Now vacant: the retail space that housed the small, unique, independent Ballet Shop on Broadway, just around the corner from Lincoln Center.
I spent many an hour browsing and many a dollar purchasing there thirty and more years ago.
Recently it was some type of of Verizon or other mega-telecom outlet, and, rents being as astronomical as they are, it now stands empty.
Residential rents too are out of sight in the area, which is why so many of the performers who make Lincoln Center hum now live long distances away from it.
Our successive mayoralties have done virtually nothing to ensure that Manhattan stays a thriving capital of the performing arts.
Columbus Avenue, where so many dancers used to live, was also once a concentration of small businesses; it is now so impersonal and pretentious that a resident described living near it as living inside of a mall. Gentrification hardly seems even to do justice to what’s happened there.
What happens when the support systems and the ancillary industries and communities are allowed to wither is that the foundation for a Lincoln Center begins to erode.