When I was looking at storefronts in 2017, every commercial broker tried to push me toward Bay Street. The pitch was always the same. 'Higher foot traffic, more visibility, the rent is more but you'll make it back.' I almost signed a Bay Street lease twice.
The reason I didn't is boring. Bay Street isn't where my customers were going. My customers were framers, electricians, plumbers, painters, and roofers driving north out of the South Shore at 6:30 AM toward jobs in Bayonne, Jersey City, and Newark. Bay Street is north-south but it's tourist-and-restaurant traffic on the way to the ferry. Port Richmond Ave is the alternate route to the Bayonne Bridge that working guys take when the West Shore is backed up.
I didn't run a study. I just sat in a parking lot on Bay Street one morning at 6:45 and counted pickup trucks with ladder racks. I counted four. Then I went to Port Richmond Ave the next morning and counted thirty-eight in the same hour. That's the whole study.
"I sat in a parking lot on Bay Street and counted four pickup trucks. Then I went to Port Richmond and counted thirty-eight. That's the whole study."
The lease on Port Richmond was 60% of what Bay Street would have been. I signed it the same week. The signage is uglier than what I'd have had on Bay Street — Port Richmond is a more functional commercial corridor, less about street appeal — and I lost the 'destination' positioning a Bay Street address would have implied. I traded that for being directly on the route my customers were already driving.
Eight years in, I have no regrets about it. There's an argument that a Bay Street store would have built a different kind of business — more retail traffic from non-trade customers, more weekend visibility, more brand awareness. Maybe. But I'm not sure I want that business. The shop works because contractors pull in at 7 AM, not because tourists wander in at 11.
Some afternoons I'll drive Bay Street and look at what's there now. A lot of the storefronts I considered are restaurants, boutique shops, salons. Good businesses, probably. None of them are workwear. None of them are open at 7 AM. None of them are mine.
If you're choosing between a higher-rent visibility corner and a lower-rent route corner, count the trucks. Spend two mornings doing it. Don't trust the broker, don't trust the website, don't trust the foot-traffic report. Sit in a parking lot and count the trucks that look like the trucks of your customers. That's the answer.