NYC neighborhood retail character constantly changing.

New York City's neighborhoods are constantly evolving. Who would have believed 20 years ago that Hell's Kitchen would be cleaned up and filled with blocks of interesting restaurants and re-christened Clinton? And if you said back then that Columbus Avenue would lose virtually all of the hot restaurants that opened in file late 70's, and be supplanted by SoHo, Chelsea or the meatpacking district, who would have believed that?

In the late 70"' and early 80's, a younger, more educated population gravitated to the Upper West Side, leasing and purchasing pre-war apartments than were cheaper than those on the East Side. With the influx of more affluent residents, livelier retail came to Columbus Avenue. It was THE place for shops like Design Observations and Charivari, and trendy restaurants like Ruell's, Ruskay's and the Museum Care. Eventually, Amsterdam Avenue benefitted from a spill-over effect, as a dearth of available space and rising rents forced many restaurants off Columbus Avenue. Retail chains like Nine West, The Limited and The Crap moved in. With the departure of the restaurants, nighttime and weekend traffic thinned out.

Who would have predicted that living in a loft in SoHo, Tribeca, Flatiron or NoHo would be preferable to, and more expensive than, an apartment on the Upper East Side? Or that the quaint northern end of Little Italy would one day become home to a host of fashion forward retailers like Zero, Sigerson Morrison and Calypso, for example. Or that the Broadway corridor of SoHo, once largely the domain of wholesale fabric companies and jobbers, would become the destination of choice for national companies like Banana Republic, Armani A/X, Eddie Bauer and the Pottery Barn?

Until the mid-Seventies, SoHo was largely home for so-called "struggling artists" and cutting-edge art galleries such as Holly Solomon, Leo Castelli and Mary Boone. As SoHo became a unique neighborhood to visit on weekends, small stores like Agnes B., Robert Lee Morris, Ad Hoc and restaurants like Central Falls, Food, WPA and the SoHo Charcuterie opened. It was only until the 1990's that SoHo became a full-fledged 7-day-a-week high density shopping area. At the same time, the Broadway corridor drew a new crop of store,s led by a much, much larger Dean & Deluca, and the Guggenheim Museum (The Guggenheim will shortly become a Prada boutique).

By the mid-Nineties, most of the original art galleries left SoHo as rents rose dramatically. More than a few landed in Chelsea, where the large industrial spaces and quiet streets were reminiscent of SoHo in its infancy. At the same time, as more art galleries headed to Chelsea, the Chelsea Piers Sports Complex and the Chelsea Market on Ninth Avenue and 16th Street, also opened. Suddenly, the far west side of Manhattan didn't seem so far anymore. Nor did the meatpacking district at the edge of Chelsea. Additional art galleries started to appear in this neighborhood, which was once the home to the wholesale meat industry. Now the area is attracting the types of retailers who headed to SoHo in the '80's. Jeffrey's of Atlanta, a Barneys New York for the next millennium's style junkies, promises to bring its full gamut of cutting-edge fashions to men and women who have very little meat on them.

As SoHo priced many retailers out of the market, some took space on Lafayette Street, while others went even further eastward to NoLita, a neighborhood of low-rise buildings. The small storefronts had enormous appeal to designers like Amy Chan, Tracey Feith and Malia Mills. Unique retailers like Shi home furnishings, Kar'ikter gifts and Daily 235, a general store for the 1990's, filled the recently renovated storefronts. Restaurants like Cafe Habana, Mekong, Clay and Mexican Radio were buzzing with trendy diners throughout the week.

Madison Avenue, of course, was at one time the most desirable avenue for influential European fashion designers such as Prada and Dolce & Gabbana. But the avenue has lost some of its drawing power in the late 1990's, as fashion names like Helmut Lang, Vivienne Westwood and Atsuro Tayama headed downtown for showcase boutiques.

Madison Avenue has instead become a bastion for luxury goods companies such as Hermes, Lalique, Bulgari and Montblanc.

The first wave of European designers, like Yves Saint Laurent for example, arrived in the late Sixties and replaced many of the service businesses and older retail establishments that dotted the avenue. Bottega Veneta opened in the late 70's, followed by Missoni in the early '80's. By the mid-'90's, the designer mix had been diluted when Victoria's Secret and the Limited Express opened. In 1986, Ralph Lauren launched his palatial flagship store on 72nd Street and Madison. But as more and more of the ladies who lunch were being outnumbered by young ladies who lunched at their desks, the new upwardly mobile customer was more inclined to spend their money at cutting-edge Downtown boutiques.

Before restaurants like Gramercy Tavern, Campagna and Bolo opened in the Flat-iron District, executives had never headed downtown for business lunches. The relocation of advertising agencies and marketing firms from Midtown to Flatiron changed all of that. So too did the formerly vacant ground floor spaces to the west on Ladies Mile (Sixth Avenue). Who would have predicted that this formerly dormant stretch would one day have strong pedestrian traffic and retail rents approaching $100 per square foot?

As the retail world turned, more and more people found life downtown to be livelier and less serious than uptown, and more fun at that. Goodbye Columbus!