It is getting hard to catalog all the new changes on the Fulton Mall in recent years. There is the new benches and sidewalks, rebuilt after decades of neglect. The rezoning and the thousands of new apartments borne in on the tides of its land rush. A new mall, CityPoint, maybe with a Target inside, as well as the national retailers finally flooding into the old department stores alongside Macy's: Aeropostale, Express, H&M, TJ Maxx. And who could forget the crown jewel, Shake Shack.

While people worry about the future of the mall and who might shop there—indeed, it is the subject of a feature in tomorrow's paper—it still has much of the polyglot look it has had for decades, even more so given the new mix of national shops among the mom and pops with their riotous signs.

Just as it worked for the rezoning in 2005 and the streetscaping a year later, the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership is in the early stages of  creating new standards for the storefronts on Fulton Mall, according to people involved with the project. While still very much preliminary, some form of new regulations is being developed by the local business improvement district in partnership with the Department of City Planning to spruce up the walls of the Fulton Mull. Read More