Report Tracks Declines in Revenue, Street Safety, and Sanitation
A report from the City’s Department of Small Business Services (SBS) paints a sobering portrait of the state of commerce in Chinatown. The report, “Chinatown Manhattan: Commercial District Needs Assessment,” notes that the neighborhood (once home to waves of African, Irish, German, Jewish, and Italian immigrants) was “established by immigrants primarily from the Toisan, Guangdong province of China in the 1870s,” and was originally centered in the three blocks of Mott, Pell, and Doyers streets.
Demographically, Chinatown hosts a local population of 57,159, of which 60 percent is Asian. The median age of these residents is 43.6 years, and their median household income is $35,805. Slightly more than half (52 percent) of the local population is foreign-born, and 42 percent of area residents have not completed high school.
While Chinatown is centered around Canal Street, it has indistinct borders. For the purposes of this analysis, the community is delineated as a 55-square block irregular polygon, roughly bounded by Broadway on the west, Grand Street to the north, Allen Street on the east, and a jagged line formed by Worth and Madison Streets on the south. Within this area, there are 1,803 storefronts, of which 386 (or 21.4 percent) are vacant. This means that the most common use to which retail space is being put in Chinatown is no use at all. The next largest categories after “vacant” are full-service restaurants at 168 stores (9.3 percent), jewelry stores with 136 spaces (7.5 percent), and pharmacy, herbalist, and vitamin stores at 106 shops (5.8 percent).
Among Chinatown’s six retail corridors, empty shops were most prevalent along East Broadway (where 27 percent of all storefronts are vacant) and least common along Mott and Bayard Streets, which have 11 percent rates of retail vacancy. But while storefronts languish, rent-free selling space on Chinatown’s sidewalks is an increasingly scarce commodity. The SBS report observes, “vendors tend to operate on major commercial corridors: produce vendors on Canal, Mott, and Hester streets and East Broadway; vendors of plants, clothing, and household items on Grand Street and the Bowery; and vendors of counterfeit goods on corridors that attract tourists.”
The last category is the single largest cohort among Chinatown street vendors, with 27 percent dealing in “counterfeit goods.” The next biggest categories were “fruits and vegetables” (20 percent) and “clothing and accessories” (19 percent). Among all vendors, the average tenure in the trade is 11.6 years, with two-thirds reporting that they work “six or seven days per week.”
Among both operators of storefronts and street vendors, strong majorities report that their business has declined in recent years, with 59 percent and 70 percent respectively saying that their bottom lines have shrunk. Merchants report that their top concerns (and prescriptions for improving business) are “street safety” and “improved sanitation.” In these contexts, the SBS analysis observes, “an increase in anti-Asian crime has presented safety concerns for merchants, residents, and consumers, and inadequate lighting throughout the district causes streetscapes to appear unwelcoming or unsafe at night,” while also noting, “density of commercial activity and limited sidewalk space create challenges related to sanitation and street cleanliness, and leave many blocks with no greenery.”