Le bike lane resistance

Rockawave 

Merchants on Beach 20th Street in Far Rockaway continue to face headaches with the new raised-bike lane on their street, creating a tripping hazard and making their day to day ability to function their business far more difficult.

According to several business owners and observed by Wave reporters, cars park on the bike lane, which the businesses owners say bike riders don’t use anyway. When cars park on either side of the street it creates a bottleneck, creating more traffic. Also, many businesses on the block do not have loading docks, and with people parking on the bike lane, they have nowhere to handle deliveries. 

“This is dangerous,” said Jose Santana, owner of Unisex by Santana Salon on Beach 20th. Santana recently spoke at the September Community Board 14 meeting, and has helped draft a letter to the Department of Transportation, signed by most of the merchants on the strip. 

Businesses say that since the bike lane was constructed in July, they have seen few bike riders actually utilize it.   

“There’s no bicycles,” said Ming Liu, owner of Sunny’s, a mix Hibachi and Mexican restaurant. “This is 20th Street, there’s so many cars…A lot of people park on the bike lane,” he said. 

Like other owners, Liu called the raised-lane “dangerous” and that he’s seen people fall down. 

Odali Rodriguez, owner of Green Village Meat Market, has experienced this first hand. 

“I tripped, I was going across the street and I tripped,” he told The Wave. “It’s very dangerous, I’ve seen incidents, including myself.” 

Rodriguez is one of the few stores on the block with a loading dock in the back, so he is more worried about the danger of tripping. 

“When you walk there you think everything is flat, there’s no indication that it’s not flat,” he said. 

Other merchants agree that the bike lane is dangerous, Seon Maynard who owns a West Indian Market says he has seen at least ten people trip. 

“They should be suing the city,” he said. 

Some owners have received $115 tickets for loitering while loading goods, like Enrique Perez from Valencia Cakes & Flowers. 

“We should be able to load and unload, we shouldn’t be getting a ticket if we take too long,” Perez said. “It’s hard for us because people are parking there,” he said. 

PIX News 

 Speeding, traffic jams and dangerous crossings are all the problems one street in Queens is causing neighbors.

Rego Park’s 62nd Drive is identified as a “high crash corridor“ by the New York Department of Transportation (DOT). More than a dozen people have been seriously hurt on the road over the last five years.

The DOT’s solution was to add a bike lane on the side, with parking in the center. Unfortunately, neighbors say it came with new problems.

“My main concern is people’s health,” neighbor Arsen Gurgov said.

Gurgov has lived on 62nd Drive in Rego Park for the past 25 years. He says the new bike lane and parking configuration have made things worse than ever.

“My son was having an allergic reaction and I called for an ambulance. It took them too long to get here because they were stuck in a jam,“ he said.

Speeding in the Rego Park area is also still a big problem. A very big problem.

Year to date, police have written more than 3.5 times as many speeding tickets as they did in the same time last year; 1,577 speeding tickets compared to just 434 the previous year.

Moving violations are also up 40%.

A DOT spokesman says they presented the idea about the bike lane to the community board a year ago as a way to fix the dangers.

“These bike lanes improve safety for all road users, providing much-needed traffic calming while adding important protected bike lane connections between Queens Boulevard and Flushing Meadows Park,” spokesman Vincent Barone said.

Rego Park neighbors disagree with the DOT. Nearly 100 of them have signed a petition to have the bike lane and center parking adjusted or removed altogether.

“It’s either or,” Gurgov said. “They either get rid of the side parking, or they get rid of the bike lane. You can’t have both. It’s too narrow of a street.”

Vincent Barone is a bike zealot idiot. These two stories confirm that the DOT is forcing bike lanes on communities to drive them crazy and they are being weaponized as tools for gentrification.

Nabes not so high on weed shops

 

Queens Chronicle

Last Thursday, the Office of Cannabis Management announced that New York State had begun accepting applications for the first recreational cannabis dispensary licenses.

The first legal adult-use retail dispensaries will be run by those impacted by the prohibition of cannabis. Qualifying business applicants must have a conviction for a marijuana-related offense or have a parent, legal guardian, child, spouse or dependent with one in New York.

One Ozone Park man has already submitted one application and is working on a second, with hopes of eventually opening a dispensary in Queens.

“My business partner and I are both justice-involved and we both meet the criteria,” said Jeremy Rivera, a 38-year-old from Ozone Park.

“Kush Culture is me 51 percent, him 49 and then Gourmet Buds is him 51 percent me 49,” he told the Chronicle this week.

Rivera spent eight years in prison for nonviolent crimes, two of which were drug-related.

Now, he owns a construction-consulting company where he teaches OSHA and city buildings regulations and audits job sites for construction-safety compliance.

“I am and always have been ambitious. Even when I was in the streets and I was dealing drugs, I was very ambitious.”

His business experience helps him check off the box from the state that requires applicants have experience owning and operating a “qualifying” business that has been profitable for at least two years.

His business partner owns a deli in Lindenhurst, LI.

Although Rivera is a Queens guy through and through, he is not sure he will be able to open the dispensary here.

“I’m not getting really good responses from the communities in Queens,” he said.

“I’d love to open a dispensary here, but I don’t know. It seems like I’m getting a lot of conservative views on this.”

He specifically wanted to open up a shop in Ozone Park but was told by community leaders that it might not be “the right place.”

Queens is burning: Merchant building collapses after early morning fire in Flushing

World's below average borough

 Queens Chronicle

The U.S. economy only grew by 2 percent in the third quarter of 2021, the federal Commerce Department reported Oct. 28. The crawl marks the smallest gain in a year, when the country began its slow economic recovery from the pandemic.

Tom Grech of the Queens Chamber of Commerce doesn’t have equivalent numbers for the borough, but if he had to estimate, he’d say Queens’ margin of growth is even smaller than the country’s.

“I would think it’s below the national average,” he told the Chronicle Nov. 4. “It’s more difficult than ever to get things done in New York City and Queens. Everyone’s gone through a hellish 18 to 20 months. It’s a hard environment.”

The QCC president doesn’t expect the city to be back to “normal” until spring 2022. On a scale of one to 10 — 10 being totally recovered — Grech would put Queens at a seven.

“The thing that’s holding our companies back from doing well is the inability to hire people,” Grech continued. “There’s been an inflation in wages. It’s harder than ever for people to go back to work. Small businesses live and die on a small margin.”

He also said strict rules and regulations from even before the pandemic are hindering businesses, such as limitations on overtime. But speaking two days after Election Day, Grech said he’s been greatly encouraged by Eric Adams’ win in the mayoral race and hopes there will be an overhaul in the favor of small business owners.

Despite the slow recovery, Grech did say there has been a great number of new businesses cropping up around the borough and filling the vacancies left behind by those that the pandemic put out of business. Last May, he had estimated that 1,000 of Queens’ 6,000 restaurants had closed for good, but he’s finding that a fair number have been replaced by new ones.

Myrtle Avenue Business Improvement District Executive Director Ted Renz places its vacancy rate at 7 percent, which is the same as it had been pre-pandemic. The Ridgewood strip lost between 25 and 30 businesses during the pandemic, most of them being retail clothing stores, he said, but gained back the same number of new businesses.

Just because the vacancy rate mirrors the BID’s pre-pandemic one does not necessarily mean Myrtle Avenue is back to normal though, Renz asserted.

Queens is still burning...

 

 Sunnyside Post

A four-alarm fire tore through several businesses in Sunnyside Thursday morning.

Flames broke out inside Taiyo Foods, a Japanese market located at 45-08 44th St., at around 7:20 a.m. The fire quickly spread to the four neighboring businesses housed within the same one-story building, FDNY officials said.

The fire engulfed the buildings and was upgraded to a four-alarm blaze within one hour, according to the FDNY. More than 200 firefighters and EMS personnel reported to the scene.

Firefighters were able to get the flames under control at around 9:15 a.m. Three firefighters suffered non-life-threatening injuries. There were no other injuries.

 

Sunnyside Post 

A man who was found dead by firefighters following an explosion inside his Woodside/Elmhurst apartment Tuesday likely killed himself prior to the massive blast, police said.

Anesti Bulgaretsi, 26, was discovered by firefighters inside a seventh-floor penthouse apartment, located at 73-01 41 Ave., after an explosion and subsequent fire ripped through the upper floors of the building. The damage was so severe that it blew the roof off the penthouse ceiling and part of the building collapsed.

Police say that Bulgaretsi, who lived in the penthouse near the Woodside/Elmhurst border, was found in a bathroom tub with self-inflicted stab wounds to his stomach and wrist. The apartment’s gas line had been “cut” and matches had been found near his body along with a knife, police said.

Bulgaretsi was suffering from depression, chronic head pain and had been out of work for two months, the New York Daily News reported. He had been telling people before his death he wanted to return to his native Greece.

 

 

It's time to tell Big Bird to F off

Mayor Big Slow is the reason the sidewalks are jammed with unlicensed vendors

  

NY Post

 

Does Bill de Blasio ever meet a deadline?

The infamously tardy mayor is over three months late appointing members to an advisory board established to review street vendor activity just as illegal peddlers have taken over whole sections of The Bronx, Manhattan and Queens.

A law the City Council passed in March stripping the NYPD of enforcement over street vendors required Mayor de Blasio and Speaker Corey Johnson to appoint a combined 10 members to the Street Vendor Advisory Board by April 21.

While Johnson has seated his six appointees, de Blasio has yet to choose his four representatives.

“It just goes to show you that they have no real care or sense of urgency in doing this,” said Jeff Garcia, head of the New York State Latino Restaurant, Bar and Lounge Association.

The board is supposed to review state and local laws related to street hawkers, including assuring that they’re at least 20 feet from building entrances— a rule is routinely broken by peddlers who crowd the sidewalks along Fordham Road in The Bronx, Main Street in Flushing, Queens and Canal Street in Lower Manhattan.

High End Ghetto Manhattan

AOC's Terrible Endorsements!

The Small Business Congress  

E-mail  savenycjobs@gmail.com                Website:  Savenycjobs.org

Media Advisory               Contact: Steven Barrison

For Immediate release       Barrisons@aol.com  savenycjobs@gmail.com

June 8, 2021                                         212-750-5560

Immigrant Small Business Advocates Angered by AOC Endorsements. 

AOC Endorsements A Grave Insult to Desperate Immigrant 

Family Owned Businesses and

To All True Progressives.

 Dateline NYC June 8, 2021:  The city’s last true immigrant small business advocate, Sung Soo Kim*, is deeply disheartened by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsement of Maya Wiley for Mayor and Councilman Brad Lander for Comptroller.  He fears both are a potential danger to the future of immigrant families.

Kim fears either’s election would mean the end of any hope to save our city’s immigrant family owned businesses. Contrary to NYC lawmakers using the purposely misleading term of “minority small businesses,” usually followed with “women owned businesses,” to reference small businesses, while, the majority owners of NYC small businesses are in fact multi generational immigrant family owned (64-68%). 

For accuracy, black owned businesses are less than 3% in NYC with the majority being immigrant owners from the Caribbean islands. The majority of women owners are from immigrant families.  Why the deception?

The reason is a massive dishonest campaign to cover-up the injustices, abuses and true dire state of our immigrant owned and run businesses produced by a handful of unethical ambitious lawmakers.  Corrupt lawmakers who have conspired and colluded with the real estate lobby to rig the system for over a decade to deny economic justice to our immigrant owners, which has made their now extreme crisis worse.  These lobby crony lawmakers are our Democratic leadership at City Hall.  Their betrayal of our immigrant families has resulted in the most anti immigrant business environment in the entire Nation, one that has been destroying immigrant’s American Dream in record numbers. 

Why is this relevant to AOC’s endorsements? Because both her endorsements are directly connected to  people who played a major role is denying economic justice, rights and a real lifeline of survival for our immigrant family owners.  AOC with her social progressive platform can profess a profound ignorance of basic economics.  But while she was working in a small business in NYC during this hyper real estate speculation period, she cannot claim willful ignorance of the dire crisis all businesses faced when their leases expire and the owners having no rights.

She must have walked by many empty stores on her main street where once thriving businesses were.  AOC could likely name a dozen businesses she patronized that were forced to close due only to having no rights while landlords demanding insane rent increases or unfair lease terms, and that was BEFORE COVID.  Why didn’t AOC ever wonder who at City Hall was responsible for allowing this unjust and insane economic policy to happen and then deny a real lifeline to the victims?  

Nevertheless, here she is, AOC is endorsing one (Brad Lander) who played a key role in throwing immigrant owners under the bus for his own political ambitions. She is endorsing another (Maya Wiley) whose policy director (Lena Alridi) also played a key role in stopping a vote on the only real lifeline to save immigrant businesses and went further to collaborate with Lander to then substitute a landlord’s bill to kill the Jobs Survival Act and end any hope to save our immigrant businesses and jobs. 

Does AOC want her followers to believe she carefully screened her endorsement’s backgrounds to assure they were true progressives who would fight for progressive legislation needed to change a corrupt government and save the victims of unchecked greed?  The truth is her endorsements of Brad Lander and Maya Wiley, if helped get elected, would continue the policies of the big New York real estate lobby that were destroying the “backbone of our economy, our immigrant family businesses and jobs” for a long time.

Her endorsement of Brad Lander for Comptroller is an insult to every informed immigrant family, good government, and to true progressive values. CM Brad Lander gives new meaning to the word “hypocrite”.  I have direct eye witness and a thorough investigation of Lander’s shameful record of disrespecting, discriminating against and betraying our city’s hard working immigrant families.  The despicable betrayal of democracy and of our immigrant community is far too long to go into detail now, but these links* show the truth of this progressive fraud and the damage to our economy as well as the suffering to many immigrant families he has caused by his abandoning progressive values and his abuse of his office. https://www.savenycjobs.com/part-v

https://www.savenycjobs.com/brad-lander-leads-rigging

 

A disgraceful record of lack of integrity and betrayal.

The key to unlocking this fraud’s true blind ambition lies with an independent study of immigrant owned businesses* and his testimony at a hearing on finding a real solution to our small business crisis.

   *https://www.savenycjobs.com/latin-chamber-study 

In April 2009, the largest study of Hispanic businesses showed conclusively a crisis existed for businesses. A crisis caused by years of unchecked real estate speculation on Main Streets forcing the rents to insane levels. A crisis immigrant owners could never hope to survive without government intervention to give them rights when their leases expired.

Upon the release of the study’s findings, then Chairman of the Small Business Committee David Yassky in public proclaimed, “that is what is at stake if we lose our small businesses we lose the jobs … ….. the one thing we cannot do in the face of this Crisis is nothing”.*

*  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiLyhVe6jDQ

Brad Lander read this study and agreed with all the progressives “you cannot do nothing in the face of a crisis.” Brad Lander would testify at the hearing on what he thought the government should do.  June 29, 2009 a hearing was held to find a solution to our city’s small business crisis. 

I testified at this hearing and listened carefully to all the testimony given. I especially liked what I heard from Brad Lander who also had an opinion on what government should do to stop the closings of businesses.  As well as predicting what would happen to small businesses if they did nothing.  

At the June 29, 2009 hearing he testified supporting the Small  Business Jobs Survival Act.  Lander, “I believe that one (solution Jobs Survival Act) being proposed here today of a fair lease renewal process comes out high up at the top (to preserve small businesses) and I strongly support it. As you know, the challenges facing small business have grown from a problem to a real crisis in the city. But you're still seeing a stunning number of places where when a lease renewal comes up, what people are being forced to do is absurd.  If we don’t do something about it soon we're going to lose them more and more and more. The City's Department of Small Business Services, as we've heard, have many fine programs, but the evidence is before our eyes, they just aren't working to save mom and pop businesses in our neighborhoods. So something new and serious is needed. I just think the evidence is there before us if we let the free market reign, we know without any additional regulation what it's going to continue to give us. In two years, three years, five years, we'll be back here with fewer of the small businesses that make our neighborhood great, with fewer of the jobs that we have here today. So let's put in place this one very reasonable additional regulation.”

I waited and shook Brad Lander’s hand after his testimony. Not only because of his support for our bill but because of what he said about making a priority to stopping the illegal extortion of immigrant owners.  Earlier in the testimony, then CM John Liu called out the SBS for ignoring the study’s findings that 31% of immigrant owners had been demanded to pay cash in order to remain in business, and SBS did not even care.   Brad Lander was aware of this shameful act against helpless immigrant owners and gave his objections.

Brad Lander made the strongest statement on the illegal extortion of immigrant owners by calling for an investigation of the extortion:  

BRAD LANDER: “I might just add one thing that was very clear from the testimony and the conversation earlier is the need for some enhanced investigation.  I don’t know who it is here that needs to step in and investigate, whether it's the IRS, whether it's the state attorney general, whether it's a city investigative agency. There are clearly things going on ….the survey that was done is obviously one great step, but having a government agency in is critical.”

Brad Lander’s reply to my thanking him on behalf of immigrant owners being extorted was, “it is the right thing to do, landlords robbing these owners must be investigated and stopped.”

After the hearing if AOC were to have endorsed Brad Lander then as a true progressive, I would be the first in line to agree with her.  But not today, not after Lander used his office and influence to keep the status quo for landlords and stop any law giving rights to immigrant owners when their leases expired. Rights needed to have a fighting chance to negotiate fair leases and make a reasonable profit for their hard work. Rights needed to stop the illegal extortion and short leases of sometimes month to month or one year. 

 When Lander left that hearing, that was his last words or acts to help small businesses in a true meaningful way. He would never again even mention addressing the illegal extortion of immigrant business owners!! His testimony was disingenuous like every time a media event happens to highlight a closed business and he appears crying crocodile tears and gives a “let’s save our businesses speech.”  While the majority of time as the Council’s deputy in charge of policy, he would collude with the fat cats, who would later donate to his campaign, to keep the status quo and never even attempt to find a true solution to save a single business or job. The SOLUTION he so eloquently testified to in 2009, supporting and ending the crisis, he will never mention!  Despicable! Lander was always pledging to do something, but never meaning it.  Lander a true phony, a pretend progressive in campaigning only. 

How progressive is a lawmaker who knows immigrant owners are targeted for extortion of their life’s savings and that is acceptable. Why is it acceptable to AOC to support a candidate who knowingly does nothing to stop this shameful act against immigrant owners? Worse, who willingly joins in the rigging at City Hall to stop any vote on the only real solution to save the immigrant businesses and stop the extortion and other landlord abuses against immigrant owners? In no major city in the world would the routine extortion of cash from owners in order to remain in business be tolerated. Yet, under Lander’s leadership as Council’s deputy in charge of policy, this deplorable act is allowed to occur unabated.

Once Brad Lander gained a leadership role in the Council he never once called for a vote on the Jobs Survival Act or any law giving actual rights to immigrant family businesses.  Former Chair Yassky’s statement, “the one thing we cannot do in the face of this Crisis is nothing”, is exactly the opposite of what Brad Lander did under his leadership, nothing to save even one business or job. By Lander maintaining the real estate lobbies’ policy of protecting the landlord’s wealth, our small business crisis grew out of control to every main street in NYC.  Under his watch as policy director a severe crisis became worse and yet, not once did he call for an honest hearing to find a solution to stop the closings. Brad Lander played a major role in rigging the system to protect big real estate and thus is responsible for helping to create our city’s empty store blight.

Under Lander’s watch NYC Courts issued warrens to evict on average 470 businesses each month for 10 years.  An estimated 1,300 businesses closed each month in NYC creating the empty store blight. Brad Lander did nothing but collude to cover up this anti small business environment and crisis destroying our small businesses.

*https://www.savenycjobs.com/nyc-court-evictions-

As the council’s policy man, Lander could not feel good about the city’s empty stores on every block during an economic boom. Exactly what he predicted in his very own testimony in 2009 was happening under his watch! Yet, he did nothing! Can you be anymore two faced than that?

Yet, AOC thinks it’s a good idea to put Brad Lander, who is policy chief and oversees the largest small business destruction in America, in charge of the City’s pension funds and has investigative powers.  Really!  Every city in America has small businesses that were prospering under a ten year economic growth. While in NYC only the landlords were prospering while long established small businesses were closing in record numbers.  Brad Lander played a key role to deny them rights and a real lifeline to survive. Why would AOC think this lawmaker with a shameful failed record is worth endorsing? Did AOC or her staff or advisors bother to investigate truth, facts, of the real Bogus Brad?

Lander continues rigging for lobby!

Because of the empty store blight, a hearing was finally given to the Jobs Survival Act in Oct 2018.  Would Lander step up to testify like he did at the last hearing and call for support of the progressive legislation the Jobs Survival Act? No, instead Lander would remain silent to the greatest anti immigrant and sham hearing ever held at City Hall. The entire hearing was turned over to the real estate lobby to orchestrate a total charade to deny economic justice to desperate immigrant owners. This sham hearing had only one purpose, to stop a vote on the only real lifeline to save our small businesses. This disgraceful hearing could never have taken place without the knowledge and full support of the Council’s deputy policy chief, Brad Lander and another impostor Speaker Johnson.

Lander then to continue the scheme like a good charlatan he promotes a substitute bill to kill Jobs Survival Act and all hope for immigrant owners to survive!

The final betrayal of our immigrant family owners by  Brad Lander came in late 2019. At the 2018 hearing, Speaker Johnson pledged to amend the Jobs Survival Act to exclude any protections to Fortune 500 type big businesses, and then move it to a vote.  This should have required changing the language of one paragraph concerning the scope of the bill.  With the Jobs Survival Act having 29 sponsors and a growing crisis citywide this simple task, which was not opposed, should have taken a few hours at most, and a quick easy passage at the next Council session. 

Speaker Johnson had no intentions of keeping his word and amending the Jobs Survival Act.  The real estate lobby’s strategy was to stall a vote on the bill, and let it expire Dec 31, 2021.    

The key player for this despicable anti democracy agenda was CM Brad Lander. If there was any doubts about whom Brad Lander really served, that was put to rest with his appalling rigging in plain sight.

No effort was made to move Speaker Johnson along to amend the Jobs Survival Act. The reason was simple, the real estate lobby had a team working in secret behind closed doors. There was no rational reason to not support the Jobs Survival Act and give small business owners the rights needed to survive. Therefore, the lobby must create a substitute bill and have City Hall leadership lie and  tout it as a viable bill to save small businesses. Brad Lander was not a sponsor of the Jobs Survival Act but would eagerly promote a new bill influenced by the real estate lobby to substitute for the Jobs Survival Act.  His new bill, was a violation of the Councils own rules of never having similar bills with the same intent. 

Councilman Brad Lander became the first NYC lawmaker in 30 years to issue a petition to Save Small Businesses, and not mean it. CM Lander in championing a new bill, Commercial Rent Stabilization, claiming it will save small businesses by putting a cap on commercial rent. It is a knowingly false claim and he knew his bill would not save a single business or even one job. Why would you secretly promote a real estate created bill that you know is grossly inferior to the Jobs Survival Act? What happened to his 2009 testimony on the Jobs Survival Act, “ at the top (to preserve small businesses) and I strongly support it.?”

Kim, “ In the long 30 year battle over our bill, never once has two bills been in play at the same time. Now policy chief Lander thinks it is a good idea to introduce another bill, one that keeps the status quo for landlords.  How does a new bill appear after 14 months from a hearing on the Jobs Survival Act, without collusion with the real estate lobby?  Yet 14 months after the hearing, with the Speaker repeatedly claiming to be “tweaking and fine tuning” the Jobs Survival Act, the bill he pledged to “move to a vote”, no changes were made. 

Instead, those same proposed changes (eliminate big business coverage) now appear in a new bill, which gives the tenants no rights whatsoever!  This is called Rigging the system at City Hall. With a growing small business crisis now out of control citywide, CM Lander should be ashamed of using his office to create a policy that in reality is the real estate lobby’s policy to stop any law from giving any rights to small business owners when their leases expire.  CM Lander’s actions are despicable and do not fool any small business owner with his lobby created bill that was created with only one goal, to stop a vote on the only real solution: Jobs Survival Act.   No honest progressive should trust him. But one does, AOC. 

Two key players, bad actors, who rigged the system against immigrant families. 

I went into great detail exposing this fake progressive Brad Lander because he did not discriminate against and betray our immigrant small business owners by himself. The real estate lobby put together an "A Team" of unethical cronies and opportunist to protect their profits. A major player responsible for colluding with the real estate lobby to deny economic justice to immigrant owners and who joined with Lander in promoting this fake substitute bill was Lena Afridi, policy director for Maya Wiley.  AOC manages to endorse candidates with a proven record of discrimination against immigrant family owners. This true display of ignorance or plain outright hypocrisy is on its own shameful. This is too critical at this point in time for NYC small businesses not to call out.

I will not go into the fine details showing which side Ms. Afridi is on. Read these links to give facts which show why I am alarmed Ms. Afridi could gain a position to influence small business economic policy. It would be the end of any hope for immigrant businesses to save their American Dream.

 

https://www.savenycjobs.com/afridi-betrayal-part-i

 

https://www.savenycjobs.com/lena-afridi-shameful-testimony

 

https://www.savenycjobs.com/commercial-rent-control-bill

 

My warning to all New York voters, do not trust AOC's endorsement of candidates, Brad Lander or Maya Wiley. Shame on CM Lander for losing his moral compass and betraying every desperate small business owner.  Shame on him for discriminating against helpless immigrant families struggling to survive. 

Shame of Maya Wiley for not doing her homework and having an anti immigrant policy director formulate her small business policy.   

 

 

 Sung Soo Kim, recognized as the city’s leading small business authority and advocate for over 3 decades. The “Godfather of immigrant businesses”  is the founder of the oldest small business service center in NYC, the Korean American Small Business Service Center, and was Chairman of the Mayor’s First Small Business Advisory Board, appointed by Mayors Dinkins and Giuliani. He is co-founder of Small Business Congress and sole creator of the Small Business Bill of Rights.  He has spent every working day for 34 years addressing the problems of immigrant small business owners. At its peak, Kim had 17,000 immigrant business owners he served under 8 Asian business associations.  He never took a salary from the government as Chairman of the Small Business Advisory Board nor in consulting on numerous regulations. He turned down offers to run a BID in Queens and turned down government funding for his business service center.  In 34 years he has personally negotiated and re-negotiated an estimated 50,000-55,000 commercial lease for his Asian members. He has gone to court weekly for 34 years to fight for his members in court. He personally consulted in the drafting of the original version of the Small Business Jobs Survival Act and every version introduced by eight prime sponsors. He organized 11 public hearings over 3 decades on the Jobs Survival Act.

Rego Park diner and other small businesses will be destroyed for luxury public housing tower

 Queens Post

 A developer has filed permits to demolish a number of buildings in Rego Park, including a popular diner and a synagogue that occupies a historic Art Deco building.

RJ Capital Holdings, under the name Trylon LLC, filed the demolition permits on May 3 for the triangular lot at 98-85 Queens Blvd. where Tower Diner, Ohr Natan Synagogue and several businesses sit.

The development company aims to rezone the site in order to build a 16-story mixed-use building on the soon-to-be empty lot. The rezoning plans have yet to be certified by the Dept. of City Planning, with the public review process still to take place.

 Rudolf Abramov, managing principal of RJ Capital Holdings, previously told the Queens Post that he aims to offer Ohr Natan Synagogue space in the new building, as well as any other current tenants who are interested.

The synagogue is a popular place of worship for members of the Bukharian community in the neighborhood. It occupies the building that once was the historic Art Deco-styled Trylon Theater, which opened in 1939 and closed in 1999. It serves a congregation of roughly 1,000 members, mostly residents of Rego Park and Forest Hills.

The leaders of the synagogue and the development company have been at odds with each other for years, but have since reconciled and hope to establish a home for Ohr Natan in the proposed development.

The Lefferts Blvd. bridge isn't over for small businesses

 

 QNS

Assemblyman Daniel Rosenthal and Senator Leroy Comrie on Tuesday, March 30, announced passage of their legislation to protect the character of the Lefferts Boulevard bridge amidst restoration, and to give protections to existing small businesses atop the structure. 

“The Lefferts Boulevard bridge serves as both a historic landmark and a community hub for Kew Gardens,” Rosenthal said. “Over decades, the diverse small businesses along this corridor have been entrenched in the civic and cultural life of our neighborhood. To destroy their livelihoods without cause during a pandemic is both unconscionable and preventable. I am grateful for the partnership of Senator Comrie and all the advocates who worked to bring this issue the attention it deserves.”

Since the late 1920s the Kew Gardens Lefferts Boulevard bridge over the Long Island Rail Road has been home to mom-and-pop stores that give the town its character and serve the shopping needs of the urban village in the city. 

In October 2020, the MTA, which owns the property, announced that the compromised structural integrity of the storefronts atop the bridge would require major capital investments. The MTA introduced a request for proposal (RFP) for a new master leaseholder to manage the stores on the Lefferts Boulevard bridge with no provisions for existing tenants. 

According to Save The Kew Gardens Coalition, a broad-based group of civic and resident organizations and Kew Gardens businesses, the RFP also specifically stated that the stores will be delivered empty. Existing small mom-and-pop stores who have served the community for over 20 years and are already hit hard by the pandemic would be forced to close under these conditions. 

To save the stores which are central to the neighborhood’s economic life, Kew Gardens community organizations partnered with the Mutual Housing Association of New York (MHANY), a nonprofit housing and commercial property development organization, to submit a unique response to the MTA’s RFP.

“The Lefferts Boulevard Bridge has suffered from years of MTA mismanagement. Because of this neglect, approximately $11 million in capital improvements will be required for the buildings, and an additional $5.5 million will be necessary to repair structural work on the bridge,” the organizations said in a petition that was shared in January. “The MTA expects the master lessee to bear the considerable cost burden of these repairs even after the city has given money to the MTA in the past to make repairs to this structure.”

Long COVID winter is coming (reprise)

  

Queens Post

 

About 80 attendees gathered outside a Long Island City restaurant Friday to bring attention to the hardship facing many small businesses.

Elected officials and a coalition of Queens business owners met outside Little Chef Little Café, located at 5-43 48^th Ave., and called on the federal government and local leaders to help them get through the economic crisis and navigate stricter lockdown measures before they are forced to permanently close.

The business owners appealed to city, state and federal officials for financial relief and other assistance. Organizers used the hashtag “SAVE OUR SMALL BIZ” to highlight their cause and several supporters carried signs with “rent relief” written across them.

The event was organized by the Western Queens Small Business Council, small business owners and other local business advocates. State Senator Jessica Ramos, Assembly Member Ron Kim and Assembly members-elect Zohran Mamdani and Jessica González-Rojas were also present along with Council Member Jimmy Van Bramer and Queens Borough President-elect Donovan Richards.

Organizers took particular aim at Washington and said that the New York Congressional delegation needs to come up with a proper recovery plan that would include a bailout package and rent relief for small businesses.

“Get out of all the federal stuff and come home and help us,” said Roseann McSorley, the owner of Katch Astoria, who led the event.

“This is a crisis…the businesses in this borough and every borough are going to fail, we aren’t going to survive,” McSorley said.

McSorley said that small businesses should be treated like airlines and other major corporations that have been given federal funds.

Several business owners described the struggles they are facing to stay out of the red with restricted indoor capacity and earlier closing times being of particular concern to restaurant and gym operators. They said that they have received little direction from the city and state with regard to the ever-changing regulations.

They appealed for clearer COVID-19 operating guidelines that are translatable and understandable.

That message was echoed by Ramos who said that Governor Andrew Cuomo has failed to help small businesses through the pandemic.

“The governor has been twiddling his thumbs for the past seven months, he’s done nothing,” Ramos said.

 

Long COVID winter is coming

 

Queens Chronicle

The rate of positive COVID test results has increased in Queens over the past week as officials have begun to warn that it could mark the beginning of a second wave.

After Gov. Cuomo designated Ozone Park as part of a yellow zone at the end of October, South Queens has continued to have warning signs of higher infection.

When the city Department of Health updated its website to show real-time data on COVID positivity rates by ZIP code, it showed that Richmond Hill had the second-highest seven-day COVID test positivity rates in all of New York City as of Monday, at 4.43 percent.

The increase is not isolated to Richmond Hill. Farther south, Arverne and Broad Channel had the fifth-highest seven-day positivity rate in the city. That data came to light shortly after Cuomo removed Far Rockaway’s yellow zone designation at the end of last week, based on state data.

The seven-day rolling average for the entire Queens yellow zone has increased from 2.68 percent positive Monday Nov. 2 to 3.12 percent Nov. 9, with daily rates of positivity shooting up in the last couple days of this week, according to the state data.

Queens Chronicle

The relationship between small business and government during the pandemic has been an uneasy one.

“It was bad before. Now it’s worse,” said Councilman Mark Gjonaj (D-Bronx), during last Thursday’s tour of businesses on Fresh Pond Road in Glendale. “The city is not listening. They’re hearing the issues. They have not addressed the concern.”

Gjonaj, chairman of the Council’s Committee on Small Business, visited stores with Councilman Bob Holden (D-Middle Village), Myrtle Avenue Business Improvement District President Ted Renz, Queens Chamber of Commerce President Tom Grech and Small Businesses Commissioner Jonnel Doris.

“For us, we’re here to help small business. That’s our job,” Doris said. “While we’re the government, we’re still their advocates.”

He said about 30 walking tours have been done around the city and though some changes in policy have been implemented because of feedback, Doris acknowledged “we have to rebuild their trust, too.”

Among the problems raised by elected officials and business owners around the city are the fines being imposed, sometimes with contradicting advice from city agencies.

“I don’t like when the government descends on businesses that were closed for so long and then they start fining them instead of warning them,” Holden said.

Grech believes one person needs to oversee everything, “kind of like a COVID czar.”

Gjonaj said store owners can be fined if a customer is not wearing a mask but believes that is unfair to the owner, saying that there have been attacks on people who are demanding masks be worn.

“They’re not policemen. They’re business people,” he said. “They’re working behind the counter. They’re sweating. They’re not supposed to act as enforcement. You can’t hold them reliable. You go tell someone with mental illness that they can’t enter because they don’t have a face mask. Let’s see how far that gets you.”

Arbitrary fines from pandemic guidelines are crippling small businesses

 

CBS New York

  Business owners already struggling because of the coronavirus pandemic are getting hit again, this time with summonses and fines for not following COVID guidelines.

Lorraine Gericke, manager of Best Tress Hair Salon, was told by a city inspector she was doing it all wrong, using a notebook to write down customers’ temperatures and information for contact tracing.

“They’re slapping us with a $1,000 fine, which is so unfair,” she told CBS2’s Dave Carlin.

The penalty of one grand is because they did not use city forms instead.

“We were not aware that we needed these,” Gericke said.

 Yi Qiang Chen learned he needed a paper displayed on his Jade Bamboo restaurant storefront indicating maximum capacity.

“I’m angry but I cannot do nothing you know,” he said.

He says the inspector told him, and just one day later, another inspector returned and fined him $1,000.

“They don’t give me the time to do that, you know,” Chen said.

On one block of Dry Harbor Road in Middle Village, Queens, at least four business were hit with fines and, in some cases, multiple fines.

Louise Fawcett, of Matson’s Delicatessen, has five documents displayed on her deli’s door, but she says she was fined $1,000 for not having a thermometer.

“You have to have one that’s non-contact,” Fawcett said. “I ordered it online the day before they gave me a summons.”

“Give them a warning,” New York City Councilmember Robert Holden said. “No, they won’t do that.”

CORONAVIRUS: NY Health Dept. | NY Call 1-(888)-364-3065 | NYC Health Dept. | NYC Call 311, Text COVID to 692692 | NJ COVID-19 Info Hub | NJ Call 1-(800)-222-1222 or 211, Text NJCOVID to 898211 | CT Health Dept. | CT Call 211 | Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

de Blasio signs bill permitting retail stores to sell merchandise outside

 

 

Queens Post 

Small business owners will soon be able to expand their storefront onto the sidewalk as part of a new Open Storefronts initiative the City will launch on Friday.

Retail shops will be able to sell their wares on sidewalks in front of their storefronts from Oct. 30 through Dec. 31 — just in time for the holiday season, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Wednesday.

In addition to retailers, repair shops, personal care services and laundry services can also use sidewalk space for seating, queuing or displaying dry goods under the Open Storefronts program.

The initiative aims to help more than 40,000 small businesses in a similar way that the Open Restaurants program helped thousands of restaurants across the five boroughs.

“Our Open Restaurants program … turned out to be something that really worked for New Yorkers,” de Blasio said during a press briefing. “Let’s apply that same idea to small businesses — retail businesses — all over the five boroughs that need additional business to survive.”

The program is modeled after the Open Restaurants program. Likewise, businesses located on existing Open Streets: Restaurants — that are cut off to most traffic — will be able to sell their products on the closed streets as well.

Multiple businesses on the same block can also join together to apply for an Open Street designation to turn their roadway over from car usage to ad hoc market usage, de Blasio said.

While this will (incrementally) help small businesses as long as this pandemic continues, this will wind up being counterproductive. It will just make the sidewalks more clustered which will make it harder to enforce distancing guidelines and also will make it more vulnerable to shoplifters and looters, which will require more NYPD presence. Not to mention that a lot of sidewalks where these stores are located aren't ample enough for those measurements detailed on that layout above.

 

40%

 

Bloomberg

 

The pandemic has battered New York City businesses, with almost 6,000 closures, a jump of about 40% in bankruptcy filings across the region and shuttered storefronts in the business districts of all five boroughs.

It’s going to get worse.

This fall, the nation’s largest city will see even more padlocked doors as companies burn through federal and private loans they tapped in March, landlords boot businesses that can’t make rent, and plummeting temperatures chill outdoor dining and shopping.

“By late fall, there will be an avalanche of bankruptcies,” said Al Togut, a lawyer who has handled insolvencies for small businesses and huge corporations like Enron. “When the cold weather comes, that’s when we’ll start to see a surge in bankruptcies in New York City.”

New York City and its businesses have reached a pivotal point. After over six months with the specter of Covid-19 hovering in every subway car and corner bodega, the virus is showing signs of resurgence.

The state of New York on Saturday reported more than 1,000 new cases for the first time since early June. Spikes emerged in south Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods with large Orthodox Jewish communities, just as they observed Yom Kippur. Meanwhile, principals called on the state to take over schools days before they restart in-person classes, saying Mayor Bill de Blasio failed to ensure enough staff to open safely.

The coming wave of business closings will touch every New Yorker as jobs get scarcer, neighborhoods lose beloved shops and families run out of cash.

Already, dwindling tax revenue has led to cutbacks in municipal services. Trash on sidewalks, unkempt parks and an increase in shootings have made it more difficult to persuade workers to return to offices, more than 150 executives told the mayor in a letter this month. A dearth of office workers is a death knell for many merchants.

“It’s a crisis, and we need to act—our economy can’t recover without saving small businesses,” said city Comptroller Scott Stringer, a candidate in next year’s mayoral election. “When they close, we don’t just lose our beloved Main Street businesses. We lose jobs, tax revenue and the economic backbone of our city.”

The pandemic could permanently close as many as a third of New York’s 230,000 businesses, according to the Partnership for New York City, a business group.

Mayor de Blasio thinks your city can handle a couple more months of economic limbo

Daily Mail

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has been blasted as a 'liar' for claiming that struggling small businesses are 'hanging on' and are prepared to stay closed for 'months' yet as he continues to cling on to the city's lockdown despite mounting calls to reopen. 

New York City saw just 63 hospitalizations for suspected COVID-19 cases on Monday, less than a tenth of the number on March 20 when the city went into lockdown, but still de Blasio and Cuomo refuse to say when the city will reopen again. 

In an interview with WNYC radio on Friday, de Blasio claimed: 'I’ve talked to lots and lots of business leaders, especially the smallest businesses. 

'They’re very worried about their futures understandably, but they also are hanging on and they know it can be a matter of months until they’ll be back in action.'  

The remark has been met with outrage by small business owners who say they are barely still surviving. 

Some called his remark 'outrageous' and particularly offensive from someone who owns two homes in Park Slope, an expensive neighborhood in Brooklyn. 

Hundreds of businesses have joined together to form a coalition to reopen the city. 

Some have taken it into their own hands to reopen because they simply cannot afford to stay closed any longer, and they have received summonses from the NYPD. 

Many are now asking why mega retailers like Costco and Walmart have been allowed to stay open throughout the pandemic while smaller stores that are able to enforce social distancing practices more seamlessly have been forced shut.

Bruce Backman, spokesman for Reopen New York, the coalition, told DailyMail.com on Tuesday: 'I think it's a power grab... you have to wonder, how much lobbying are the big box stores doing to keep themselves the only ones in business? 

'When have we ever forced people to go to three stores to buy everything? It's like the Soviet Union.'