Amarcord Vintage Forced from SoHo After Purported 400% Increase in Rent
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How many different ways (or number of times) can this same story be told – building sells, landlord hikes the rents to unaffordable levels, small businesses succumb as a result. We see this progression play out so often it’s scary.
Amarcord Vintage is the latest commercial venture to fall victim to the disturbing trend. The sixteen-year-old threads shop had operated at 252 Lafayette Street for more than a decade, but forced from SoHo a couple weeks ago.
“Ultimately [the departure] was because our building was sold and the new management hit us with a 400%+ rent increase when our lease terms would come to end,” creative director Veronica Norris tells us. “It obviously forced us to weigh everything and we decided when that time came, we would have to close as there was no possible way to stay open with such an expense.”
Indeed, 252 Lafayette (aka 91 Crosby) sold for a whopping $25 million last year to Javeri Capital, which owns several properties in SoHo. The ground level is back on the market [PDF] seeking a new tenant.
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The fashion flight isn’t all bad newa; the silver lining here is that Amarcord is falling back on its Williamsburg outpost. Admitted that their looking to the future, as the closure “pushed us to renovate our Williamsburg space and make it better.”
This stretch of Lafayette Street is familiar to the aforementioned gentrification activity. Remember that last year a fourfold increase in rent forced Bicycle Habitat to close two of its stores at #242-244 and consolidate operations at the more stable 250 Lafayette. And lest we forget the relocation of Spring Natural due to rent gouging late last year.
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