East Side of Ninth Avenue between 54th & 55th Streets

[iguana]

Any idea know what's going on? Every single storefront has been cleared out over the past few months, from one end of the block to the other, including an OTB parlor and the Vynl Diner (which relocated nearby). I'm not sure what kind of consolidation it is as the buildings have different owners and are represented by different brokers, I'm not sure they can even be joined. Can't be coincidental, something must be afoot but it does seem rather curious -- a Duane Reade to end all Duane Reades? This is across the street from the new Alvin Ailey Dance Center and 'The Nicole'.

[vc10]

By the way, those two buildings (Nicole, Alvin Ailey) have made that side of the intersection one of the most radically improved in the whole area. In the mid 1990s I used to have to go to a building on 55th between 9th and 10th all the time for business. The Nicole spot was occupied by a cr*ppy one-story building with an A&P in it, and the other side had some sort of theater that was only in partial use and which always had homeless sheltering under its marquee.

Now the Nicole isn't anything special on the scale of Manhattan, but compared to what was there, and compared to all the other really cr*ppy buildings on 9th avenue, it's a palace. And the Alvin Ailey building is fine, if modest on the scale of Manhattan, but again it looks wonderful next to all the drek on 9th ave. I walked by there about a month ago and it took me a while to realize this was the same nasty intersection I'd been through so many times.

Any idea know what's going on? Every single storefront has been cleared out over the past few months, from one end of the block to the other, including an OTB parlor and the Vynl Diner (which relocated nearby). I'm not sure what kind of consolidation it is as the buildings have different owners and are represented by different brokers, I'm not sure they can even be joined. Can't be coincidental, something must be afoot but it does seem rather curious -- a Duane Reade to end all Duane Reades? This is across the street from the new Alvin Ailey Dance Center and 'The Nicole'.