The Coming Death of Smith Street

A few years ago chefs in Manhattan with dreams of opening their own restaurants and finding enough kitchen space to do a proper job were turning to Smith Street in Boerum Hill for what they needed at reasonable rents. Smith Street has now become so celebrated as a strip for good eating that the chains are moving in, upping the rents to unaffordability for local operations and transforming a place of distinctive character into one more agglomeration of the usual that you can find everywhere else.