these perverse incentives ought to be fixed, but to be honest I have no idea how to do that practically and equitably.
Here’s how that would work: 1. A couple stores owned by a landlord close down due to a recession or something.
2. Landlord has to keep the vacancies for awhile while he finds other renters.
3. He get’s levied the extra taxes due to the vacant properties. Now he really needs to get it off his books or find a renter.
4. He can’t find a renter because the economy is bad. So he tries to sell the properties.
5. He either doesn’t sell it, or sells it a big discount because the buyer needs to price in the tax premium.
6. Rinse and repeat.
> Here’s how that would work: 1. A couple stores owned by a landlord close down due to a recession or something.
> 2. Landlord has to keep the vacancies for awhile while he finds other renters.
> 3. He get’s levied the extra taxes due to the vacant properties. Now he really needs to get it off his books or find a renter.
> 4. He can’t find a renter because the economy is bad. So he tries to sell the properties.
> 5. He either doesn’t sell it, or sells it a big discount because the buyer needs to price in the tax premium.
> 6. Rinse and repeat.
If this is truly "rinse and repeat", since each subsequent sell results in a price discount, wouldn't the price eventually settle on what the market can bear?
I see articles all of the time saying the US has too much retail space: https://www.businessinsider.com/the-retail-apocalypse-has-of... https://www.forbes.com/sites/bisnow/2017/04/05/even-develope...
It is not clear to me, why their asset prices are going to go up if there is too much supply.
Also does the building owner actually "own" the building or are they paying off a commercial loan?
Also, the kind narrative you are proposing - and that is taking more acceptance in society lately - only makes building owners more weary and afraid of renting directly to someone that might decide they are entitled to the space without paying their due rent, so yes, of course they choose more and more to have the protection from a safe mega corporation.
We aren't talking about the stock market here. If someone buys property that means someone else doesn't get it. Vacant properties have a negative impact on communities.
You mean like a savings account? Or a treasury bond? Or stocks? Or gold? There is such a thing as opportunity cost. The money that went into buying the property, as well as the money continually spent in maintaining it (from repairs, to taxes, to insurance, to advertising for renters, to managing renters) could have been spent on something else, like an index fund - which, without any effort, could net you a nice 7% return.
You're also missing the risk profile. Property values could crash at any moment, and take all the capital along with it. It happened in 2008 to many people. Could happen again at any time. Historically, real estate hasn't been the best store of value nor provided the best rate of return on your investment.
If you think it's that easy, you should try it.
Say a business signs a 2 year lease. They go out of business after 1 year.
They got ~1 year of lease payments compared to ... nothing.
That still seems like something.
So that risk is worse than ... being stuck with an empty storefront?
And I'd imagine the risk is broadly similar to residential rentals, e.g. trouble evicting tenants, the tenant damaging your property.
Some strip malls in less desireable areas work they way a residential lease would, but those wouldn't be the best place to do it.
Not well. Retail is hard in the best of times.
>For whatever reason the folks making decisions about what goes in there are happy to sit and wait for yet another Noodles & Company or Chipotle, nails salon, but that's kinda it
Maybe the owners can't get anyone to rent the properties?
I doubt they are 'happy to sit and wait' for anyone. They still have to pay property taxes.
Maybe if they copy B&N's model and turn themselves into a coffee shop that sells books on the side, it might work. But they'd need the scale of B&N and locations near major universities with wealthy privileged students willing shells out lots of money for lots of books that their professors recommend.
In an environment of online shopping and expanding library services, bookstores face a lot of headwind. Why would you go to a bookstore when you can go to the library? Why would you buy can carry a bunch of books home when you can just order it online? If you can solve these problems, you could make a lot of money opening up bookstores all over the country.
In the United States at least, many commerical real estate owners _will_ perform a build-out conditional on a lease agreement. Of course, if the business folds earlier than expected it is the real estate owners who have to eat the cost.
As a store owner, you have exposure to wage laws, property values, foot traffic, etc.
I would personally argue that you would have to irrational to open a mom-and-pop store in this day and age.
Sometimes you want to own a book, be able to write it in, tear pages out, and make it your own.
(Some writers know how to pull strings.)
I searched "bookstore" on google maps around my town, and quit counting at 13.
Can someone explain the benefits of living on top of one another in such a congested area when nobody delivers services even as basic as a bookstore, while my podunk place in "flyover country" has now 13x the number of available outlets for something like this?
There are also several specialty book stores, e.g. the NY Botanical Garden has a really good one, there is a Jewish bookstore in Riverdale, etc.
Because The Bronx was largely designed for residential housing, it's very easy to just hop on the subway or in a car and get to a bookstore in a few minutes. It's actually much easier to get from The Bronx into Manhattan or into Westchester, Fairfield County, New Jersey, etc. than it is to get to other parts of The Bronx. So other than that some people seem to be morally offended by the fact that there isn't a general purpose bookstore in the borough, there isn't really any especially good reason to have one.
A) is the model a lot of Barnes and Nobles are going with these days; they're attached to some sort of cafe and people leisurely walk around with their coffee and read whatever. This model doesn't make much money when people won't buy terribly overpriced coffee.
B) is all over Denver, with owners living in the buildings they run their bookstore out of. I have no way to confirm, but I can't imagine they're making much money.
It could be wifes of people who are making a lot of money, with the wife not having another career. The wife has something to do, and the husband has something to declare losses to pay less taxes.
This is probably true by total population, but not by block. That is, on most blocks most people are middle class. That's why there is no shortage of wine and tapas bars or whatever.
I think the real reason is that most independent bookstores are subsidized by the surrounding community in order to raise real estate values or add character to the town. In places like NYC these types of businesses often get subsidized by real estate developers who want to raise the rates in their surrounding apartment buildings, but most areas of The Bronx don't have dense enough cores for developers to make money on real estate speculation.
Mott Haven and Port Morris are some of the only areas where this actually works, so that's probably why the bookstore is going there rather than where the owner grew up or wherever.
Whatever the reasons, real bookstores everywhere are rapidly becoming nostalgic throwbacks to a different era.
They're not a "basic amenity" anymore. This will soon catch up with your (as you describe it) "podunk place in flyover country" just as surely as your town has left behind acid-wash jeans and mullets in the year 2013.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/282808/number-of-indepen...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/once-endangered-bookstores-are-...
Do the same problems apply to the Muslim or Jewish bookstore in my neighborhood? Should I be concerned with them - there’s funny symbols! (I don’t think there’s a Christian bookstore)?
Does St. Thomas Aquinas, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky belong in “Christian” bookstore, or in a “normal” bookstore?
If in a “Christian” bookstore, do you have a problem with Tolstoy?
If in a “normal” bookstore, is Tolstoy’s work no longer Christian?
Is “Persepolis” bad literature for being a comic book?
A bunch of fun but barely-profitable things can exist here, that could never exist in a city, simply because of how hostile dense urban economics is to human beings.
The same kinds of things can exist in dense urban environments when they're otherwise terrible places to live, like NYC up-thru the '90s.
I would say or write that they're 'aggressive', not hostile. There's lots of reasons why the (economics of the) same areas are perceived to be incredibly welcoming. Density itself is (or can be) amazing, e.g. more (potential) customers, many more competing employers.
This is 80% a function of supply and demand. No amount of good will will make this work unless people are buying books.
Surely - someone making a statement, catering to a niche not otherwise catered to, encouraging reading - this is all good.
But people need to buy books (or whatever else they sell) and that's most of the story.
So this looks like a 'good news' story, I wish them well. But we need to buy books (there, and a places like this) for it to work.
Really happy and proud of this owner for this initiative, but other than just being another Model Minority Today piece, the institutional racism evident in the US is clearly visible to me as an outsider, and it appears to me, a sly, covert, purposeful, institutionally enforced ignorance prevalent in American society as a result of Nixon's attack on ethnic political expression through a caricature that is the war on drugs, in accelerating their collective demise through economic and educational deprivation. It wasn't like African Americans weren't trying either, for example, there once was a thriving economy called "Black Wallstreet" that was destroyed by the white establishment.
It's not evident just from the treatment of African Americans throughout US history but other minorities. For instance, disarming Koreans who were defending their stores from looters, and letting the communities they built up burn to the ground, and only then, sending in the national guard, Japanese Internment Camps, more recently the plight of hurricane Katrina victim's treatment, kids of refugees and asylum seeking parents who are stuck in a privatized camp with reports of sexual abuse from the caretakers in the absence of their parents, are escaping an increasingly violent narco-economies in South America that were formed out of the same institutional deprivation and usurpation of national resources by American corporations throughout Latin American history, ex) United Fruits Company, comes to my mind.
Because they make money. I suspect you'll find many liquor and gun stores in poor red neck areas as well. You can blame outside forces all you want but at the end of the day multi-generational poverty causes and perpetuates many issues on it's own.
Good luck opening a bookstore anywhere. They don't make money anymore, and any business model that relies on pity purchases is doomed to fail.
Besides, there are already bookstores offering free books - public libraries.
I loved B&N in the 90s, and regularly went there to browse the stacks. They had the selection, and the independent book stores didn't.
"Those who lived in the Bronx couldn’t help feeling that the gatekeepers of cultural commerce found them unworthy."
More like they found the community didn't buy enough books for the bookstore to pay the bills.