Brooklyn small businesses helping fuel city’s pandemic recovery
At the catty-corner of McGolrick Park’s northwest edge, Drama Club subtly makes its presence known. While its exterior consists of muted, granite slabs in an almost brutalist design, its large windows reveal a chic interior lined with brilliantly colored clothes and accessories worthy of a double take.
As a locally-owned small business in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, this clothing store creates a cosmopolitan atmosphere where its clean, white walls richly accentuate the vibrancy of its hand-selected pieces. But for everything that Drama Club has to offer, it still depends on the local community.
“There’s a soul to Greenpoint’s small businesses that I think distinguishes itself from our near neighbors,” said Jack Sachs, 39, a long-time Greenpoint resident and the owner of Drama Club. He added, “What I can say is Greenpoint does have in its community a healthy population of folks who value local, small business. The support of those people keeps Greenpoint dynamic, approachable and thriving.”
Sachs’ store in Greenpoint is among the growing number of small businesses in north Brooklyn that have shown successful small business recovery following the pandemic. The neighborhoods in this area, as well as certain others spread around the city, have become exceptions to the trend of small businesses struggling to rebound to their pre-pandemic heights.
The decades-long economic development in Brooklyn has particularly been noteworthy, said James Parrott, 72, the director of economic and fiscal policies at the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School. “The strong residential growth and gentrification of North, and parts of Central Brooklyn, have made it a very conducive area for new businesses to take root,” he said. “There’s absolutely no mystery there. Growing populations with rising incomes, with many residents whose incomes did not suffer due to the pandemic” have contributed to Brooklyn’s overall economic success.
This economic prosperity was also evident in the Queens neighborhoods of Baisley Park, South Jamaica and Bay Terrace, and the Bronx neighborhoods of Allerton and Pelham Gardens.
The information on small business recovery was gathered from a 2023 report from the New York City Economic Development Corporation, a nonprofit affiliated with the New York City government. The findings showed that Greenpoint saw an approximately five percent net increase in small businesses between the second quarters of 2019 and 2022. Similarly, the formation rate for small businesses in the neighborhood was about 24 percent between 2021 and the first half of 2022.
In addition to sharing post-pandemic growth in small businesses, Greenpoint and the other successful neighborhoods have all seen significant increases in their median rents, ranging from 21 to 116.5 percent surges between 2006 and 2021, according to the NYU Furman Center Neighborhood Profiles database, a housing and demographic resource.
Jeremy Wilson, 38, a decade-long resident of Greenpoint and a bartender at Lake Street bar and Rule of Thirds restaurant, has firsthand experience of rental hikes, as he said that while living in a studio apartment in northern Greenpoint for nearly eight years, he saw his rent increase from $1,300 to $2,250. This jump was enough to make him move further south in the neighborhood.
When asked about the resiliency of Greenpoint’s small businesses, Wilson attributed it to the loyalty of “The Greenpoint Bubble.” He said “Everybody who works at these places, we all know each other. Y’know, it’s just that kind of place. You find these little niche places and you just want to support them.”
This sense of community was echoed by Nico Paganelli, 50, co-owner of the Sicilian restaurant Le Fanfare, when he said “I think it’s the demographics. In Manhattan, it’s very rare that you go to the same places. But in Brooklyn, we have regulars. They even come by just to say hi.”
