Manhattan’s flower district, on 28th Street, is not
long for this world. What the merchants needed – a whole city block
with easy truck access and non-astronomical rents – simply can’t be found
in these days of frothy residential real estate. It won’t be long until there
are essentially no street-level merchants (as opposed to retail stores) in Manhattan
any more: our wonderful island is becoming a place of office buildings and residences
up high, and retail at street level; nothing more. (So long as there is Lendy,
however, I still have hope.)
Of course, the fact that the flower merchants were highly competitive and couldn’t
agree on anything to save their lives hardly helped their cause. Renting a store
on 28th Street because that’s where the flower district already is? That’s easy.
Trying to coordinate a mass rental of storefronts somewhere else? That’s a collective-action
problem which was clearly beyond these überflorists.
At least the diamond district remains. Now there’s a business with
the money to stay wherever it wants.