Adopt-A-Rat in Harlem

We first knew that Harlem was in trouble when the short lived Disney Store appeared in the brand new Harlem USA complex a few years back. Now another rodent is sniffing around planning to take Mickey’s place along the 125th Street corridor.

Seemly on the heels of our recent discussion of the new Chuck E. Cheese to open in Harlem USA, CNNMoney.com has published an article titled “Big merchants learn from the Big Easy: Why large chain stores should tap into the $90B potential of inner-city markets like New Orleans”.

To summarize the article, industry experts claim that “the inner cities have become the new hot retail market.” Why? Because according to the International Council of Shopping Centers “Most large scale suburban retail development is done.”

In the comments section of Harlem Fur, Chris queries, “Besides, if CEC (Chuck E. Cheese) has already built its brand and customer base, why would they wait until now, when real estate prices are insane, to open? If The Rat had moved in five years ago, when Grant Houses were here, they would have paid much less.”

In answer to that question the article offers some statistics that might be a little surprising to some. As the cost of living rises and wages decrease for the middle class “research shows that inner-city residents with lower per capita income tend to spend a higher percentage of that income on retail purchases.” Harlem is used as the model of what is defined as “inner-city penetration.”

“Once the mass market retailers went to Harlem we started to see the next wave of business activity develop through new hotels, restaurants and other types of retailers selling better quality products.”

Drugstore chains like CVS, Rite Aid and Walgreen are credited with doing a “brilliant job in positioning themselves to cater to the urban inner-city markets.” This is most obvious in Harlem where drugstore chains, particularly, Duane Reade has trickled uptown to serve the numerous condos that have been constructed over the past two years.” As a result, two new locations now sit within a 10 block span from 135th Street to 145th Street.

Below 125th Street, retailers like CVS on 116th Street and Rite-Aid on 117th Street have positioned themselves to serve the fluctuating demographic of Harlem. Aware of the lack of decent grocery stores in Harlem all of the aforementioned stores have an extensive food section. “Between 35 and 40 percent of their stores are devoted to conventional supermarket categories like dairy, food and other refrigerated products even though they operate as drugstores. These companies almost operate as mini supermarkets in inner-cities.”

So basically Harlem is ripe for the pickings because it is viewed as having “a lot of potential but it’s still largely underserved” and offers a “sizable expansion opportunity for retailers at a time when most big-box chains are threatened by saturation in their more typical suburban markets”. All of that is to say that we can expect to see more ratty high volume chains crawling into Harlem.

Source: CNNMoney.com

Photo source: WATPA