In case you didn't know, the Lower East Side is an increasingly popular location for merchants to set up shop. Crain's reports that high-end retailers are swarming to the area to take advantage of all the fat-walleted fauxpeople who stride its streets in search of that self-satisfying fauxhemian feeling. But not everyone is convinced.

Todd Kenig, chief executive of 20-store cosmetics chain Ricky's NYC, visited possible sites along the Bowery in early May and decided that the demographics didn't justify the $125-per-square-foot asking rents.

"The area is five years from being good and 10 from being great," Mr. Kenig says.

Lower East Side an uppermost target [Crain's]

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