The former location of the Mexicali Restaurant on the southeast corner of Atlantic Avenue and Court Street has long been boarded up. Now a sign tells us what will, at long last, be the space's new tenant: A branch of Bank of America.
OK, so that completes it; Atlantic and Court, the crossroads of Cobble Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Boerum Hill and Downtown Brooklyn, is now wholly an intersection of corporate commerce. Across the street from the proposed Bank of America is a Sovereign Bank. Kitty-corner is an Eckerd (soon to be Rite Aid) pharmacy. The fourth corner will soon be occupied by the hotly anticipated Trader Joe's, which, though a much friendlier and livelier presence, is still a chain.
Place is gonna look like Yorkville.
I'm glad you're blogging about the area I grew up in. You are right that we are seeing too many of these all-chain corners in the city, and in Brooklyn its an extra problem in that the density of independent businesses is already lower than in Manhattan.
ReplyDeleteOn the bright side, Court Street north of Atlantic is a pretty horrible walk, the one ugly part of Brooklyn Heights, so even a bunch of banks would improve it. South of Atlantic is a different story.
You may want to check out the (a href=http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/) Vanishing New York (/a) site, which looks at the same phenomen, but more in terms of the changing population than the changing buildings.
Ed: Thanks for the words. Indeed, I know of Vanishing New York and its impassioned author Jeremiah well. In fact, Jeremiah wrote me when he first started his blog to say Lost City helped inspire it. I was humbled, to say the least.
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