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\who have been in business longer than she.John Hamilton is part of the Atlantic Avenue Promotional Committee, an arm of the street%u2019s Atlantic Avenue Committee, a group which is trying to get merchants to work together as a group %u201c because we can only succeed as a group.%u201d Co-owner of the new Delices de Saigon, a French-Vietnamese restaurant, Hamilton says Atlantic Avenue isthe place where things happen, although business is still very tight. %u201cWe have a long way to go, but if we have a commitment to the Avenue, we%u2019ll succeed,%u201d he said. %u201cPublicity is important. It%u2019s necessary to let people know what%u2019s here and it isn%u2019t just antiques. We have a lot of other interesting shops like the Make a Frame Shop, the photo shop The Ultimate Image and Bibliomania to name a few.%u201dMargaret Cusack, author of %u201cThe Atlantic Avenue Guide,%u201d now in its second edition, also stressed the need for merchants to work together. %u201cThere are still warring signs and a lack of continuity,%u201d she maintains. %u201c It shop owners thought of the Avenue as a whole, then they could work together on specific desires and needs.\Boerum Hill resident of five years. Cusack allowed that there were still parts of the street that made her nervous but that %u201cevery time someone paints a building or plants a tree or has a good idea, the whole community benefits.%u201dStanley of Stanley's Caning Co. has been on Atlantic Avenue 10 years and has flourished with the ever-increasing demand for his trade. But he was less than exuberant in his assessment. %u201cI%u2019ve seen dealers come and I've seen them go. It isn't as easy as it looks. 1 work six, seven days a week, 12 hours a day. You%u2019ve got to work to make a go of a business and you%u2019ve got to stick it out. You can%u2019t be open just on the weekend and expect to make it.%u201dCREATING FOOT TRAFFICThat criticism has been leveled at antique shops before, some of whose hours are erratic. It%u2019s difficult to build up a following when your shop doors are firmly padlocked. Harry Reid, owner of Botanic Planning Ltd., a wholesale floral company, said: %u201cSuccess really depends on the owner being omnipresent and involved in the area. As more merchants come and get involved, we can create foot traffic which is what retailers need.%u201dTwo of the shops that shut their doors permanently this year were craft stores: Dexterity and Oh June! Although they closed for different reasons, Nancy Cogan, creator of the highly1 successful batik designs at The Melting Pot,acknowledged that it%u2019s harder for crafts to succeed. \browse for crafts like they do for antiques,%u201d she explained. %u201cYou have to work at getting people in through mailings or advertising. The rest of the shops are not as well known as the antique places.%u201d While none of the five cooperative art galleries have closed shop, business could be better. Charles Crozier of Gallery 91 said critics seldom cross theBrooklyn Bridge, despite repeated attempts to entice them, and that the galleries here have the talent but not the traffic.%u201cThe art here is as good as Soho or Madison Avenue,%u201d Crozier said, %u201cbut business is slow. The galleries can t afford to hire a full-time sitter so they are only open a few days a week. We are trying to educate people about what is going on but we%u2019re isolated, at the end of the avenue.%u201dHelp might be coming from an unlikely corner, from clear down the avenue at the Ex-lax factory. That building is being transformed into 97 cooperative lofts and there are those like Virginia Woodward of Renaissance Real Estate view that project and others as the harbinger of a new era.Woodward, who has lived in Boerum Hill for 17 years, thinks that Atlantic Avenue could become a new Soho, %u201cbecause Manhattan has priced itself out of the artist's range. The Atlantic Gardens and the Ex-lax factory are two exciting. contrasting projects on the Avenue. One is taking old. derelict buildings and bringing them ba to life and the other is convert ing a commercial building into living spaces for people. They are of equal merit and an example of what can be done.\The location of these projects, at the eastern end of t he Avenue, is of special significance. That has been as neglected and ignored as a maiden aunt in a nursing home. For while merchants crossed the moat of Court Street, they pulled hack at Third Avenue.Of course some parts of Atlantic Avenue have always been booming. The Middle Eastern section from Court to Clinton has the vitality of a Chinatown or Little Italy, on a smaller scale. It has retained its own special character and appeal despite the vicissitudes of the rest of the street over the yea-1' People come from as far afield as North Carolina and Rhode Island to buy spices and lebani and the occasional brass tray. The restaurants and retailers have complemented each other, nur turing an appreciation for things oriental.%u201cWith the new interest in health foods, people are coming to Atlantic Avenue more than they ever did in the past,%u201d said Richard Sahadi of Sahadi Importers.%u201cPeople are buying things which a few years ago they wouldn%u2019t even ask what it was. They%u2019re looking for bet ter foods and spices and they aren%u2019t pul off by the olives in big barrels anymore.%u201dAs Stanley Rashid of Rashid Sales, an Arabic record and publications store, observed: %u201cThis neighborhood has really boot-strapped itself up. There was a time when you couldn%u2019t give away a building on this street. It%u2019s all changed enormously.%u201d