Harvard Square Bounces Back Into Business

Susan Corcoran will tear the paper off her Brattle Street storefront this Saturday and open the Museum of Useful Things.

It will be one of two stores opening in Harvard Square this weekend and one of five to open within the last three weeks, a trend local property owners say indicates that the real estate market around Harvard is picking up after a lean period through last year.

If all goes as planned, an additional five stores will open in the Square by June.

Richard Getz, who manages several high-profile Square properties, including the building which, since last Saturday, houses the Cross Store, said that demand for commercial real estate has jumped since last year.

“There’s definitely higher demand. We’re getting calls...there’s much more interest,” said Getz, the president of Richard Getz and Associates, which also manages the building housing Brattle Street Florists and Hidden Sweets. John DiGiovanni, the president of Trinity Properties, which owns The Garage, agreed that business was picking up.

Felipe’s Taqueria opened in the Garage earlier this month.

“I think things are improving. The Square was feeling the same economic environment you see in the local, state and even national level,” he said. “There’s a certain amount of insulation, but [the Square] has felt the same climate.”

Getz emphasized, however, that because of the Square’s “cache,” demand never gets “really weak,” even in a recession.

The Museum of Useful Things is moving about a mile away from its present space on 370 Broadway St. to a storefront across the street from Crate and Barrel. Corcoran, the store’s owner, also owns nearby Black Ink.

“It’s a better location and we wanted synergy [with Black Ink],” Corcoran said, adding that the two stores were different in that Black Ink was more geared toward gifts.

The Museum of Useful Things, which is about the same size as Black Ink, features items like restaurant-style napkin dispensers, bookends that look like lockers, tape measures, measuring cups and bells.

“The Museum of Useful Things sells only functional items for home and office use. The merchandise is quite different,” Corcoran said.

She demonstrated a metal bouncing fruit basket that falls and rises as fruit is added or removed from it.

On the other side of Brattle Street, City Sports will move into the storefront above Ann Taylor that was vacated by Utrecht Art Supplies last summer, leaving behind its 16 Dunster St. location by June.

“It’s a bigger space...that’s the main reason behind the move,” said clothing manager Emily Schreiber. “There will be nothing different. Just more styles of the same stuff.”

Next to the Harvard Shop, at 54 John F. Kennedy St., a bubble tea and Mochi ice cream store will open in mid-May.

“The real draw is the tapioca pearls,” said Ying Ying Ma, the co-owner of the Lollicup Tea franchise, referring to the tapioca starch that comes from yuca plants and will be added to the tea.

“Once you get used to it it’s almost addictive,” she added.

In addition to over 80 varieties of tea, Lollicup will also serve a Japanese ice cream called Mochi.

“It’s basically ice cream filled with thin dough,” Ma said.

Tomorrow, a DVD rental store called Quick-Flix will open at 8 Bow Street, near St. Paul’s Church.

“We’ll primarily rent DVDs...we’ll have all the big releases and take requests,” said owner Michael Bradley, who said the new shop would be more “organized” than is its present location in the back of Tommy’s Value.

“This is our first stand-alone store,” he said last night while unpacking boxes of candy for Quick-Flix, which will hold 600 DVDs. “We’re going to try to focus on local artists too. We’ll [carry] feature films by film students.”

Broker Annette Born of Urban Born Associates, who negotiated the agreement that allowed Abercrombie & Fitch to move into the Square, said that this spring’s upsurge could not just be attributed to the season.

“Stores don’t like to open in the holidays or the dead of winter but a lot open for the fall season—for the holidays,” she said.

Born pointed to last weekend’s opening of the Adidas Originals Store on the corner of Mass. Ave. and Plympton Street and the opening of Second Time Around in the One Brattle Square building three weeks ago as an indication that the Square real estate market was improving.

But despite the flurry of store openings, several high profile storefronts remain vacant near the Square. For example, at One Brattle Square, the former HMV Records store is empty.

Jonathan P. Dutch, a broker at the Dartmouth Company, which leases the building, would not say whether a new tenant had been found.

However, he said that it had been difficult to find a tenant for the storefront that is now occupied by Second Time Around, a used furniture shop.

But Jennifer Martinelli, the assistant director of the Harvard Square Business Association, said that the group had heard from its members that business was improving.

“We’re getting feedback that there is more of a shopping vibe going on,” she said.

Tamarind Bay, an Indian bistro and bar, is also set to open across the street from Pinocchio’s, where Casa Mexico used to be. The owners could not be reached for comment yesterday.

According to Getz and DiGiovanni, tenants have been identified for two stores that have closed or are closing this year, including Rock Bottom Brewery, which shut its doors last June, and Brine’s Sporting Goods, which had planned to close by the end of March but remained open as of yesterday.

—Staff writer Joseph M. Tartakoff can be reached at tartakof@fas.harvard.edu.