CoCo Bubble Tea Spot Opens in Last Low-Rise Strip on Delancey Street
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Taj Gold, one of the last jewelry/pawn shops along the Delancey Street corridor, closed back in May. Its store canopy was pried from the building and its windows fully papered. The company had been on the block for more than a decade.
And until last week, the space at 156 Delancey was a vacant mess topped with a thick layer of graffiti. Now, half that retail footprint is filled with a familiar local business. The Chinatown bubble tea spot, CoCo. The location opened on Friday, and is the eighth overall in Manhattan for the multinational chain.
There is a grand opening sale – in week-long increments – running through next month.
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However, the installation of CoCo is simply another instance of rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship. Consider the location. 156-164 Delancey Street is a stretch of single-story retail that has been on and off the market several times in recent years. While some new retail did move in – namely, Boost Mobile and Cricket Wireless – it’s believed that the real estate is operating on borrowed time.
The properties were again on the market over the summer with the lower asking amount of $15 million, but were just as quickly pulled. Either way, that price point was still more than two-fold increase in what Ashkenazy Investments paid three years ago.
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