Oh wow, just what I’ve been missing. This will surely draw me and countless thousands over there. So much better than Tyler’s Taproom, Marigold Parlor, Night Kitchen Bakery, Phydeaux, Logan’s, etc. that had personality and drew people in. Not blaming the developer (especially since Logan’s is still there for now and several of those closed years ago), but this is exactly what I pegged this area becoming: A bland apartment complex of several 5-over-1s with generic ground floor retail. Happy to be proven wrong if some cool stuff comes in, but it won’t change my opinion that this area was better 5-7 years ago.
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All of these new apartments are filling up with young, well heeled professionals who shop online and are part of the selfie generation. No wonder all the storefronts seem to fill up with self care joints and expensive things to drink.
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I guess you all would rather these retail spots stay empty like One Glenwood/Bloc 83, Pendo building, Fayetteville St. etc.
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Honestly, yes. It would be a lot better to have valuable businesses like Gucci mentioned and not mediocre coffee chains and yoga studios (we have one in smoky hollow).
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To be fair…it’s a wellness center that’s planned for Seaboard Station…not a yoga studio.
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We should have anticipated this…the barrier to entry for these new developments(high rent) is too much for someone to try and gamble with a new restaurant concept, bar etc. You need an established brand name or an established group that can sacrifice several months of possible negative income.
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I agree. Another good example are the retail spaces at Platform. The two spaces on Cabarrus are massive! At least one is set up to be a restaurant, but what budding small local business can afford a space that large?? The sizes of the spaces on Dupont are flexible, but I think that the smallest size available is 1500 sqft. That’s bigger than my house! Seems too big for small and local.
I know they’re trying to court local businesses, but if they really want them to succeed, they’d offer smaller footprints.
Honestly, this is one reason I often feel conflicted when older downtown buildings get demolished for sparkly new mixed use instead of putting the new stuff on vacant property. We lose the spaces where our cool, small business can thrive.
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Here’s the thing - Starbucks is just as expensive as any half decent locally owned coffee shop, but with infinitely shittier coffee. Honestly, I genuinely DO NOT UNDERSTAND the appeal of Starbucks, it’s bad/burnt coffee with corn syrup. Any local coffee shop would’ve been more welcome here, like the BREW spot that got pushed out from Seaboard. They were actually GOOD.
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And locally owned, so profits mostly remained local and were invested/spent here (more so than Starbucks)
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I agree that we really need more micro-storefront spaces, but just for some perspective: 1500 sf is quite reasonable for a storefront and about as small as most restaurants can operate in. This is what roughly 13-1500sf looks like.
My dad’s 50-seat restaurant was about 2100 sf. Half of that was back of house kitchen space, bathrooms, etc. Unless you do mostly take-out or are a small coffee shop/bakery, it’s hard to operate in much less than that. If you don’t have space to seat enough customers, you won’t have enough cashflow.
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I honestly don’t know how you threaded the needle from “Starbucks and a gym opening beneath an apartment complex” to “kids these days are ruining everything” but somehow you managed to do it. You crazy sob, you did it!
Please don’t “…” me on something that I didn’t say.
You have the floor, please feel free to correct the record
Zoomer here. If possible I always try to buy local (I live near Iris and love that place) but the appeal of Starbucks, at least to me, is most definitely the app. If I’m in a rush to get somewhere/do something, but don’t want McDonald’s coffee or whatever, placing an order for a breakfast sandwich and a cold brew at the closest Starbucks and getting in and out of there within 45 seconds is fantastically convenient. And honestly, while I only limit myself to certain menu items, there are some winners.
That said, if I’m sitting down somewhere to get some work done or meet up with someone, somewhere local is a no brainer. And the real tragedy here imo is that there’s already a Starbucks right up the street. But I guess all my favorite “big” cities have an absurdly high Starbucks density, too. Maybe it’s inevitable.
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Starbucks in Prague was actually pretty good. Flat white is a standard menu item.
Not speaking for @John but uhhh, yeah that’s definitely not what he was saying. At all lmao
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Alright, I’m not very smart so not surprising. Carry on
I agree and have been saying this for years. I don’t think that developers have proven that they understand the context nuances between suburban and urban business needs. I suspect that Kane in particular didn’t really think about how SH is fundamentally different from NH. I say that because (like NH), he largely turned the development’s back on the city streets by focusing the development’s activity/action inward while leaving West and Harrington largely devoid of substantial sidewalk activation. And this doesn’t even account for the prioritization of Publix’s entrance to the automobile on Peace instead of the pedestrians on Johnson (regardless of whether or not Publix forced his hand on that decision). If he can’t get that right, how in the world is he supposed to begin understanding more nuanced details like mico-storefront spaces? How do we get that fixed at the city review level if we can’t find developers who can help us build functional urban experiences?
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Thanks for the reference layout. It makes sense for restaurants to need a bit more space, but the flex spaces at Platform are not slated for food service according to the property manager. They’re looking for small local retail or office to fill the Dupont section. The two potential restaurant spaces on Cabarrus are much larger.
I think my main skepticism is that the flex spaces area is currently one big undivided space, so it seems that there’s an opportunity for micro spaces that isn’t being offered. But that’s just my layperson’s perception as someone who has figured out how to optimize a small living space.
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