Zero Waste Daniel founder Daniel Silverstein got an email recently that made his jaw hit the floor. Labeled “Lease Renewal,” he clicked into it and found the distressing news that the rent on his 700-square-foot studio was increasing “hundreds and hundreds of dollars more a month.”
“ And why? For what?” he said. “You can look at both sides of the coin, We’re in this cool artist neighborhood there’s all this graffiti and street art, but also, the buildings are in disrepair. People look the other way at some unsavory behavior because it’s affordable for artists. When you change the price tag of the rent dramatically, it’s not so appealing.”
In healthy retail corridors, demand is steady and quality spaces are getting multiple offers, the Real Estate Board of New York said in its July 23 Spring Retail report, adding, “A year ago, as leasing intensified, REBNY committee members predicted that availability would be sharply reduced by this time. As anticipated, quality space options are scarce in many prime neighborhoods such as Broadway in SoHo and Madison Avenue.
“Improving demand is in part due to rents that are still well below pre-pandemic peaks,” REBNY said. “Asking rent is at least 30% below its peak in 13 of the 17 corridors tracked. Compared to the Fall of 2022, rent increased slightly in 10 of the 17 corridors.”
That doesn’t make Silverstein feel any better.
“We felt very fortunate to kind of land on our feet after the pandemic and open up in this little private studio,” he said. “Of course, we did our due diligence when we found the studio space. We asked for references, we wanted to set up shop here and wanted this to be a long-term thing. We wanted to put down some roots.”
Silverstein’s broker told him, “The landlord is not going to give you any crazy increases. Many of the tenants have been here for decades. You’re right in the heart of Bushwick where all the artists and street art and thrifting is. We eagerly, but cautiously, set up shop and after six or eight months, we started to put up our shelves and hang our signage.”
“We confronted the landlord, without doing any hard work,” Silverstein said, adding that he and his partner walked down the hallway and said, “‘Here’s 10 photos of horrible conditions in this building, what are you going to do about these things? Are you going to provide a higher level of service because you’re raising rents?’”
The landlord ignored them. “We asked again and they said, ‘Are you taking the increase or not?’ “‘So how about this number,” Silverstein offered. “They said, ‘No, that’s the increase.’ ‘What about this number, and we’ll take a two-year lease?’
‘They said, ‘No, you’re not taking the increase. We want you to move out.’ ‘We said, ‘We don’t make noise or messes. Why?’”
Why, indeed. “I’m the type of person who is always looking in the mirror and asking, ‘Why me, what did I do?’” Silverstein said. “It took me a minute to realize, it’s not just me, it’s every tenant in New York and every landlord. This is a sign of the times, and I can’t waste another moment asking, why. I have to do what I have to do and put on my own oxygen mask now.”
“Persistent demand has depleted availability of quality storefronts in many of the most sought-after [Brooklyn] corridors,” REBNY’s Winter 2023 report stated. “In turn, average vacant asking rent per square foot increased year-over-year in 12 of the 17 major Brooklyn retail corridors analyzed for this report.”
With less availability, higher-priced rents and the end of peak pandemic-era concession packages in prime corridors, retailers are exploring lesser-known areas, REBNY said. “Brokers say Grand Street and farther afield in North Williamsburg present viable options for tenants willing to work with smaller floorplans, and light industrial buildings in Sunset Park and Bushwick are garnering interest despite often requiring the tenant to assume more out of pocket buildout costs.”
“I realized that I have been in this city with this noble fashion mission for over a decade, since starting school, almost two decades and I’ve had almost 10 studios, including my store,” said Silverstein, whose popular Zero Waste Daniel collection is made of upcycled fabric scraps collected from the floors of designer work areas. “It’s not because I’m being chased out of them, it’s because I’m being priced out. I was in a coworking space that closed and told me to move out in the middle of the night. I was dragged from location to location. We were told, ‘We leased out your space to someone else, you’re going to have to move up two floors.’”
When Silverstein was done with his pity party, he thought, “‘I can’t catch a break. I had an ‘If you can make it in [New York] you can make it anywhere’ kind of moment, and that, unfortunately, is not a deterrent for me. So I just said, ‘We have to look at this as an opportunity because if we look at it as a loss, I might not be able to shake if off.
“As soon as I got through the rage of it, I thought, ‘This could be so fun,” he said. “As soon as I got happy, I found this incredible space at 257 Varet Street in Bushwick. It’s 1,000 square feet. The old the store was 700 square feet. It’s a taller space, and the back has a lofted mezzanine space and it has a skylight. It’s near our studio but in an even better location and has some other retailers nearby, notably, a third generation hat maker that does hats for the fashion industry as well as their own brand. Designers like Thom Brown have pieces made for them.”
Silverstein said he found a landlord who said, “‘I want a tenant who’s just going to be a good tenant and stay. I’ll give you a long-term commercial lease and an option to renew. I thought ‘Wow, if I had allowed myself to sink deeply, I wouldn’t have found this situation that was just around the corner waiting for me.”
Silverstein qualified for the lease, put down a deposit and started thinking about the vision for the space. “I kind of had a lightbulb moment and thought, ‘This is really an opportunity to engage our community,” Silversaid said. “There are so many people, makers, designers, creatives who’ve had this similar experience of being pushed around and put into hibernation because of Covid, so to speak. It’s just a wonderful opportunity to appeal to everyone’s sense of community that we’re able to be back in person.”
Silverstein had an idea for a crowdfunding campaign, and addressed his fans. “I want to inspire people to take ownership of [the store] in a way, not just a part in helping us move, but a lasting part,” he said. “The entry level reward for donating to our Kickstarter campaign is to have a brick with your name in our shop. I want people to realize that you can be an indelible part of the history of our brand.
“We know that fashion has this horrible reputation for not giving people credit,” Silverstein continued. “I thought it would be a beautiful way to display those names and give people ownership for the contributions they’re making to our legacy,” he said. Another aspect of the community focus and Kickstarter approach is that I’m in sort of a funny spot because I’m not so big or so financially-solvent that I’m opening up a Fifth Avenue location, but I’m also not an emerging designer.
“This is a moment where I want to appeal to the people who not just love my work, but also see themselves in me and give them an opportunity to see their work in my store,” he said. “One of the things we’re looking forward to is carrying the work of other designers. I know what it’s like to try and sell your work to a buyer and I look forward to giving aspiring designers a more positive experience than I had. I also know what it’s like to share a mission and see the value in cross-promotions. We’re eager for the success of our campaign to bring many designers together for zero waste and upcycling in design markets as well.”
Silverstein has a modest goal on Kickstarter of $10,000. As of today, the designer said he’s more than halfway toward achieving the goal, only 24 hours into the campaign. His reach goal is $20,000. The target opening date is September 15, which gives Silverstein plenty of time to develop new inventory.
The space is long, tall, and narrow. Silverstein envisions his studio in the back of the store, where his sewing machines will be and where he’ll conduct fittings and sampling of new patterns. The front of space has 13-foot ceilings. “They’re high and beautiful and the entire front of the store is glass,” he said. “It’s a door you can walk through and on the other side it’s a glass garage door that we can open and invite people to come in off the street.
“It will be a really entertaining environment,” the designer said. “We love our scraps as a moving, living installation. In our old store we had a mountain of scraps that you could walk into and it was our dressing room. All I can say is that as we begin to design the space we want to ideate on that and the point of reference we come up with is Seussian where these enormous scrap sculptures that are alive.”
When staff cleans up at the end of the day, they dump scraps on the piles. “When I’m looking for bits of colors to create a mosaic I pull scraps from them,” he said. “When a customer wants to customize a design, they’ll say, ‘Can you use this fabric, and pull something off the wall, so it’s a living, breathing thing.
The new store really has the Bushwick warehouse feeling, Silverstein said. “It’s in a better retail location, in a neighborhood where customers are aware of, and excited about the idea of thrifting and upcycling. I’m looking forward to stocking the store with more one-of-a-kind items and having that tactile interaction with customers where they don’t just see an online photo and ask lots of questions, but they can try something on and feel it and touch it. That’s a really beautiful thing.”
Read the full article here