On a sunny Sunday that should have been a layup for brunch crowds and coffee lines, chunks of Greenpoint’s retail strip were eerily quiet. Restaurant tables sat open, cafes had seats to spare, and shopkeepers say the first weekend of planned G train outages turned foot traffic into a trickle.
Perri Salka, who runs WonderMart and organizes the Shop Small Greenpoint effort, said sales were down roughly 40% compared with a typical sunny weekend. At BLND Coffee Studio, owner Rich told reporters they usually pour for about 200 customers on a busy day but saw closer to 100. Over at Radio Bakery, staff saw something they could barely remember: no line out the door.
Merchants Say Weekend Traffic Fell by Half
As reported by News 12 New York, Salka and other local owners pinned the slump on the first weekend in a planned series of G line closures. The outlet also noted that a letter from merchants pushed the MTA to move a scheduled June 12–14 shutdown to a weekend in July, a shift owners said brought at least a bit of short-term relief.
MTA Reschedules Work and Runs Shuttle Buses
Assemblymember Emily Gallagher told ABC7 that the June repairs were bumped to the weekend of July 10 to avoid back-to-back outages. The MTA says shuttle buses will run during closures. MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber has said the tunnel under Newtown Creek needs more work than originally expected, which the agency is using to justify the extra weekend construction.
Businesses Ask for Overnight Work Instead
In a May 26 letter to MTA board members, a coalition of about 50 Greenpoint and Williamsburg businesses urged the agency to switch to “weekday overnight closures and cancel the planned weekend closures, particularly in June and December,” warning that Pride, the World Cup and the holiday season are make-or-break for their bottom line. The letter, signed by neighborhood fixtures including WonderMart and BLND Coffee Studio, also griped that replacement shuttles can be “slower than walking.” The letter is posted and was reviewed by Greenpointers.
What’s Next for the Strip
Local officials and business groups say more weekend closures are still on the calendar, and that the MTA needs to either tighten up shuttle reliability or scale back weekend work if Greenpoint’s retail corridor is going to bounce back, according to Brooklyn Paper. Community organizers point to last summer’s “Look Local First” effort and similar campaigns to blunt the impact, as documented previously by Look Local First campaign. Merchants say they plan to keep pressing for schedule changes as the MTA rolls out its summer work plan.
