Triangle Sports Sold, ‘Neighborhood-Friendly’ Restaurant Coming In

After just three months on the market, the iconic building across from Atlantic Yards has been sold.

Owner Henry Rosa declined to name the buyer until the contract is completed, but confirmed that the new business will be “neighborhood friendly.”

Here's Park Slope reported news of the sale Monday. 

According to Sharon Davidson, director of the North Flatbush BID, there was a bidding war and the top five bidders were all restaurants. She said one of them was Hooters, but Rosa confirmed that Hooters is not the buyer.

Hooters also approached the nearby about selling, but the hardware store turned them down, Davidson said, adding, "I think they (Hooters) desperately want to open in the neighborhood, but I don’t think they’re going to on North Flatbush."

The 97-year-old business was when co-owners Rosa and William Shapiro decided to retire and take advantage of rising prices thanks to the soon-to-open Barclays Center. 

The store is having a 50 percent off sale and Rosa said more than half the inventory is already gone. He expects to be open “another couple of weeks.”

Triangle Sports, named for its three-cornered building at the intersections of Dean Street and Fifth and Flatbush avenues, was opened in 1916 by Shapiro's grandmother Betty Shapiro. Rosa, who grew up in Park Slope, began working in the shop in 1962 at 14 sweeping floors and stocking shelves after school.

The store started selling Army/Navy surplus, then began offering rifles and other hunting equipment. It dropped the guns in the 1960s, and added such sportswear as Levis jeans and Timberland boots.

Regina Cahill, president of the North Flatbush BID remembers that when she moved to Flatbush Avenue in 1975, Triangle was one of four iconic stores along with City Lighting, Pintchik and Ireland’s Eye Clam Bar.

"It transported the shopper to a by-gone era ... I will never forget the old world charm of the wooden shelves, the smell of aging hardwood floors, the creaky, narrow stairs to second floor," she wrote via e-mail.

"It was a shop where the young 'hung out,' started sweeping and stocking the shelves and then were employed for the next 20 or 30 years," she wrote, adding that both Shapiro and Rosa were extremely active in the BID.

"It is the end of an era, one that lasted 97 years!" she wrote. "We are sad to see them go; we miss Bill and we will miss Henry and the guys. ... We wish them well.”

Rosa said selling the nearly century-old business is a “mixed feeling.”

“I’m glad that we sold it but it’s also sad,” he said. “We’ve been here for 97 years and we’ve had a loyal customer base."