October 2, 2026, The Real Deal, New York’s retail storefront strategy: cut it in half
The bank and pharmacy takeover of New York’s streetscape didn’t come without backlash. In 2012, the City Council passed zoning restrictions on the Upper West Side banning banks from taking up storefronts wider than 25 feet.
Two years later, Manhattan had even more bank storefronts, peaking at 702 locations, according to an analysis from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.
But now, both chain banks and drug stores are downsizing and closing up shops. Many of those 15-year leases signed in the aughts and 2010s are expiring.
National trends have meant that the big banks simply don’t need all that space anymore, said Jason Richardson, senior director of research at the NCRC. Federal regulations in the wake of the global financial crisis standardized mortgage lending and made it a less relational business, while fin-tech firms encroached on small business lending. National surveys show fewer people are going to bank branches. Meanwhile, consolidation in the industry has made some branches redundant.
“Every year, a bank has to look at their balance sheet and say, ‘do we really need this branch?’” Richardson said. “There’s got to be a lot of pressure on them every year to justify the existence of every branch they’ve got in their footprint.”
In the past ten years, the number of bank branches in Manhattan has fallen by nearly 27 percent, according to an NCRC analysis.
