Sustaining Independent Retail
As New York City's commercial strips lose treasured neighborhood businesses to rising rents, the Pratt Center has been working with civic and community groups on strategies to encourage neighborhood-serving independent retail and set reasonable limits on the proliferation of chain stores, banks, fast food and other generic corporate businesses.
With a class of students from Pratt Institute's Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, the Pratt Center has been advising the East Village Community Coalition on strategies for sustaining independent stores. Pratt Center Director of Planning and Preservation Vicki Weiner, who co-taught the class, is also advising an East Harlem task force, convened by City Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito, which is working with the city's Economic Development Corporation to provide opportunities for independent retailers in a new shopping center anchored by Target and Home Depot.
The Pratt Center's work on independent retail looks at strategies and policies to encourage:
- Retailers that sell goods and services people in the area need
- Goods or services affordable to most neighbors
- Living wages for workers
Weiner has been fostering public dialogue around the prospects for sustaining independent retail in New York City in the face of high rents and corporate competition. She has been speaking on panels following screening of the documentary Twilight Becomes Night by filmmaker Virginie Alvine-Perrette, and facilitating conversations in communities working toward a retail landscape that fits their neighborhood.
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