Gale Brewer's plan to help save small NYC businesses

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer released a report today titled "Small Business, Big Impact: Expanding Opportunity For Manhattan Storefronts." (Find a PDF here.)

Per the Daily News:

Brewer is proposing legislation to give small businesses a one-year break before they get booted from their spaces. Under the plan, the city would create a mediation program that would kick in when a store nears the end of its lease.

If the landlord and tenant don’t reach a deal with the help of a mediator, the landlord would be required to offer a one-year lease extension with a rent hike of no more than 15%.

“The city can — and must — do more to help small businesses survive,” Brewer said.

Other ideas from Brewer include ... via Gothamist:

Finding a way to "condo-ize" more storefronts (basically allowing tenants to buy space, as there are federal funds for small businesses to do this); create "low-intensity" commercial districts in areas that have skyrocketing rents (this would be allowing some commercial businesses to open on quieter streets); and helping small business owners navigate the thicket of various city agencies.

No room for mom and pop in the neighborhood

Hate to say it, but this was all too inevitable. From this week's issue of The Villager:

Discount stores, ethnic restaurants and small local businesses line the south side of E. 14th St. along the stretch of Alphabet City. Many of these congenial mom-and-pop shops have been serving the lower- and middle-income Lower East Side and Stuyvesant Town communities for decades with their affordable prices and personal customer relationships. But it is becoming more and more difficult for these establishments to survive, caught between rising rents and gentrification. Charlies, at 532 E. 14th St. between Avenues A and B, a neighborhood staple for the past 41 years, is the latest to fall victim to this trend.

Bonnie Rosenstock's article says Charlies will shutter at the end of this month.

“I’ve been coming here since I was 7 or 8,” said a 46-year-old Hispanic woman. “We need to have our community stores. This is what keeps the neighborhood healthy. There is so much greed that is destroying the neighborhood.”

[Image: Villager photo by Bonnie Rosenstock]