By Matt Chaban 8/15/12 2:19pm

Tales of Retail

Ready to party. (Max Carr)

Michael Weiss’ Homecoming: Brooklyn Boy Brings Express to the Fulton Mall

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. Read More

By Matt Chaban 1/18/12 11:40am

Tales of Retail

Shiny new sales. (Brownstoner)

Discounts Galore! Century 21 May Bring Bargains to Fulton Mall

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. Read More

By Matt Chaban 1/11/12 3:05pm

Tales of Retail

CityPoint takes shape.

Whose Mall Is It Anyway: Will Brooklyn Flock to Fulton Street’s New Chain Stores?

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. Read More

By Matt Chaban 1/10/12 7:42pm

Tales of Retail

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

Detail-Oriented Retail: Fixing the Fulton Mall Up

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. Read More

By Matt Chaban 12/20/11 5:40pm

Shack Attack

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Outerburger! Politicians Eat Up the New Shake Shack, But Will Brooklyn Bite?

Just 20 minutes before opening Tuesday, there was no line outside the Brooklyn Shake Shack. Lines are as much a part of the burgeoning brand as grass-fed patties and seasonal custards. It is even part of the company motto, “Stand for Something Good.” Both sidewalks of the Fulton Mall were clogged with shoppers, students and suits, but none of them had yet queued up outside the boutique burger shop, which was about to have its grand opening.

Marty Markowitz was there, though. He had even come the night before and helped himself to a double cheese burger, Shack-cago Dog, fries and one of the signature concretes (what Danny Meyer likes to call his Blizzards.) that had been named after him, the Fudge-gadabout. (The other was the Borough Precedent, with vanilla custard and granola, not exactly Mr. Markowitz’s cup of custard.)

Mayor Bloomberg was on his way, not only to feast but also to boast—a city program had helped speed the opening, done in just under a year, and facilitated the hiring of 52 Brooklynites.

But where was the crowd? This was the great white hope on the Fulton Mall, the game changer that would gentrify this last unruly stretch in the heart of the once boisterous borough. The opening had been blasted across blogs citywide since it was revealed on Friday.

Had Danny Meyer’s great Brooklyn adventure backfired? Read More