As homes were built in the area, stores also began to appear. The area attracted a lot of traffic because of the railroad and the ease with which one could get to Manhattan from the neighborhood. Hollis was fully built up by World War II, [1] and the economy of the neighborhood was in good shape. However, after World War II, people of different ethnic backgrounds began to move into Hollis. [2] From the time the neighborhood was established up until the mid 1950s the neighborhood had been primarily inhabited by whites.
Around 1955, the ethnic composition of Hollis began to change south of the railroad as immigrants began to move into the area.[3] This led to white flight, and as whites abandoned the area, store owners in turn closed their shops, moving them to areas more densely inhabited by whites. Hollis began to experience economic decline in the 1960s [4] due to the fact that the store owners had closed their shops, and “the main shopping strip on Hollis Avenue faded away”.
As the shopping strip in Hollis withered, the “shopping thoroughfare” on Hillside Avenue continued to prosper. Because Hillside Avenue and the shopping strip in Hollis were so close to each other, Hillside being only a mile away, retailers were more likely to first look to Hillside Avenue to open a shop. The economy of Hollis continued to decline, as retailers could not find a way to justify opening a shop in Hollis’s main shopping strip. [5]
The population of Hollis was 80 percent black and Latin American by the 1980s. [6] Meanwhile, by the early 1980s, the rate for vacancy of shop space on Hollis Avenue had reached 40 percent. Although Hollis experienced economic decline because of the loss of economic activity on the shopping strip, the values of the homes in the neighborhood continued to rise, as they were well-kept.
Community members worked to revitalize the area in the 1980s so that the economic decline that the neighborhood was experiencing would not negatively affect the social aspect of the neighborhood. Vacant shops attracted drug dealers, and it took great effort on the part of community members to keep them from gaining a foothold in the community.[7]
Starting in the late 1980s, community members worked to revitalize the neighborhood, and pushed for the construction of a new shopping center. This shopping center was the first significant commercial investment in Hollis in more than 20 years. Residents wanted a strong commercial base to help ensure the stability of the neighborhood in the future. The new shopping center, which began construction in 1989, would include a Walgreens that had a 20-year lease for its space. [8]