Photo by Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images
On Tuesday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani trumpeted in a tweet that New York City’s storefront vacancies had hit a post-pandemic low.
Turns out he popped the champagne cork too soon.
City Comptroller Mark Levine released a report on Thursday that put the numbers in context — and showed the city lagging the nation.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the local retail vacancy rate stood at 10.5%.
As of April, it was 11% — about 15,700 empty storefronts.
The national vacancy rate was 4.08% in 2024, below the 2019 rate of 4.37%.
In other words, New York’s storefronts still haven’t recovered since COVID, while the rest of the country bounced back years ago.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post
______________________
John Ketcham is a legal policy fellow and director of Cities at the Manhattan Institute.