A recent bout of leasing activity suggests a struggling West Village block packed with empty storefronts, long an anomaly in the booming neighborhood, is on the verge of a rebirth.

In coming months, the opening of at least six new restaurants or cafés is planned for West 8th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues, according to landlords, restaurant owners, and the director of the area’s business improvement district. The activity is inspiring a cautious optimism that has long been absent from the block.

In the 1980s and 1990s, West 8th Street was a thriving retail hub, jam-packed with shoe stores that collectively made the street a destination for both New Yorkers and tourists. As the surrounding areas of Greenwich Village prospered throughout the past decade, adding high-end retail and pricey restaurants, the block lost its prominence as a site for shoe shopping, giving rise to a negative spiral whereby foot traffic fell and the tally of empty storefronts jumped.

In the past year, the street seems to have hit its nadir — at least 18 of the block’s storefronts were vacant last May — and started a gradual rebound, as eateries began slowly filling in the empty sites.

Through the summer and the fall, the street is expected to see the addition of two new Asian food restaurants, a branch of the 23rd Street-based Rickshaw Dumpling Bar, a barbeque restaurant, a bistro that serves coffee and desserts, and another restaurant of a variety yet to be determined. Taken together with the three other food shops that have opened in about the past six months, and the block seems to be adding a level of diversity within its retail that had been absent for decades.

“There’s no question that there is somewhat of a change in the retail landscape,” the director of the Village Alliance business improvement district, Honi Klein, said. “I would hardly say that we are without shoe stores, but what has happened is we now have a better representation and a mix.”

Still, storeowners are the first to assert that the block is far from flourishing, as some of the shoe stores that are still around are hanging on by their fingertips.

“It’s very hard to survive,” the co-owner of the Village Shoe Revue for the past 35 years, Khokon Khan, said. Rents have been on the rise, Mr. Khan said, and foot traffic has been on the wane, as retail in other areas such as 14th Street and St. Mark’s Place has expanded.

Decades ago, the street drew much interest from people throughout the city, serving as a home for notable bookstores, a theater, and popular restaurants, a longtime resident of the neighborhood, LindaAnn Loschiavo, said.

The street gradually lost its variety, transforming into a hub for shoe shopping, for which sometimes more than 20 of the storefronts were devoted to that narrow market. Once its prominence as a shoe hub declined in the past 15 years, many of the stores closed, giving way to some smoke shops and numerous empty storefronts, which storeowners and real estate experts view as a hindrance to the block’s success.

“When you see so many stores empty, you’re afraid to go on the block,” a general partner at retail real estate firm Square Foot Realty, Aaron Gavios, said of potential tenants.

In the past few months, things seem to be changing, Mr. Gavios added, as restaurants and other tenants are lured by the low prices that landlords have been forced to set. “The prices, I’m sure, are going to go up to catch up with the rest of the Village,” he said.