Kingsbridge in Chains
Reader Eric sends in the following report from Kingsbridge, around Broadway and 236th St.:
Since the Stella D'oro cookie factory was demolished, all these fancy chain-store shopping centers have been popping up, and slowly the little businesses are leaving.
All photos by Eric Bell: BJ's and T Mobile
The Bronx Ale House moved into the neighborhood a few years ago. With great food, craft/local beers, it's the classic first wave of change in the neighborhood, the one really nice restaurant in an otherwise kind of rundown area.
Riverdale Crossing is the shopping complex with all chain stores going in. There's been scaffolding up there for quite some time. Before that, there were just some bodega-type stores.
Bank of America
Just south of that, Broadway Carpet just recently closed up. Don't know if their lease wasn't renewed, or if this building is going to become part of the Riverdale Crossing complex. They were a warehouse/wholesale carpet dealer. I was able to carpet my apartment with really nice carpet from leftovers from one of their commercial jobs for very cheap.
Just south of this is the Bridge Tavern, a little dive bar, connected to the Police Precinct block. I can see that vanishing soon.
Across the street is Loehmann's which is currently being demolished. There's a sign up that it will soon become a storage place and some other shops.
Loehmann's demolished
Back on the west side of Broadway you have Stack's Tavern, which looked nice at one point on Forgotten NY, but now looks abandoned. The Tavern sits on an unusually large plot of land. I had a real estate attorney friend of mine do some investigating and he found out that it was just sold in September. I was surprised to find out that Mr. Stack actually owned the land and he sold it to a development company (Broadway Development LLC) for over 3 million dollars. Solid retirement money. So I imagine that will soon become a new shopping complex.
Stack's Tavern, closed
Keep traveling south on Broadway and you have Garden Gourmet, a very good local supermarket that just tripled in size. And a new fancy-looking lounge, which claims to be the sexiest. I don't know how sexy you can be at the end of a dead-end street next to 87, Staples, and batting cages.
The rest of Broadway until you get down to 230th Street is what you'd expect from Kingsbridge under an elevated train. A lot of discount stores and restaurants. Until you see the ugliest shopping center that's been built in history. I call it Grey.
This building looks like a prison. It's uninviting, there's only one small entrance, and it's only filled with chain stores. Soon they're adding a Starbucks, because we can never have enough of those and I guess people were getting tired of the Dunkin Donuts across the street.
Since the Stella D'oro cookie factory was demolished, all these fancy chain-store shopping centers have been popping up, and slowly the little businesses are leaving.
All photos by Eric Bell: BJ's and T Mobile
The Bronx Ale House moved into the neighborhood a few years ago. With great food, craft/local beers, it's the classic first wave of change in the neighborhood, the one really nice restaurant in an otherwise kind of rundown area.
Riverdale Crossing is the shopping complex with all chain stores going in. There's been scaffolding up there for quite some time. Before that, there were just some bodega-type stores.
Bank of America
Just south of that, Broadway Carpet just recently closed up. Don't know if their lease wasn't renewed, or if this building is going to become part of the Riverdale Crossing complex. They were a warehouse/wholesale carpet dealer. I was able to carpet my apartment with really nice carpet from leftovers from one of their commercial jobs for very cheap.
Just south of this is the Bridge Tavern, a little dive bar, connected to the Police Precinct block. I can see that vanishing soon.
Across the street is Loehmann's which is currently being demolished. There's a sign up that it will soon become a storage place and some other shops.
Loehmann's demolished
Back on the west side of Broadway you have Stack's Tavern, which looked nice at one point on Forgotten NY, but now looks abandoned. The Tavern sits on an unusually large plot of land. I had a real estate attorney friend of mine do some investigating and he found out that it was just sold in September. I was surprised to find out that Mr. Stack actually owned the land and he sold it to a development company (Broadway Development LLC) for over 3 million dollars. Solid retirement money. So I imagine that will soon become a new shopping complex.
Stack's Tavern, closed
Keep traveling south on Broadway and you have Garden Gourmet, a very good local supermarket that just tripled in size. And a new fancy-looking lounge, which claims to be the sexiest. I don't know how sexy you can be at the end of a dead-end street next to 87, Staples, and batting cages.
The rest of Broadway until you get down to 230th Street is what you'd expect from Kingsbridge under an elevated train. A lot of discount stores and restaurants. Until you see the ugliest shopping center that's been built in history. I call it Grey.
This building looks like a prison. It's uninviting, there's only one small entrance, and it's only filled with chain stores. Soon they're adding a Starbucks, because we can never have enough of those and I guess people were getting tired of the Dunkin Donuts across the street.
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