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Photos today in Tompkins Square Park by Bobby Williams...
It’s time for the mayor to step up and take action against the destruction of the city’s character.
Start by following the example of San Francisco, where City Hall tightly controls “formula retail,” as in big chain stores. If former Mayor Giuliani could keep adult businesses from operating near one another, then de Blasio can keep national chains from doing the same.
Starbucks and Marc Jacobs should not be allowed to have multiple stores within a few blocks, and we don’t need Walgreens down the street from CVS.
Then, pass the Small Business Jobs Survival Act to create fair negotiations of commercial lease renewals, so landlords can’t use insane rent hikes to evict dependable business people.
Give fines to landlords who leave commercial spaces vacant, creating blight while they wait for the right price.
While general commercial rent control may be unworkable, we can protect what little remains of the city’s oldest and most beloved small businesses by creating a selective rent control program.
According to the suit, filed Aug. 7, the five tenants claim that the landlord has engaged in gut renovations of multiple vacant apartments at the building since 2013, causing the ceilings to collapse in several occupied apartments.
The renovations at the 17-unit building also caused a gas leak that resulted in a month-long gas suspension, according to lawyers for the tenants.
"I would say that this case is symptomatic of what is going on in the Lower East Side today," said attorney Sadia Rahman, who represents the five tenants. "Violations like the broken front door and broken cornices have been in place for years, but owners instead are investing considerable sums of money into vacant apartments so that they can be deregulated and rented at market value."
This is a restaurant space that has an atrium in the back, the ansil/flute are in place. there is 6,627 square feet on two floors that could be divided for the right tenant. The asking rent is $331,350 per annum and $27,612.50 per month. This place needs a real restaurant operator. there was a liquor license at one time the new tenant would have to apply for a new one. Tenant will pay their proportionate share of real estate taxes as well as their own utilities which will include water, gas and electric. ownership would be willing to split up this site.
Right now, books and other merchandise are on sale at the Broadway store for 30 to 50 percent off. Go purchase some, and experience the soon-to-be-extinct joy of turning real, paper pages.
It seems as if a friend and I were both taken by this scam recently. We've both woken up to fraud alerts from Chase in the past week that our debit cards have been used elsewhere in the City.
Given that we both reside in Alphabet City, frequent the same places, and were still in possession of our cards, it suggests that it was indeed a scamming operation to steal the card data and produce dummy cards. Chase confirmed as much over the phone when I spoke with them. I'm very careful about using my card, so wherever the operation is it must be pretty stealth. We think it happened somewhere along Avenue C.
Mitch Kossoff, a lawyer for Icon Realty, said there are guidelines in place for rooftop access, which only the top-floor tenants have access to. Parties past 10 p.m., loud music, consumption of alcohol, barbecuing and smoking are prohibited. Kossoff said he wasn’t aware of any complaints from last weekend’s bash but he’s ready to take necessary action, including eviction proceedings.
Kyle Frey, 25, who lives on the first floor of the newly renovated building said cops come by “almost every weekend.”
Tommy, another regular, recounted an oft-told Blarney Cove legend. One evening, he said, a regular was sitting alone at the end of the bar, minding his business, enjoying his $1.50 mugs of beer with all the usual contentment of an old drinker on a young night. Suddenly, but without fuss, the man set down his mug, shut his eyes, slumped forward, and died right there in his chair. “They put him in the freezer,” Tommy said. And the next day his body was gone.
Name: Gary Bell
Occupation: Martial Arts Teacher, Boys Club of New York
Location: 3rd Street between A and B
Date: 6:30 pm on Thursday, July 31st
I have lived around here for 35 years. I grew up in Harlem and was raised in South Carolina. As soon as I got out of the military I came down here and took up certain courses. I must have been 22 or 23. At first, I was working in the Wall Street area, for Solomon Brothers. I was doing a receptionist job and one of my co-workers asked me what would I want to do on the side. I told him that I’d teach martial arts, so he got me an interview at the Boys Club.
I started off as a volunteer and ended up working for the Boys Club for 30 years. I was the martial arts teacher. I noticed that most of the kids I dealt with had single moms. A lot of the kids were being bullied. I’m a big advocate of kids not being bullied, so I put my hand in that and I got a couple of kids really standing up for themselves. They had self-esteem, honor, dignity. Most of the kids became policemen, lawyers. It was amazing.
All in all I’m very proud of the work that I did. The best is when they came back to me and their parents would say, ‘By the way, George is playing baseball for a high school team and he’s the top pitcher in the nation.’ I said, ‘This kid was so nervous.’ He had a problem, but he came out good. If I walk just a couple of blocks I’ll see a kid and they’ll say, ‘Hey sensei, how you doing?’ Some of them left and came back and brought their kids.
Another thing that brought me down here was homesteading. I renovated an abandoned building right here on 2nd Street. I started in 1986 and finished it up in 1991. I’m a veteran and I was thinking about buying a building off of my VA Bill and I ran into this and it was a dream come true.
It was an organization run by the Archdiocese. Koch was the mayor at that time, What they’d do is find an abandoned building and squat in it and take it over. There has to be at least 12 homesteading buildings in this neighborhood. So they’d put you on a trial basis working on other people’s buildings and in return they’d give you your own building, abandoned — totally, totally abandoned.
It gave me a lot of respect for construction workers, because I had to do mostly everything — putting up sheetrock, putting in a new roof. Everything you did you were like an apprentice, but the big time stuff like electricity and plumbing, the government gave you professional people to come down here. They started us off with $300,000 to fix the building, but they gave us a time restraint. So they said, ‘OK, we’ll give you this money and this will pay for all the professional people, but you’ve got to finish it off in seven years, because if you don’t, the day before your time limit is up the city can just take the building.’
My building started off with like 12 people, and I guess the work wasn’t going fast enough because a lot of people quit and a lot of new people came in. We’ve got actors, accountants, carpenters. We’ve got all kinds of people.
The neighborhood was rough in the beginning. I was thinking of backing out of the deal because this neighborhood was rampant with crime and drugs. I was here when Tompkins Square Park was literally just homeless people. If you would have looked at it back then you would have never believed this transformation. It had me fooled too. There were no banks around here at all and hardly any restaurants. Now you’ve got them back-to-back. I never thought that would happen. It was very risky. I’m really proud of this neighborhood because a lot of people stuck with it and stayed strong.
The red tape was the biggest problem — the politics behind it. With every building, the Cardinal blessed the abandoned building before you got into it. At that time Mayor Dinkins came by and gave a little speech. Of course the politicians came by and wanted to take pictures of us. We had to put in 20 hours a week.
The whole deal cost me $225 dollars. There are some pictures that will scare you. You would go, ‘Oh my God.’ I said, ‘No way.’ I said, ‘Nah, I can’t do this,’ but as time went on, plus at the time my girlfriend was pregnant, so my son needed some space. So I was focused. I think it took me six years to complete it. It was Christmas Eve 1991 that I moved in. I have a duplex, parquet floors, a rooftop garden, and it’s beautiful man. You wouldn’t believe it.