A city in chains. (CUF)

James Joyce once puzzled whether it would be possible to cross Dublin without passing a pub. As it turns out, despite having more than 22 pubs per square mile, with the help of a computer algorithm, it just barely is. Today, after The Center for an Urban Future released its fifth annual study ranking the national retailers popping up all over in New York City, it might have found a harder puzzle to solve. With a reported 24 locations per square mile, is it possible to cross New York without passing a chain store?

The report showed a 2.4 percent increase in the total number of chains over the past year, despite prominent retailers like Filene’s Basement and Betsey Johnson closing their doors. It is boom maintained by trusty stalwarts like Dunkin Donuts, which opened 18 stores in the last year for a total of 484 citywide, followed closely by Subways, with 454 locations, and despite seeming to be on every street corner, Starbucks, with a mere 272 locations.

The number of national retail store locations grew in every borough but Staten Island. The Bronx, at a pace of 4.3 percent growth, grew the fastest, going from 809 store locations in 2011 to 844 in 2012. It is the second consecutive year of rapid retail expansion in the Bronx. Both Manhattan and the ever-expanding Brooklyn registered a 2.6 percent increase this year. Queens, not to be left out, was up 2.1 percent. Staten Island had a 0.7 percent drop (not attributable to washouts from Sandy, it would appear).

Overall, the total number of 310 retailers included in the study accounted for a massive 7,190 stores in the city. That;s a whole lot of the generic branding for a city that prides itself on (or at least pretends to) being unique.

It’s a testament to the city, somehow, that while walking a mile past the brands, chains and logos, that it can still feel like anything but the strip mall it’s hoping not to be.

Ready to party. (Max Carr)

An expressive guy. (Getty)

Much has been made of the Fulton Mall's transformation over the past few years (not least in these pages). New shops, new sweets, new people. No one knows this better than Michael Weiss, the CEO of Express. Sure, the career garmento with slicked back white hair and severe glasses likes the location for his newest outlet, set to open this evening with a big block party outside the new store at 490 Fulton Street.

But his love for the strip goes back much farther than that. Mr. Weiss' first job was as a management trainee and associate buyer at the old Abraham & Strauss, one of the four department stores that helped solidify the Fulton Mall as Brooklyn's main shopping destination.

"Except in those days, it wasn't called the Fulton Mall, it was just Fulton Street," Mr. Weiss joked.

Mr. Weiss grew up in Crown Heights and attended Brooklyn Tech High School in nearby Fort Greene. He remembers the area well. "It was just the greatest place to be," he said. "So much activity. So much action. Brooklyn was it."

He spent almost the first decade of his career at A&S, working in different departments, moving up through the ranks. This was in the late 1960s and early '70s, before Brooklyn, along with the rest of the city, began its precipitous decline into bankruptcy and decay.

"It was very different than it is today," Mr. Weiss recalled. "It was very optimistic, to tell you the truth. Brooklyn was quite a place in those years. It was a place of expectation and aspiration. It was solidly middle class, everyone sort of felt like they had a shot if they worked hard. It was very different then."

Mr. Weiss left Abraham & Stauss for a job at Casual Corners, which along with the Limited was just starting to define the specialty (read:non-department) store model of shopping that dominates malls these days. "Little known fact, computers are what made that possible," Mr. Weiss said. "It revolutionized retail. You didn't have to count the stubs, the computer did it for you."

He then spent a few years as a consultant before joining Limited Brands in 1981 to help launch Express. Over the next three decades he worked throughout the companies, including serving as CEO for both Express and Limited Brands. In 2004, he retired before rejoining Express three years later after it was bought by a private equity outfit. "I wasn't very good at retirement, things," he said. "My one piece of advice to you is develop some retirement skills when you're young. Take up golf or bocce. If you don't retirement will be very boring."

Meanwhile, Brooklyn began its rejuvenation, something Mr. Weiss both marvels at and yet always expected. "I knew that street had to be rejuvenated at some point," Mr. Weiss said. "The big question was when could it company afford to get into the place and make it work. You don't want to be too early, and you don't want to be late. I really think now is the time."

Not that the Fulton Mall ever really lost its popularity, even if a little of that luster changed. The demographics were different, but it remained one of the busiest, and most profitable retail strips in the city. There are times when the long-timers might complain about the changes that have come to the strip. Mr. Weiss insists his store will be welcoming to all. "Demographically, we're everywhere in the country," Mr. Weiss said. "Manhattan, Miami, Chicago, Boston, LA, San Francisco. Brooklyn is no different."

The party tonight should offer a mix of new and old, with everything from shaved ice to Roberta's Pizza and, for those who can't manage the impossible reservation's, neighboring Brooklyn Fare. Inside, Express will be unveiling a new interiors concept, designed by Japanese architect Masamichi Katayama of the firm Wonderwall. "We want to elevate the retail experience for national stores, really take it somewhere new," Mr. Weiss said. The concept first installed in the King of Prussia store.

So Mr. Weiss may have the local flavor down, but can he make his clothes work? He admitted to loving the styles of Brooklyn, particularly Williamsburg. "The whole art, bohemian community, has added to the fashion profile, the creative fashion profile of the borough," Mr. Weiss said. "They're not high-fashion dressers, they're creative dressers."

Asked whether he can succeed in such a fashion-conscious environment, he expressed no doubts.

"Some of our most successful stores are in the New York area, on Long Island and in Jersey," Mr. Weiss said. "People want to look good, and that's what we're good at."

Turning and turning in the widening gyre. (MTA/Flickr)

So we already know Lower Manhattan is set to become a giant mall. No, we do not mean Canal Street, though that has been attracting big name investors, as well. This is instead Fulton Street, which will soon gain more than a million square feet of retail from (narrow) coast to coast: the World Financial Center, the World Trade Center, the Fulton Transit Center and the glittery new Pier 17 at the South Street Seaport (not to mention a vastly expanded Century 21—joy!).

The Journal wonders just who is going to fill all that retail space, particularly at a time when rents are up but the economy remains off?

Developers and brokers said there is plenty of pent-up demand since the destruction of the World Trade Center and its huge underground mall on Sept. 11, 2001. Even with a daytime population of wealthy financial workers, millions of tourists and a growing residential population, Lower Manhattan has lagged well behind other busy parts of the city in terms of shopping options.

Faith Hope Consolo, chairman of Prudential Douglas Elliman's retail group, said it would be "difficult" to fill all of this space. But she added that it will be good for the neighborhood overall. "Downtown will finally come into its own in the next 18 months," she said.

Lower Manhattan's problem isn't demand, say brokers. It is that its retail spaces traditionally haven't been enticing, thanks in part to a warren of confusing side streets and shadowy storefronts.

Things are especially big for the MTA, which has no one to run its retail space yet—we learn an RFP is coming this week for a partner on the Fulton Transit Center, but with  the cash cow/headache that is the Grand Central Apple store, it will be especially important to get this project off to a good start.

The Fulton Center is likely to be one of the most enticing spaces because of the high amount of foot traffic, say brokers. The MTA will issue an RFP for the retail space Aug. 2, seeking a master lessee to handle leasing and operations of the nine-level structure and the attached concourse under Dey Street.

The $1.4 billion project is slated for completion in June 2014.

On a recent morning, Uday Durg, the MTA's program executive for Lower Manhattan projects, gestured through the floor-to-ceiling windows of the Fulton Center's third floor, pointing at the church steeple across Broadway to illustrate a point: This was no place for a modest food court.

"You're sitting here having a drink," Mr. Durg said, conjuring up a future restaurant space, "and you can see St. Paul's!"

For once it appears the agency has its work cut out for it.

The International House of Pancakes: opening up in a building near you.

Pass the syrup—and the Kleenex, because the Death of Downtown lamentations are only going to get louder as the Village gets its second IHOP.

There’s one in Harlem and one on East 14th Street, and soon there will be one in the West Village, too, at 80 Carmine Street. The International House of Pancakes has hit the Big Apple, folks, and it looks like it’s here to stay.Last week, Trihop LLC—the tri-state area owner of the pancake house franchise—signed a 49-year lease for the restaurant’s latest location, partner Kevin Salmon of the brokerage firm Salmon and Marshall Real Estate Investments to The Real Deal. The restaurant will be Budakkan big, covering 10,500 square feet: a 3,500 square-foot ground level area, a 1,000 square-foot covered outdoor space, and a 6,000 square-foot lower level. It's located—surprise—in a new 10-story condo building.

Ashkenazy Acquisition, an affiliate of Trihop that signed the building’s lease, had been eyeing the site for the last 18 months, Salmon said, and had at one point considered buying the commercial condo. Rent for the unusual shaped building, which has three different entrances on three different streets, will be $300,000 a year.

The firm has yet to confirm an opening date for the West Village location, and although it is only the third IHOP location in Manhattan, rumor has it that Ashkenazy has plans to open as many as 25 IHOPs in the tri-state area. Is that better or worse than the 100-plus 7-Elevens planned for the island?

And while most diehard Villagers will hate this place with a passion bordering on Carrie's abhorrence of hair scrunchies, at least some locals might get excited. Next door is a Kumon Learning Center and you can bet your bottom dollar that a slew of backpack-laden kids will be clamoring for a hard-earned milkshake or plate of funny face pancakes after a grueling tutoring session.

jschiewe@observer.com

More of this.

Less of this. (DNAinfo)

While real estate and business groups opposed the Upper West Side rezoning that places restrictions on retail establishments, James Gardener, a native of the neighborhood and The Real Deal's architecture critic, makes a compelling case for the legislation.

He argues that the rezoning improves not only the retail mix on the stretch, not always great, but also the street life, that most essential of New York experiences, a landmark more important even than the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty, perhaps. For after all, it is at street level where so many of us live, not in these hokey locales.

But in recent years, with the revival of Columbus Avenue’s fortunes and the Upper West Side in general, the big banks (as well as big retailers) have moved in, occupying some of the choicest corners with branches that take up as much as half a block. The presence of such banks here and throughout the city is especially to be regretted because, due to their profligate abundance, they add almost nothing to the neighborhood; they are by their very nature a boring architectural typology, and most of the time they are closed, thus constituting a dead space. And yet, because banks are national or even international corporations with money to burn, they can pay any amount of rent and, laying hold of the most conspicuous corners of the Upper West Side and occupying them with their drab and unimaginative branches.

[...]

In the area covered by the proposed legislation, there are already 30 banks.

Naturally, many brokers and landlords are not happy with the legislation, which has several stages of review to undergo before it goes before the City Council. Yet it is quite likely that the effect of the legislation, if it passes, will be a subtle — and maybe more than subtle — enhancement of the Upper West Side. But even if it restricts the square footage of banks going forward, unfortunately it will have no retroactive effect on those that are already there.

After all, who really wants to patronize an awful outdoor mall? Just look at Soho.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

510 Fifth Avenue gets Fresh. (Nicholas Strini/PropertyShark)

The kaleidoscope of New York City shopping bags is a mesmerizing thing, a language. The thrifty carry some variation of red—red and black for H&M, red and white for Uniqlo, red, white and black for Century 21. The weak-dollar-spending tourists have the navy and naked bodies of the Gap and Abercrombie, the star-crossed lovers the teal of Tiffany’s. For the fashion-forward, Small, Medium and Large brown bags.

Then, last fall, a bright orange bag began to appear in the overburdened arms of Manhattan shoppers. Inside were the dreams of all the other bags put together. It was not some down-market Hermés, however, but an upstart brand called Joe Fresh.

If that moniker conjures visions of the grocery store, you’re not far off. Joe Fresh was launched in 2006 by Loblaws, a chain somewhere between Trader Joe’s (they have a great in-house brand, approaching Newman’s Own) and D’Agostinos (the selection is nice, but it’s no Fairway). If that does not seem like a strange enough place to find the next great fashion line, Joe Fresh, and Loblaws, happens to be Canadian.

“It used to be weird, going into the grocery store for socks and maybe a sweater, but it sure was convenient,” said Tara Ariano, a writer from Saskatchewan-by-way-of-Toronto who is especially well known for her SNL recaps for New York magazine’s Vulture blog. “Now, they’re on Fifth Avenue, and that’s kinda crazy, but also kinda awesome.” Ms. Ariano admitted that she owns five pairs of pajamas from Joe Fresh—no blogger jokes, please—and said that whenever she goes to visit her sister, “I have to go to the store and check out what’s new.” Not anymore!

Joe Fresh conquered Canada in a matter of years, largely through the benefit of the 350 Loblaws in which it was sold, but now it has crossed the border into one of the most challenging retail realms on the planet. Following three pop-ups, an international flagship is set to open at 510 Fifth Avenue on March 30, at the corner of 43nd Street. One block south is Zara and H&M, a few to the north everything from Benetton to Bergdorf. The great orange hope from the Great White North has come to conquer New York.

There is one group Joe Fresh has had no trouble winning over: New York Canucks.

Rachel Sklar, the Toronto-born media presence, said she did a double-take when she saw the first store on lower Fifth, at the corner of 16th Street, where she might soon be “purging the shopping jones.”
“I own two things from Joe Fresh—one is a nice basic white sweater that I’ve got with me here at SXSW (it goes great with my purple jeans),” Ms. Sklar said via email. The other is a blue scoop-neck T-shirt, which she purchased along with a yellow, giraffe-printed blanket for a friend’s baby. “I discovered to my delight aisles of FUN stuff to buy, and something to distract me from wandering the candy aisle,” Ms. Sklar said.

Devotees of the brand include everyone from gallerinas to TV news anchors. “They’re legendary for the quality of their clothes, like the Gap in better days, or H&M if it didn’t fall apart on you,” NY1 morning man and Calgary native Pat Kiernan told The Observer (though he admitted that he mostly shops Saks Fifth Avenue and J. Crew).

Part of the appeal of the brand used to be convenience. As you put on your shoes to head to the store for a carton of milk, you realize the socks have a hole in them. Or it is an especially blustery day, so why not grab a windbreaker—it costs only 30 bucks. John Barnes, a Columbia grad in the process of applying to med school, recalled a trip home to visit the family cottage on Georgian Bay. His luggage disappeared somewhere between LaGuardia and Toronto Pearson International. His family stopped off for provisions at Midland Superstore, a division of Loblaws, and he managed to build an entire weekend wardrobe, from shorts to sweatshirt to skivvies.

New York is a market that makes sense, as the number of Canadians living in Gotham has swelled in recent years, thanks to NAFTA and its subsequent exports of human capital. A boom in the Loonie has also made New York an attractive destination for Canadian tourists. After all, how many New Yorkers wear Abercrombie? And yet, the line outside its Fifth Avenue flagship has become a New York institution.

He put the Joe in Joe Fresh. (Getty)

“Those things are nice, but this is about New York,” Joe Mimran said last week, calling from his office in Toronto, a day after presenting the fall Joe Fresh line at the city’s fashion week. “Look at where the stores are. If we wanted to be for tourists, we would be in Soho. Instead, we’re on Fifth Avenue, where the New Yorkers shop. And the store on Madison has been our best.” That would be 1050 Madison Avenue, in the heart of ladies who lunch and tots with disposable income territory.

Joe Mimran is the “Joe” in Joe Fresh, the closest thing Canada gets to a fashion god, their very own Tommy Hilfiger. Ralph Lauren might be more apt, as it was his company who bought Mr. Mimran’s first great success, Club Monaco, in 1999 for $52.5 million. Mr. Mimran then went into consulting, which led him to Loblaws in 2002. Facing pressure in the grocery aisle from Walmart and the like, the store decided to turn the tables and began selling home goods. Mr. Mimran helped create the President’s Choice Home collection, with everything from notebooks to tea towels to cheese boards. The clothes came next, in 2006.

He came along at a good time. Fast fashion was just taking off in the states, with the arrival of H&M, Zara and the Target designer collaborations, none of which had yet reached Maple Leaf country. “Certainly a lot of my peers thought, God, what are you doing,” Mr. Mimran said.

“I never got into this just to make cheap clothing,” he continued. “It was always my vision to make something a step up. Never underestimate the customer you’re serving. That has always been my belief.”

The result has been a striking collection the past few years, one that bears its own fashion identity, far from the socks and sweaters of yore. Uniqlo has a plentiful rainbow of basics. H&M translates runway styles to its stores in no time. Forever 21 just rips them off. J. Crew is classic, if staid, and quite a bit more expensive. Joe Fresh still does solid basics, from jeans to jackets, but there are also slacks with batik flowers and printed blazers—for the gentleman. Women’s suits come in a riot of colors and patterns, and the fall line featured a maroon faux-fur jacket bonded to a shiny leather shell and a splotchy cableknit sweater in gray, maroon and, as with so many Joe Fresh accents, orange.

When the label was launched, it was called Project Orange, and that was nearly the name the brand was given. “Orange to me is food, which is appropriate given the context,” Mr. Mimran said. “It was citrus, but it was also fresh.” Instead, Joe Fresh was selected for the obvious connotations, plus the name recognition. “We had to make sure there was instant recognition,” Mr. Mimran said, readily admitting his own national, if not international, cache. “It couldn't just look like another private label. This was fashion.”

The fashionable seem to agree. "People love the fashion they can afford," Carine Roitfeld, the French Vogue editor and runway godhead, told The Observer at an art opening hosted by her son during Armory week.

Barney’s creative ambasador-at-large and former Observer scribe Simon Doonan admitted ignorance of the brand but saw no reason it would not succeed here. “New Yorkers always give a warm welcome to breezy wholesome brands from Canada and elsewhere,” he said. “Everything in Manhattan is louche and gritty and dark. We embrace anything which brings a little outdoorsy je ne said quoi.”

Perhaps Joe Fresh's greatest ambassador is Joe Zee, the Elle creative director and well-known stylist. Mr. Zee worked for Mr. Mimran at his very first Club Monaco store while still a kid in high school. "It was the coolest thing in all of Toronto," he said in a phone interview from Los Angeles, where he was taking meetings for the next season of All on the Line, his fashion reality show on the Sundance Channel.

"He has the right color, the right cut, it's a very specific look, but something you won't find anywhere else," Mr. Zee said. "He just taps into the trends right now, but in a very accessible way. It's something as simple as having a V-neck sweater in just the perfect shade of gray, or the perfect shade of persimmon.

Orange is our specialty. Orange is the enemy of beige./Orange is the meaning of happiness. Orange is always alert./Orange is sunny every day. Orange is tirelessly upbeat/Orange is mood changing. Orange is brighter than tangerine.

This is the mantra hanging outside the dressing room of Joe Fresh’s Madison Avenue store, a monochrome cri de coeur.

“It’s a great thing to try and bring things that are fresh and fashionable at a good price,” Alan Saltz said, thumbing through a rack of polos. Middle-aged, with salt-and-pepper hair and prescription Ray Ban glasses, Mr. Saltz is director of camp programs at the 92nd Street Y—not exactly the H&M, or even orange, set, and here he was, having already picked up some shirts on a previous trip.

“Not to be smug, but it’s a great price point for disposable clothing,” Jay Hupp, another Upper East Sider told The Observer, adding that he is “allergic to H&M.” He left with a nylon jacket for $49. “It has plenty of pockets, great for walking the dog, and if it gets dirty, who cares?”

Vanessa Khuong had come all the way from Jersey City to shop at the Joe Fresh on Madison with her sister, Lana. They are both from Illinois, but Vanessa Khuong was in town from Boulder, Colo., where she now lives, for some consulting work. “It was on my spreadsheet of things to do,” Ms. Khuong said.
She was the only one of the people The Observer met on a recent Sunday afternoon who knew Joe Fresh was from Canada—she had read about the brand on “New York’s very active discount Tumblr scene”—but even then she was ignorant of the grocery store roots. “I guess it at least helps explain the name,” Ms. Khuong said.

It may not matter, either. After all, Lululemon and Aldo are Canadian companies—who knew? This is not Mounty-approved Roots or Canada Goose. “It’s a new store with good-looking clothes and ridiculously low prices,” Ms. Sklar said. “There are no supersized boxes of cereal on the shelves, so unless there’s another tip off the average shopper probably won’t know.”

Shiny new sales. (Brownstoner)

If the Fulton Mall is being transformed, it is only so much. The strip is being glammed up, stocked with major national retailers, at the cost of the mom and pops who have called the mall home for decades.

Still, things are not changing so much. As previously, pretentiously noted, Smith Street it ain't, nor is it going to be. This is still a discount strip. From H&M to Target, the Gap to the almost-Filene's, the newcomers have been far from high end—not counting the hamburgers. For further proof of the trend toward the same, welcome Century 21 to the neighborhood.

According to the Post, the discount dandies are poised to sign a 100,000-square-foot lease for the upper floors of the soon-to-open City Point mall under construction on the old Albee Square Mall site. That's twice the size of the on-target Target, which is technically not official but that everyone has been talking about for years.

The move makes sense, this being the third busiest retail strip in the city, better than Madison Avenue or the company's downtown location. The company has been expanding at a healthy clip, almost doubling its downtown store and opening another near Lincoln Center last year. There is one in Brooklyn already, out in Bay Ridge.

Now all the mall needs is an Apple Store.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Shrink to fit. (wilm23/Flickr)

Maybe the Fulton Mall just needs some zoning changes to save its mom and pop shops. That's what they're doing on the Upper West Side, tired of all the giant Duane Reades and Chases. New zoning requirements would limit the size of stores on Columbus and Amsterdam avenues, protecting the character of the neighborhood and possibly discouraging national retailers, who tend to prefer bigger spaces.

Not surprisingly, landlords are not happy about the proposal, according to The Journal.

It's opposed by leaders in the real-estate industry who say the zoning rules are a blunt instrument. The Real Estate Board of New York, an industry association and lobbying group, said a similar regulation along East 86th Street during the late 1970s didn't deliver what supporters hoped.

Property owners had to grapple with cumbersome rules, and in the end, chain stores opened along the thoroughfare anyway, said Michael Slattery, a senior vice president at REBNY. McDonald's and other fast-food chains don't need as much space as major retailers or banks were able to move in. The regulation was eventually repealed.

"This was tried before and failed," Mr. Slattery said. "It's ignoring the changing nature of retail."

Funny that developers hate the cudgel that is New York City zoning, except when it benefits them. This is only the latest showdown for REBNY on the Upper West Side, as the real estate group is vehemently opposing plans for a West End Avenue historic district, fearing it will diminish development. Heaven forefend.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Comings and goings across from Shake Shack. (Matt Chaban)

Joseph, a slender 19-year-old from Fort Greene, stood inside Downtown Pawn Shop Sunday afternoon turning an almost-new Nokia flip phone over in his hands. On either side of him were glass display cases, chipped and fluorescent.

Those before him held more new and used phones, neatly arrayed. Beside that were purses in an array of colors and material. Across the way was perfume—Lilac for Women, Yacht Man Chocolate—and more jewelry than the Zales across the street, in maybe one-fifth the space. Bomber jackets hung on the wall, besides po sters of President Obama, still smiling, celebrating his inauguration. Bills from every Caribbean nation were taped up next to that. In the back was a tattoo parlor and an optometrist. “Designer Frames Start at $59.99.”

Like generations of Brooklynites before him, Joseph had come to the Fulton Mall to do some shopping. Some historians credit the centuries old strip with pioneering urban department store shopping, with the opening of Abraham & Weschler in 1865 and the many stores that followed, all now long gone but for the Neo-Grec and Beaux Arts temples to retail they erected.

When he arrived on the mall this day, Joseph had passed by the T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T and MetroPCS outlets and come here for his new-enough phone. “They don’t want so much here,” Joseph said, a Dodgers cap—L.A., not Brooklyn—resting on his head. “It’s a good deal.”

But for how much longer? It is getting to be that they want more and more on the Fulton Mall. Just like the rest of Brooklyn before it.

“I am so damn excited,” Albert Laboz said, his fruit cup just arrived. “Even if a fraction of these tenants come in, it’s gonna change everything. It’s gonna be a game changer.”

Friday morning, Mr. Laboz was seated at a round table in the middle of Junior’s, one of the only surviving  Fulton Mall institutions left, having consumed two rounds of coffee in the first half of an hour-long interview. A developer and landlord, he is among the handful of machers actively reshaping the five-block bazaar into his version of a family friendly destination, inviting for everyone from the blacks who have dominated the mall since it fell into decline decades ago to the white bohemians and businessmen who have set about, wantonly or not, dislodging them from many other parts of the borough.

Mr. Laboz insists it does not have to be one way or the other, that all of Brooklyn can happily coalesce around a few stores in restaurants in the middle of some of the most valuable real estate in the country. (Not to mention the GQ-certified coolest.) Just two blocks away is the three-Michelin-starred Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare. The 20-course meal is 30 times the price of dinner at Mr. Fulton, the soul food institution on the corner of Flatbush Avenue.

“We can meet in the middle,” Mr. Laboz said. “Everyone wants a bargain.”

His strategy, and that of his neighbors, is attracting middlebrow retailers who appeal to both the design and price conscious. H&M is scheduled for a new glass building on the corner of Hoyt Street being built by Mr. Laboz, below which will be a TJ Maxx. Aeropostale opened across the street in the fall of 2010, around the same time the new Shake Shack was announced, which opened in December, a month after the Gap announced plans to take space on the mall. Express is coming, too. The gleaming new first phase of CityPoint will open in the first half of next year, quite possibly with a Target inside, so successful is the one half-a-mile away at Bruce Ratner’s Atlantic Center Mall.

Yet, venture inside that mall, and it is largely devoid—except for the aisles of Target—of the kind of clientele Mr. Laboz and his cohort talk of attracting. It remains to be seen whether the brownstone babies and their cousins in the condo towers will ever migrate to the mall, giving up on Bird, Greenlight Books or the newly arrived Barney’s Co-op.

“The hard part is, black people will shop where white people shop, they don’t have a choice,” one veteran Brooklyn broker said. “It doesn’t work the other way around.”

Sure, there is Shake Shack, but besides that, literally and figurativelyh, the new eateries consist of a barbecue place from Vegas, a candy store called Sugar and Plumm, and a Paneras?

These are precisely the kinds of establishments people moved to New York, and now Brooklyn, since they have colonized so much of Manhattan, to get away from. They are fleeing middle American malls, not craving them.

In the shadow of new towers.

Mr. Laboz and his two younger brothers followed their father into the real estate business, and it was on the mall where they got their start. Daddy Laboz arrived at the end of the beginning, when Martin’s department store closed at 505 Fulton, in 1979. It was a part of Fulton Street’s commercial quartet, along with Abraham and Strauss, May’s and E.J. Korvette. Only the first still exists, in the form of Macy’s. The location is one of the company’s top grossing stores.

Mr. Laboz is a Brooklyn boy, born and raised in as much comfort as the borough could afford: Manhattan Beach, the Riviera of Coney Island. He and a partner set up shop around the corner from his dad’s place in 1985, after they had taken a stake in the property. He eventually bought out his father as he continued to expand along the corridor.

“From a real estate point of view, the building was always a success,” Mr. Laboz said. The ground floor had been chopped up into smaller storefronts and stalls, all paying a decent rent for the tens of thousands of shoppers, office workers and students streaming by each day. Upstairs were government agencies. Now they have been cleared out, along with a stand of five rowhouses, demolished to make way for the H&M. Mr. Laboz is even considering lofts on the upper floors of the old Martin’s building.

“I don’t want to sound like Donald Trump,” said Mr. Laboz, “but my site is the best location in the block. It’s across from Macy’s, it’s on the 50 yard line.”

Part of the problem with developers, politicians and the media talking about the transformation or revitalization of Fulton Street is that it suggests there was something wrong in the first place. Unlike Smith Street or Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, which were largely empty, the Fulton Mall has always been packed. With its 110,000 patrons  a day, it is the third busiest retail strip in the city, besting Madison Avenue and behind only Fifth and Times Square.

The idea is that with 12,000 new residents in the adjacent towers, the people will need somewhere to shop. But this also presumes such changes will not alienate the current clientele. Were this to resemble Smith Street, with its boutiques and boulangeries, it would be a failure for the landlords on the strip, who command $200 a square foot, compared to $70 per on Atlantic Avenue and $50 on Smith, according to numbers furnished by brokerage Prudential Douglas Elliman. Some of the national retailers are even paying upwards of $300 a square foot, which helps explain the desire for change, even if the demand may not follow.

Laboz's castle.

“Do we really need 10 sneaker stores and a dozen cellphone outlets?” asked Isaac Chera in a phone interview. His family owns half-a-dozen properties on the stretch and has been a fixture there for four decades. They now own retail properties citywide, but he still credits the Fulton Mall with teaching him how to do business.

"Brooklyn’s a big, big, big, big place," Mr. Chera said. "It’s the fourth biggest city in America. Everything can’t be everything to everybody. There are segments, and that’s who we’re looking to serve."

Borough President Marty Markowitz remembers the days when his mother used to drag him to the mall. “We used to shop at May’s while the nicer folks went to Abraham & Strauss,” he recalled from his office on Monday, overlooking Fulton Street—he boasts of being able to shout his order down to the new Shake Shack. “I never liked shopping,” Mr. Markowitz continued, “I still don’t, but at least I always knew it meant a trip to Chock Full o’Nuts or Nedick’s. They served hot dogs in little white doilies.”

The borough president has been a huge champion of the strip’s transformation, disputing charges of its Manhattanification. “Nobody wants that less than me, I campaigned against that when I ran for office,” Mr. Markowitz said. “Brooklyn is still Brooklyn, there is still plenty of room for mom and pops, but we can find space for other people, too. This is not changing Fulton Street, this is bringing it back to what it was.” But are people really traveling to Manhattan from Brooklyn to shop at the new JCPenney?

Mr. Markowitz said he would like to see some kind of commercial rent control to protect tenants rents, though he was also wary of even mentioning the topic, knowing how it is despised by the real estate industry. “Maybe some kind of mediation, so if your rent triples, you can go to someone about it,” he said. He also said that if he could have any store on the strip, it would be a Nordstrom’s, though he would also settle for a Nordstrom’s Rack.

CityPoint takes shape.

“Can you believe this? They just tried to charge me $50 for this, just ‘cause it says Sony on the side.” James Sanders was standing outside CompuWorld just after sunset on Monday, a grey beanie on his head and burgundy Versace scarf on his neck. Mr. Sanders had managed to barter the men behind the counter down to $10 in only five minutes of work.

Mr. Sanders grew up in the neighborhood, and even though he now lives near Columbus Circle, he said he makes the trip down at least once a week to do his shopping. “You come down here to Downtown Brooklyn, they will always work with you,” Mr. Sanders said. “They never want to let the money walk out the door. You could never do that at a name store. It’s embarrassing, you could come by every day, they still don’t know you.”

Just then, a pack of screaming teenagers could be heard from a few blocks away. At least a hundred of them were packed around a pair of men, there was shouting, it seemed perhaps a fight. It turned out to be the rapper Drake, who stopped into Quick Strike, one of the strips remaining hat-and-shoe outlets. He picked up a Toronto Blue Jays cap, representing his hometown team. Even in Canada, they know the Fulton Mall. Would Drake really have come to shop at Lids down the block?

Lauri Cumbo, a Fort Greene fixture who founded the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art, argues that the loss of the mom and pops is bad, but worse is the erosion of the mall’s culture. She points out that while the Bronx may have been the birthplace of hip hop, the Fulton Mall is where it grew up, with Biz Marquee and Biggie Smalls rapping on the corner. “The way things are going, entrepreneurship will be smothered all together,” she said. “There will be no room for creativity or originality. People may still shop here, but there will be no community.”

At the Brooklyn Fare grocery on Fulton Street, Chris, who lives nearby, was shopping for dinner with his girlfriend. They were deciding which humus to get, and settled on Three Kings. Did he do much shopping on Fulton Mall? Would he if the stores were to change?

“I mostly come here to shop, or on Atlantic and Court,” he said. “It’s different types of stores over there, and it feels too much like the city. I moved out here a month ago, and I did it to get away from all that.”

mchaban@observer.com

What to do with those once-beautiful windows? (Brownstoner)

It is getting hard to catalog all the new changes on the Fulton Mall in recent years. There is the new benches and sidewalks, rebuilt after decades of neglect. The rezoning and the thousands of new apartments borne in on the tides of its land rush. A new mall, CityPoint, maybe with a Target inside, as well as the national retailers finally flooding into the old department stores alongside Macy's: Aeropostale, Express, H&M, TJ Maxx. And who could forget the crown jewel, Shake Shack.

While people worry about the future of the mall and who might shop there—indeed, it is the subject of a feature in tomorrow's paper—it still has much of the polyglot look it has had for decades, even more so given the new mix of national shops among the mom and pops with their riotous signs.

Just as it worked for the rezoning in 2005 and the streetscaping a year later, the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership is in the early stages of  creating new standards for the storefronts on Fulton Mall, according to people involved with the project. While still very much preliminary, some form of new regulations is being developed by the local business improvement district in partnership with the Department of City Planning to spruce up the walls of the Fulton Mull.

The zoning governing the mall has largely gone unchanged since the 1980s, when a special use district was created. One of the biggest challenges to landlords has been finding uses for the upper floors, many of which have been bored up or bricked over in recent years, the ground-level retail really being the only real estate of value. In some cases, stairwells have even been removed to create more selling space. Even the higher windows of the vaunted Macy's are empty and rusted.

Exactly what sort of signage requirements or development incentives might be used to encourage the activation of these upper stories is still being considered, but the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership is focusing now on studying the history of the strip, looking for cues in its past. Among those are sidewall signs, the kind that used to be painted on the taller buildings, or blade signs that hang from the front of building. Currently, the signage tends to be two dimensional, and this will help shoppers locate stores and create more of an arcade-like feel.

There is also questions of cleaning and paint, but ways to encourage cleaner collonades and cornices are less sure.

As for animating the upper floors, one option would be encouraging landlords to pull down those bricks and replace them with glass again. Even if there is nothing on those floors, it could serve as additional displays, helping to hock the wares downstairs. This will not be Times Square, though, officials involved in the planning insist.

The hope is for a more unified, modern, perhaps less gritty, perhaps a little Disney look. Nothing really out of place anywhere else in today's New York.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC