For Brooklynites of a certain age who have watched approvingly as Brooklyn has taken its first steps from infancy to full-blown gentrification, the last few weeks have been nothing short of a waking nightmare. The Grocery, the most iconic of the restaurants along Smith Street, aka Restaurant Row, was closing.
According to Ofer Cohen, the president of TerraCRG, rents on Smith Street have climbed to the $90- to $130-per-square-foot range. “If you are a sushi place and you can move three blocks further out and pay 50 percent less in rent and be close enough [to where you were], you’re going to move further down,” Mr. Cohen continued.
“You have restaurants that are currently in Williamsburg at double the [rent] of what Smith is” that are looking at Smith Street, said Joey Terzi of TerraCRG. “A lot of those guys are looking into Park Slope and Cobble Hill because Smith is similar to Bedford [Avenue in Williamsburg] in [its] footprints.”
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