Starbucks Is Closing 600 Stores. Will Newark Be On the Hit List?

[EverythingMatters]

Originally Posted by zengeist

Support T.M. Wards!

And....... Fusion Cafe

[JoefromPGH]

Update:

Today it was announced (I don't have the link handy) that only ONE Starbuchs location will be closed in NJ, that being in Cherry Hill.

[Miss Tam-Tam]

Originally Posted by JoefromPGH

Today it was announced (I don't have the link handy) that only ONE Starbuchs location will be closed in NJ, that being in Cherry Hill.

Jerseyans are caffeine addicts. It's how we keep our sparkling personality. But Starbucks regular brew coffee is very strong. One cup is good for at least half a morning of high-wired energy. In my book, the best coffee can be found in ordinary diners. Really good diner coffee is very smooth, not bitter like Starbucks.

[nom de plume]

I don't like their coffee either but I am glad that the workers in NJ won't be losing more jobs.

[Make Newark Clean]

July 23, 2008

To Starbucks, a Closing; To Newark, a Trauma

By KAREEM FAHIM

A spokesman for Starbucks, Mike Lenda, sent an e-mail statement. “We are humbled by the support we’ve received from communities around the U.S. — including Newark — regarding the closure of our stores,” it said.

NEWARK — The green aprons, the blond wood, the safari-themed coffee art and the chalkboards. From Chula Vista, Calif., to Bangor, Me., all Starbucks are more or less the same. And that’s how the company wants it.

But every store, as it turns out, is not quite the same. When a Starbucks opened on Broad Street here almost eight years ago, it was not seen as a bland new spigot of a corporate coffeepot, but as a gathering place whose very existence would have seemed impossible a decade before, a symbol of a knocked-down city’s attempts to get up.

A few miles away, in New York City, new Starbucks branches were sometimes greeted with yawns, or even annoyance that the national chain was invading neighborhoods. In Newark, Sharpe James, then the mayor, showed up for the opening.

So when Starbucks announced last week that the Broad Street branch would be among the 600 stores that the coffee company is closing around the country, the reaction here was especially emotional, a mixture of anger, disappointment and frustration.

“They’re not going to close the one on Wall Street!” one man exclaimed.

A flier was circulated: “Save our Starbucks,” it said, directing supporters to a comments section of the corporate Web site. A deputy to Newark’s mayor, Cory A. Booker, called Starbucks and asked them to reconsider.

The closings of hundreds of the coffee chain’s branches have certainly caused consternation in other places. But the cafe in downtown Newark is in some ways unique, a high-profile sign to all the people who fear the city that life is normal — if one accepts that part of “normal” is the ability to buy a slightly expensive cup of coffee and a scone in the morning.

“It’s the only nice place on this street,” said Jorge Espana, a 70-year old retiree who comes to Starbucks twice a week from the other side of town. He pointed down Broad Street, a busy shopping thoroughfare dominated by nail salons and fast-food restaurants. On Monday afternoon, the Starbucks was packed with customers. Mr. Espana sat near a window.

Starbucks “is important for me,” he said. “It’s important for a lot of people.”

His fellow patrons reflected a slice of Newark, the locals and commuters who work in the city’s slowly recovering downtown, where there are few places, apart from the Starbucks, to sit and have coffee.

Starbucks lists two other branches in the city, apart from those at the airport, but they are unseen by most people here. One is on the campus of Rutgers University, and the other is tucked in a corner of the Gateway Center, a glass office complex near Pennsylvania Station.

Neither of those cafes — and indeed, hardly any other cafe or restaurant in Newark — attracts the kind of crowd that gathers daily at the Broad Street Starbucks, where Pamela Simms, an educational consultant, takes afternoon coffee breaks. “There’s a certain demographic, a clientele that feels comfortable here,” she said.

This is to say that the white-collar workers who come to Newark daily, many of whom hardly interact with the city at large, are willing to escape their worlds once or twice a day and walk Newark’s streets to get to Starbucks. On Monday, they came from Prudential, the insurance giant across the street, or one of the smaller offices in the building upstairs.

One regular, Nijim Muddaththir, runs a food cart a few blocks away. “All the guys from the mosque come here,” Mr. Muddaththir said. “It’s our meeting place.”

Robert Brozon had just missed his friends, a regular gathering of social workers.

“I was shocked that with the revitalization, with the face-lift here, they would remove the Starbucks,” he said. “I’m confused about what message they’re trying to send.”

Mr. Brozon was referring to the sense that the streets around the Starbucks seemed to be prospering. A beautification campaign has transformed Broad Street with new bus shelters and sidewalks. A luxury apartment building nearby is almost full, and construction will soon start on a new residential loft building a few blocks away. New restaurants and bars have opened, their owners hoping for business from the visitors to Newark’s recently-opened arena, the Prudential Center.

But at the same time, high-profile national retailers, including Old Navy and a FedEx/Kinko’s, have quietly left the area. Mr. Booker and his aides, while expressing disappointment with the Starbucks decision, have tried to put the best face on it.

Stefan Pryor, Mr. Booker’s deputy mayor for economic development, said the building’s owner, Cogswell Realty Group, was exploring the possibility that another coffee shop might move into the space. And he said ambitious development plans for other parts of downtown Newark, closer to the stadium of the local minor-league baseball team, the Newark Bears, might mean that Starbucks will open elsewhere in the city.

That did not stop the Booker administration from trying to keep the Starbucks right where it was.

Mr. Pryor said he learned of the decision to close the branch from the building owner and called Starbucks executives to make “a business case” that they should stay. That appeal, for now, seems to have gone nowhere. Mr. Pryor would say only that the conversations with the coffee company were continuing, and that he was hopeful that Starbucks might open up again, perhaps somewhere else in the city.

A spokesman for Starbucks, Mike Lenda, sent an e-mail statement. “We are humbled by the support we’ve received from communities around the U.S. — including Newark — regarding the closure of our stores,” it said. “We used several criteria to determine stores for closure, including identifying locations that were not profitable at a store level and not believed to provide acceptable returns in the foreseeable future.”

Mr. Lenda’s statement did not say when the branch would close. “While certain locations are underperforming for various reasons, we believe that a number of opportunities for profitable domestic growth remain in many areas, including Newark,” he wrote.

Late Monday afternoon, the soundtrack on the Starbucks stereo system had taken a melancholy turn, playing songs by Emmylou Harris, Bob Dylan and Gram Parsons.

Nakia Banister and James Johnson sat at a table, their afternoon trip a reaction to the news that the Starbucks would not be on Broad Street for long. The closing of the Starbucks was a loss, Ms. Banister said, but there were other things to think about.

“I think what’s more important is what replaces it,” she said. “Will this sit vacant for a year?”

[JoefromPGH]

Whether it sits vacant for a year rests partly on Cogswell. in fact, whether the city has half a chance for Starbucks to stay there rests partly on Cogswell.

Cogswell needs to make a decision as to whether lowering the rent may benefit in the longer-term.

I know that not everyone loves the Starbucks coffee (or its prices) but the loss of this store also losses a bit of culture - the poetry readings.

[Miss Tam-Tam]

Originally Posted by JoefromPGH

I know that not everyone loves the Starbucks coffee (or its prices) but the loss of this store also losses a bit of culture - the poetry readings.

I was never a big fan of Starbucks coffee, but I loved the fact that their coffee shops are social gathering places.

[zengeist]

Originally Posted by JoefromPGH

I know that not everyone loves the Starbucks coffee (or its prices) but the loss of this store also losses a bit of culture - the poetry readings.

That actually is the sad part.

[5Reasons]

Faheem wrote an excellent article, one that captures the issue quite vividly. Starbucks' special significance is that it demonstrates that Newark is 'normal'. For Newarkers, we've been isolated and scorned and so whenever we see any commercial development that you could find in any suburb, whether it is IHOP, Applebees', Home Depot or Starbucks, it makes us feel acceptable, human. We live in a state where it is socially acceptable to say things like, "Newark is the toilet tissue of New Jersey"; "Newark is the arm pit of New Jersey"; "Nothing good ever comes out of Newark" -- you know where I'm going, and so this plays into how we see the state and our world. So when a Starbucks shows up, it shines a lights that beems across all the wards. It says, "Newark might not be that bad." Heck, we might even have a few good places.

Look, I've said all along that we need business diversity, especially one that promote our overall objective of income diversity. A couple of years ago, I talked about subsidizing certain businesses that brought about this type of diversity, after all as Espana points out, Newark already has an abundance of certain types of businesses. The city must continue to do what it can, if it means offering to pay 30% of the rent for the next 4 or 5 years (I figure by that time the darn thing will be viable with the development of increased housing, et al), then do it. Starbucks adds culture and class to Newark. And it says to those near and far alike, Newark has some style.

[Make Newark Clean]

August 2, 2008

Editorial

Cold Coffee

You’d think that nobody but the employees and maybe a few loyal customers would mourn the passing of a Starbucks, but that’s not the case in Newark. A lot of residents and office workers are saddened by the news that the downtown Starbucks on Broad Street is closing its doors — and so are we.

Starbucks has the right to close its stores, but unlike New York and other cities where Starbucks seem to dot every corner, Newark has only three franchises. When the Broad Street Starbucks opened almost eight years ago, it was seen as a herald of the city’s resurgence.

And so it seemed to be — enticing white-collar workers to leave their office sanctuaries at Prudential and other companies to get their Caffè Vanilla Frappuccinos, and encouraging street traffic that did not exist before. To anyone passing by during the middle of a weekday morning, business seemed robust.

Not so, according to Joe Hallinan, regional vice president, who says the branch has actually been losing money. Now that the company has hit tough times, he says, there is no alternative but to include the outlet among the 600 that the company will close.

Perhaps. But the area shows strong signs of growth. A luxury apartment building is almost filled, and construction is about to begin on a new residential loft building. The recently opened arena, the Prudential Center, is bringing people in on nights and weekends.

Starbucks boasts of its commitments to diversity and to its communities, and keeping the Broad Street branch open would seem right in line with those objectives. Newark could yet prove the company wrong, and we hope it does.


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