Nearly 75 percent of shops operated by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority are vacant
Two people walk down a corridor with two empty storefronts.
The Turnstyle Underground Market at the Columbus Circle subway station.Credit…Yehyun Kim for The New York Times
At Columbus Circle, only one of the 40 shops that opened in its underground market eight years ago is still open today. At Fulton Center, the decade-old mall in a Lower Manhattan subway station is nearly vacant. In Midtown, empty storefronts line the Port Authority and Rockefeller Center stations.
The state of retail in New York City’s vast underground subway system is, in a word, bleak.
Nearly three-quarters of spaces in the transit network are empty, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a downward trend that began before the coronavirus pandemic but was exacerbated by it and the rise of remote and hybrid work.
For travelers, the empty storefronts have created a sense of unease and urban decay. Some doors have been locked with chains, their windows covered with for-lease signs. Others have discarded items like restaurant supplies strewed about. Homeless people have taken over empty corners of retail areas and sleep in stairwell
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