If you build it, they will come. If you wreck it, they will flee.

Hope the BLM riots were worth it Upper West Siders who decided to support criminals out of spite for Trump. 

In the heart of Manhattan, national chains including J.C. Penney, Kate Spade, Subway and Le Pain Quotidien have shuttered branches for good. Many other large brands, like Victoria’s Secret and the Gap, have their kept high-profile locations closed in Manhattan, while reopening in other states.

Michael Weinstein, the chief executive of Ark Restaurants, who owns Bryant Park Grill & Cafe and 19 other restaurants, said he will never open another restaurant in New York…

In Manhattan’s major retail corridors, from SoHo to Fifth Avenue to Madison Avenue, once packed sidewalks are now nearly empty. A fraction of the usual army of office workers goes into work every day, and many wealthy residents have left the city for second homes…

For four months, the Victoria’s Secret flagship store at Herald Square in Manhattan has been closed and not paying its $937,000 monthly rent. “It will be years before retail has even a chance of returning to New York City in its pre-Covid form,” the retailer’s parent company recently told its landlord in a legal document.

J.C. Penney and Neiman Marcus, the anchor tenants at two of the largest malls in Manhattan, recently filed for bankruptcy and announced that they would shutter those locations.

Some popular chains, like Shake Shack and Chipotle, report that their stores in New York were performing worse than others elsewhere, investment analysts said. A few dozen Subway locations have closed in New York City in recent months. Le Pain Quotidien has permanently closed several of its 27 stores in the city and plans to leave others closed until more people return to the streets…

A Gap Store near Rockefeller Center has stayed closed and has not paid its $264,000 monthly rent…

For Veggie Grill, a California-based chain of 35 restaurants, New York is “the most difficult market for us to operate in right now,” said Jay Gentile, the company’s chief operating officer.

Of course the “R” word for riots never appears in the New York Times article. But between the lockdowns and the riots, Manhattan is in very bad shape and getting worse. The political future of New York City is controlled by increasingly radical leftists which means businesses have nothing more to look forward to than growing crime, higher taxes, and the exodus of their customer base from the city. Is it any wonder that they’re getting out while the getting is good?