Vacant storefronts and shuttered venues plague the once-iconic Bleecker Street
It’s bleak on Bleecker St. for commercial stores. There’s an 18.4% vacancy rate along stretches of the well-known West Village street — once famous for its beatnik shops and music venues like the Village Gate and the Bitter End, places where Bob Dylan once played. “Bleaker on Bleecker: A Snapshot of High-Rent Blight,” used on-the-ground data collection and firsthand accounts to look into the root causes and impacts of storefront vacancies and recommends a number of solutions.
How Google Street View documents a changing New York City
Think about where NYC was in 2007: it was pre-recession, but also before the so-called “eight digit boom”that led to the development of the supertall skyscrapers that now dominate Central Park South. Megaprojects like Hudson Yards or Pacific Park had yet to begin construction, and neighborhoods like Williamsburg or Long Island City—while still in the process of adding new buildings—weren’t the built-up areas we see today. Heck, the High Line and Brooklyn Bridge Park hadn’t ev
