La Nacional at 45-12 46th St. (Photo: Queens Post)
Aug. 6, 2019 Staff Report
A long-time money transfer store on 46th Street closed yesterday, joining a number of other store fronts that have closed recently.
La Nacional, located at 45-12 46th St., shut its doors Monday after being on that strip for over 20 years. The company will continue to provide its services nearby at a new permanent location at 45-08 Greenpoint Ave. It will be sharing the location with Musicalisimo, a cell-phone provider that had a La Nacional kiosk in its store already.
La Nacional decided to consolidate the two locations at Musicalisimo where the cost of rent would be cheaper and the foot traffic is robust due to the Musicalisimo customers, according to a well placed source.
The former La Nacional location will be the new home of the UPS store, a business that was destroyed in the Queens Boulevard fire in December. The UPS store has been operating out of a temporary space at 45-18 Queens Blvd.
Tony Tang, who owns the UPS store with his wife Lena, plans to start renovating the 45-12 46th St. space soon and open their permanent location at the beginning of 2020.
La Nacional is not the only store to have closed recently.
GameStop closed its Sunnyside store at 47-21 Queens Blvd. at the end of June.
Customers of the store are being referred to the GameStop location at 5106 Northern Blvd in Woodside.
GameStop at 47-21 Queens Blvd (Photo: Sunnyside Post)
The corporate office at GameStop did not respond to questions as to why the Sunnyside store closed. However, the manager at the Woodside location said the lease came to an end at the Queens Boulevard location and it was not a high-performing store.
Meanwhile, the Sunnyside Thrift store at 46-25 Greenpoint Ave. closed at the end of June. The store is operated by the owners of the thrift store by the same name farther down the avenue at 45-12 Greenpoint Ave.
The closure represents a consolidation of business, workers said.
Sunnyside Thrift Shop That Closed (Photo: Sunnyside Post)
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13 Comments
Yea and now sunnysiders that cant afford are invading woodside !! Get out go to long island city we don’t want you
You think people who can’t afford Sunnyside can afford Long Island City?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Everyone jumping ship. That’s what you get for lying to people about sunnyside and gentrifying the neighborhood. Now deal with your overpriced 1 bedroom ghost town
good riddens. time for a new condo. we owners want prices to keep going up so we can see our hard earned investments grow. that and a wealthier neighborhood is prone to much less crime.
I agree. The ones who complain are these 3d world degenerates who want everything for free while we pay out of out areas for everything we earned in our lives. I’d rather bring upper class people in who will actually Pay the rent and not try to scam me by staying without paying. I wont put up with that crap regardless. I’ll throw their carcasses out the window literally if they try to screw me.
To be fair, none of those businesses were providing super in-demand goods or services. People don’t go to physical game stores anymore, that thrift shop was small and smelly, and most people do money transfers online…hopefully they’ll be replaced with local businesses providing things people really need….
With rents artificially up 3000% i doubt anyone would even think to start a business in Sunnyside.
RENT RENT RENT GOUGING lease is up 50% more rent no profit at that level…..
What is going on? Is there a grand plan for the area?
It’s long past time to make that block under the arch a pedestrian plaza. Make it a place people want to hang out, and your foot traffic will go through the roof.
Sure, because it’s so very nice under the 46th street station, homeless people and drunks, young but somehow unemployed people just loitering around, looks so classy!
Pedestrian plaza, sure we need more aimless people sitting around doing nothing. We already lost bunch of cross-roads accessing 495 and BQE, you want to block more streets and let insane TLC vehicles speed right through other residential streets to beat traffic to get to 495?
Right, let’s not forget that cars matter more than people in this city.
How dare anybody consider taking a tiny, barely-used block that’s not even a through-street and use it to create a friendly centralized spot for people in and outside the neighborhood to do things, including shop.
And who needs a nice outdoor area to sit under the sky when you could just keep hanging out in the dank, claustrophobic space under the subway instead? Yep, you’ve totally turned me around.
More like bikes and their idiot operators matter more.