By Lisa Kava and Tracy Zwick
Three Upper West Side Starbucks locations abruptly closed on September 26th and 27th, as part of a restructuring plan announced in a September 25th letter from Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol. The UWS closings include: 2252 Broadway (at West 81st Street), 2045 Broadway (between West 70th and West 71st streets), and 159 Columbus Avenue (between West 67th and West 68th streets.)
In the letter, Niccol said some locations would close following a company-wide review of the North America coffeehouse portfolio. “We identified coffeehouses where we’re unable to create the physical environment our customers and partners expect, or where we don’t see a path to financial performance, and these locations will be closed.” The decisions were part of a greater “Back to Starbucks Plan,” which he said also includes “reducing non-retail headcount and expenses.” Notices to customers have been posted on the UWS Starbucks windows saying “We have made the incredibly difficult decision to close this Starbucks location. We know this may be hard to hear because this isn’t just any store, It’s your coffeehouse, a place woven into your daily rhythm, where memories were made, and where meaningful connections with our partners grew over the years.” A press representative from Starbucks referred West Side Rag to a recent post which speaks of a “new era of design” for existing and future coffeehouses. (Thanks to Warren for the tip.)
Miznon, the Mediterranean restaurant that’s had signage up at 2895 Broadway (between West 112th and West 113th streets), for nearly three years, will open there in October, a representative confirmed to West Side Rag by email. Miznon was launched in Israel in 2011 by chef Eyal Shani and now has over a dozen locations around the world, including a popular outpost at Chelsea Market. Known for its pillowy soft pita bread, which is often served with inventive fillings but also encases a unique smashburger, Miznon had an Upper West Side branch called North Miznon at 161 West 72nd Street (between Columbus Avenue and Broadway), which was transformed into Malka, another of Shani’s culinary concepts, in November 2023. The upcoming Broadway location was last occupied by The Mill, the longtime neighborhood Korean restaurant, which closed in 2021.
The Bar, a speakeasy lounge, opened on September 15th in the Mandarin Oriental New York at 80 Columbus Circle. Located on the hotel’s 35th floor, it’s open to the general public as well as to hotel guests. It features a cocktail menu designed to “take guests on a sensory journey across Mandarin Oriental destinations worldwide, with each cocktail designed to be an immersive experience,” a representative wrote to West Side Rag. These cocktails include Siam Sunset (Bangkok), made with coconut and pineapple rum; Serenissimia, (Venice), made with gin; Medina Mirage ( Marrakech), made with white rum; and Manhattan Spice, made with vintage rye. The Bar also serves champagne, malts and premium spirits. The space, which seats 45, was formerly known as The Office.
Dim Sum Sam, a part of Cantonese restaurant chain Dim Sum Palace, opened on September 21st at 2485 Broadway (between West 92nd and West 93rd streets.) A staff member in the newly-opened branch told West Side Rag that the chain has nine other locations, among them Times Square, FiDi and Flatiron. However not all offer dine-in, as the Upper West Side location does (the Broadway space has four tables for two, and one two-top, along with several stools in front of a window-facing counter.) Dim Sum Sam offers what its website calls “a truly authentic Cantonese dim sum experience,” including dumplings, spring rolls, scallion pancakes and a myriad of rice and noodle dishes. The space used to be occupied by Taïm, and for 30 years before that it was Cleopatra’s Needle, which closed in 2019. (Thanks to Celeste and Karen for the tip.)
Spear Sports Club, a branch of Spear Physical Therapy, opened on Monday, September 29th at 160 Columbus Avenue (at West 67th Street), inside the Equinox Sports Club. Spear Physical Therapy was founded 1999 by former baseball player and physical therapist Dan Rootenberg, along with squash player and physical therapist, David Endres. It has over 70 locations in the tri-state area including 13 in Manhattan and five others on the Upper West Side. Spear Sports Club is offering expanded services geared specifically towards athletes of all levels. “Our goal is to bring professional level equipment, clinical care, and education to anyone who identifies as an athlete,” Clyde Staley, the clinical director wrote to West Side Rag. “Whether you’re recovering from an injury, returning to your sport, or looking to enhance your performance, this space was built for you.” In addition to athletic-focused offerings, Spear Sports Club will provide a full range of traditional physical therapy services. The clinic is open to everyone, and an Equinox membership is not required.
Club Monaco, the contemporary clothing shop at 211 Columbus Avenue (between West 69th and West 70th streets), closed suddenly on September 28th, a representative from the company confirmed to West Side Rag. The rep did not give us a reason for the closing. “They were open for business on Saturday,” a clerk from Madewell, the clothing store next door, told the Rag. Club Monaco’s Flatiron location at 160 Fifth Avenue also closed earlier this summer. We will update if we receive more details. (Thanks to Irene for the tip.)
The Openings & Closings column wouldn’t be possible without our many tipsters: thank you! Anyone can send tips about openings and closings in the neighborhood to info@westsiderag.com.
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Perhaps landlords are finally pushing the envelope too far.
“Finally”?!?!?!?! Have you not seen how many storefronts have been empty since even before the pandemic? And then the pandemic caused even more?
This is the result of a combination of three things: landlord greed, lack of rent regulations for commercial spaces, and the Internet, which can sell you almost any item much more cheaply than a bricks-and-mortar store, and deliver it within a few days. This combination has decimated bricks and mortar stores throughout the City. Which is why the only things that you see opening any more are “services” that cannot be provided by the Internet: nail salons and spas, restaurants, artisan coffee shops, etc.
If this is “progress,” I’m against it.
Commercial rent control is such a horrible idea. Businesses should not get subsidized rent.
I strongly disagree. If we had had commercial rent control from the beginning, we wouldn’t now have hundreds of empty storefronts throughout our City – even given the pandemic.
As well, commercial rent control would not be a “subsidy.” A “subsidy” would be if the City or State paid the commercial landlords a direct amount of money to offset the difference between the rent they are ALLOWED to charge, and the rent they WANT to charge. Rather, commercial rent control would simply determine the maximum amount a commercial landlord could charge, based on whatever parameters are used (price per sq ft, location, etc.).
And simply to make this clearer, residential rent regulations are NOT “subsidies” either. The only residential rent “subsidies” would be programs like SCRIE, in which the State actually DOES directly pay the landlord the difference between the rent the tenant is paying and the actual rent amount of the unit.
Capping rent is a de-facto subsidy. I don’t think we need corporate welfare for profit-seeking entities.
It certainly makes for a diminished city.
The Columbia buildings fill because they subsidize the rent. The private buildings rents are too high
Starbucks can be 1 of 3 things:
1. Coffee shop
2.Homeless shelter
3. Office space , where people sit for hours and work.
2 and 3 are not profitable.
When ABC moved out of Lincoln Square, the Col/67 St location was toast.
I was wondering the same, but you have phrased the matter much better. The OP says Starbucks corporate is trying to reduce “non-retail headcount and expenses.”
It’s barely even a coffee shop now. Coffee is meh, food is trash, most of their sales are probably from 400-calorie “coffee drinks” full of anything but coffee and $7 bottled water. Good enough for an airport pinch; couldn’t care otherwise. Plenty of independent and smaller coffee shops to drop $6 on an espresso.
sbharing@gmail.com
Don’t forget public bathroom
That can be made profitable by requiring a purchase in order to use the bathroom (something that was the rule in France at least last century as my French teacher told us back when I was in high school many moons ago).
There are public toilets that cost 1€ in Paris
A Starbucks tried that in Philly a few years back…. Let’s just say it didn’t go well. Look it up!
Did anybody you know — or yourself — ever shop (or just browse) at Club Monaco? Self-answering question
Yes! I went in that store several times a year and my husband shops there for me every Christmas. Sad to see them go.
At one time Club Monaco filled an important niche- well made, mid tier clothing in dark colors. If you wanted a black dress shirt or sweater, they were a wonderful option. They were owned by Ralph Lauren until 2021, but lost site of what made it good well before that. I worked at the flagship on 5th avenue and 21st street in 2002-2003 and they were very well regarded by many in the fashion world back then.
Didn’t know RL owned them. No wonder I never felt inspired to go in.
They had a completely different and distinct aesthetic to RL. You wouldn’t know unless you knew.
Cloths may be different, but I get a bad feeling about the RL store; don’t mind other stores on Madison Ave in the 70s, not that I go there often.
I did but in 2015…
It filled a certain market niche of quality/price. There’s not a lot in between Banana/J Crew (which have gone downhill) and much more expensive brands and stores.
In the early 1990s
Agree, never saw many people in there. I hope a developer comes and puts apartments on top, it’s a prime location and the single story retail is not in keeping with our neighborhood character
What, exactly IS our neighborhood character? A mixture of human-scale brownstones and 19th-and 20th-century low-rise apartment houses with retail spaces at street level and, more and more, eye-wateringly tall and unaffordable towers that darken the streets.
What happened to taim? Was it ever open?
Nope, never opened – DSS had a pretty quick turnaround, it looks like!
skip Dim Sum Sam (ridiculously over priced) and head to Chinatown. The $6 cost of the Subway will even out the differential in price and you get better food, wider selections, and bigger portions. Plus you can go shopping.
Or, you know, try to support a business in our neighborhood so we don’t all have to read more complaints about empty storefronts?
yes, because I must support businesses even if I don’t find them appealing because “support!” How about making life on the UWS affordable so we don’t have to read more complaints about spending $15 for a plate of rice.
Maybe people in the neighborhood don’t want to waste 3 hours for dim sum lunch.
I’m sure you waste more time doing less productive things
this is possible.
That one-story Club Monaco building is ripe for redevelopment. Watch a big hi-rise get built there. Any one-story building in the neighborhood is a target.
Isn’t this a historic district?
IDK but the address is 211 Columbus and here’s some history of the site including photos of old buildings:
https://www.landmarkwest.org/theywerehere/211-217-columbus-avenue/
Re: Starbucks – Trump did that! He put a 50% tariff on Brazil, the world’s largest coffee producer. This has nothing to do with jobs (we don’t have the climate to grow coffee beans here even if we wanted to), and everything to do with punishing Brazil for prosecuting their former president Bolsonaro for his attempted coup (Trump obviously identifies with him). Rising costs either get passed on to consumers or companies try to cut costs elsewhere. His little personal beefs have real consequences for the people who work in our neighborhood.
They’ve had this restructuring underway since before Trump (after they ousted the last CEO), but don’t let truth get in the way of ideology.
The store closures were announced on Thursday. I think people would obviously make the connection if Mamdani passed a 50% tax on coffee beans and then a few weeks later a bunch of coffee shops closed, but because Trump did it conservatives forget that massive tax hikes can be bad for business.
They were *announced* on Thursday. They didn’t just come up with the list on Wednesday. Per multiple sources, including an article in today’s WSJ, they’ve been planning the cuts since early this year, and same-store sales have been in decline for six quarters.
https://www.wsj.com/business/hospitality/starbuckss-roller-coaster-week-of-job-cuts-and-store-closures-ebdf5d8e
This is also the second major layoff under the new CEO. Come on, people. Use your whole brains, not just your emotions.
Unions and $15/bar coffee pourers did that.
Can you live on that?
don’t the baristas have a right to a union, and to equitable pay? i think they do. Most UWSers agree with me, I’ll bet.
Nope. It has been this way for years. Tariffs are the reason stores are closing.
No, declining same-store sales for six consecutive quarters are the reason stores are closing.
Let’s try to stick to fact-based reality, please.
About 3% of Starbucks is unionized and none of the stores on the UWS are.
Any news on Absolute Bagels?
Who cares ………….
That would explain the shockingly bad attitude I got from staff in Club Monaco on Saturday afternoon (which had not been the case in past visits). They must have known it was closing.
Did Taim ever really open at that location? All I ever saw was signage.
No, it never opened. Kept hoping it would.
No they started to build it and then it stopped because of a gas issue and then Taim sold out to some private equity firm which killed the project altogether.
A green construction shed popped up on the corner of Amsterdam and 99th (the old Pearl’s Chinese Restaurant). Any idea of what it might be?
Does anyone know what’s going on on the corner of w97th and Amsterdam in the old Key Food store? They have a temporary fence up and are doing construction but know one seems to know what will be opening there.
Starbucks has been in trouble for quite some time – at least 18-24 months, if not longer. (They have had three different CEOs within a three-year period – none of whom was able to “stanch the bleeding” – but all of whom left with paychecks in the many tens of millions.)
Part of the problem is that they keep changing their policies – often doing 180s with them. For example, prior to the pandemic, Starbucks had an official policy that bathrooms were open to the public; they even pasted the door code on the door itself. And while the homeless did cause some issues, they were far from the only ones.
Yet instead of “tweaking” the policy, they did a 180 and “renovated” hundreds of stores (at a high cost, I’m sure) JUST to ELIMINATE the bathrooms, even for the purchasing public. And in NYC, if you sell “open” food or drink, you are required to have one bathroom for every 19 seats. So this meant that they also had to remove a great deal of seating from many locations. This, in turn, led to the proliferation of “pick-up only” locations, which most customers didn’t like.
The other major factor affecting their business is the proliferation of artisan coffee shops, and the outright rejection of Starbucks based on one or more of price, comfort, or the coffee itself.
Starbucks will survive. But what it will look like in a year or two is anyone’s guess.
Thanks for the analysis. I found it interesting. FWIW, the Starbucks on 66th & Amsterdam appears to have reinstated their tables and chairs, it was full yesterday.
Here is a list of the 34 stores they closed. https://www.timeout.com/newyork/news/here-are-all-34-starbucks-locations-that-are-closing-in-nycis-your-coffee-shop-on-the-list-093025
Good riddance, Starbucks. Their coffee is objectively terrible, and their prices far too high. So many better options in the ‘hood.
Your use of “objectively” is objectively incorrect. It is your OPINION (which is subjective) that Starbuck’s coffee is terrible, not an objective reality, since million of people clearly like it.
So the millions of people who purchase from Starbucks worldwide each day are objectively dedicing to drink terrible coffee? Or maybe it’s just your subjective tastes?
Anyone know why multiple citibike docks have vanished? I noticed the ones on 100 & Broadway and 95 & Broadway are gone.
The one on 95 and Broadway was removed for road resurfacing. I think they were resurfacing 100th as well?
YES, 100 IS BEING REPAVED
Great news!!! More room for govt run grocery stores.
Actually, those have already been roundly rejected by “the people” (almost all the ones that opened shut down fairly quickly due to both lack of business and political pressure), so I doubt we will see many, or any, of them.
I am sure the $30/hour minimum wage that Mamdani is planning on for even people fresh out of high school will help your local stores a lot. Check his website.
Hope you don’t complain about how there are empty storefronts and nothing but huge chains.
ALL politicians propose things that may or may not come to pass. I strongly doubt that this proposal will become legislation and pass the Council. Although it is actually not as bad an idea s you make it sound. Given how much it costs to live in NYC, or even the surrounding area, the minimum wage does have to go up if we want to have service workers and other blue collar workers.
I can tell you have never run a very small business. If the $30 minimum per hour passes, I assure you that all your independent local stores will not be able to afford to hire people or keep people when someone out of high school will be making $30 per hour and you have staff that are not 18 years old They will want more than an 18 year old and how much do you think a small Mom and Pop can afford with payroll taxes, workers comp, business insurance, unemployment taxes, and more? That is an insane amount to be proclaiming.
This law, if it comes to fruition m, is telling every local small store, you don’t matter, so all big chains, you are the only ones welcome in NYC as you are the only ones who can afford it.
So now every Mom and Pop has to hope and pray he does not get his law passed. Small independent stores can’t rely on hope and prayers, they need stability and rational laws to plan ahead.
Again, welcome to your new streets of small vacant stores and only big chains.
Really? And how will a very small store pay for workers that are out of school for several years? Have you ever run a business? Do you have any idea how much it is for workers comp, payroll taxes, unemployment taxes, business insurance? And more? Someone out of high school should get $30 per hour? And the people out of school 5 years should get what? $35 per hour? What about 10 years out of school? $40 per hour? How many employees then do you think a small Mom and Pop store can afford?
It is insane and welcome to your new world of nothing but big chains.
This being the UWS one of my neighbors said that the action of Starbucks closing 3 locations on the UWS was a union busting technique.
Starbucks also looks like they permanently closed their location on Columbus near W 81st.
Looking forward to trying the Dim Sum place. I love Dim Sum Palace
The Upper 60’s area is now dead due to the closure of ABC studios. They desperately need to build apartments there fast.
Perhaps. But I wish it wasn’t a “supertall” building like the ones on 57th Street, which it is apparently going to be. And the developers are not being required to put money into surrounding infrastructure; e.g., transportation, grocery stores, schools, and other things that a 1200-foot building full of people are going to need. Services in that are rea going to be stretched WAY beyond their limit if no increase in infrastructure is done.
Nothing gets built fast anymore. Except for The Felon’s garish ballroom. That seems to be barreling ahead, despite the government shutdown.
It makes me sad to read the comments on the rag. No matter the subject, almost everyone is angry and rude. I hope these comments aren’t truly reflective of our community.
Not me! I greatly enjoy the sarcasm here and on the websites of other city newspapers. It reassures me that New York remains sardonically optimistic.
Starbucks is its own worst enemy since it cannibalizes its own markets and locates too many locations to serve the same vicinity — UWS perfect case in point!
“The Mill, the longtime neighborhood Korean restaurant”
I’m so old (Columbia class of 1980) that I remember the Mill before it was a Korean restaurant.
We’ve lost so many fashion stores in recent years. Alongside Club Monaco, we’ve now lost Reiss, Banana Republic, Sandro, Theory and Rag N Bone. There’s nothing much left (for men, especially).
The Dunkin’ Donuts on Columbus nr 95th has a sign saying they’re closed for two weeks for renovation.
So happy about Miznon! The food is so so good and at Malka too.