Controversial McDonald's closes

From the Queens Chronicle:

A company representative forwarded the Chronicle a statement from owner/operator Jack Bert, who thanked the community for its patronage over the years, as well as his employees, “all of whom have been offered the opportunity to work in our other restaurants,” a number believed to be between 20 and 25. Most if not all have accepted the jobs, a McDonald’s spokeswoman said.

The company would not give a reason for the abrupt shutdown, though Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Flushing) and John Choe, the executive director of the Flushing Chamber of Commerce, offered their takes.

Kim said in the big picture that new restaurants and eateries — many of them well-financed by conglomerates — are springing up in Flushing all the time with access to marketing money, technology and social media expertise.

He said Flushing’s economic success has driven up property values, with commercial rent on Main Street “now higher than what is found in Midtown Manhattan.”

But he also said this particular McDonald’s had a strained relationship with the neighborhood’s Korean community going back more than five years when the owner attempted to keep elderly Korean residents from taking up tables for hours at a time to socialize while he was trying to keep customers flowing.

Queens likes retail chains

From the Queens Chronicle:

The presence of national chain retailers in the borough expanded by 0.9 percent in 2017, a Center for Urban Future report has found. It went from 1,665 to 1,680 stores.

In its 10th annual “State of the Chains” analysis, the CUF said that 34 new MetroPCS stores opened in Queens, making it the second-most pervasive chain here with 122 total locations. The city and borough’s top spot still belongs to Dunkin’ Donuts, which added eight new Queens stores in 2017; it now has 187 of them.

Queens lost 14 CVS locations and eight Duane Reade/Walgreens stores in 2017.

The report defined the national retailers as businesses with at least two locations within the five boroughs and at least one more outside them.

The past few years have seen an expansion of the stores in Queens. According to the CUF, their presence rose by 1.6 percent in 2016 and 2015 after going up by 5.3 percent in 2014. In 2013, the number of this borough’s chains fell by 0.4 percent.

Every borough except Staten Island, which saw a 1.9 percent decrease, saw a rise in the chains. Queens and Manhattan tied at 0.9 percent, though the number of national retailers added was higher in the latter because it has more of them overall. Brooklyn’s increase of 3.1 percent was the biggest, with the Bronx at 1.8 percent.

Legislators refuse to allow SBJSA to be voted on

From the Village Voice:

You'd think a law that would give small businesses a fighting chance against astronomical rents and the soulless chains willing to pay them would be an easy sell for a City Council chock-full of progressives and our supposedly liberal mayor.

Yet Mayor Bill de Blasio, Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, Public Advocate Letitia James, and Robert Cornegy, the chairperson of the council's Committee on Small Business, won’t even allow the legislation to go before a committee hearing, even though 27 councilmembers support it. Why?

In short, because it would supremely piss off the powerful real estate interests that all major politicians in New York City must answer to, which makes it a total nonstarter. Debating the Small Business Jobs Survival act would start a conversation about the future of the city that no ambitious politician actually wants to have.

At 9 a.m. Friday morning, a group of community advocates will hold a rally outside City Hall to protest the mayor and the council's willful inaction on the Small Business Jobs Survival Act, which would give commercial tenants a ten-year minimum lease, as well as the right to renewal, and a right to go to arbitration to settle on a new rent.

The SBJSA has been kicking around in some form or another since commercial rent control died in New York City in 1963, and with it, the ability for a small business owner to have any sort of economic stability in New York City. Instead, they became subject to the whims of landlords and speculation, larger market forces that are able to take a vibrant, locally owned business district and completely clear it out, in just a few months.

"This isn’t a silver bullet of legislation," said Jenny Dubnau, an artist based in Long Island City, who’s a member of the Artist Studio Affordability Project (ASAP), an organization that aims to unite artists and small business owners who are each being displaced by commercial speculation. "All we’re asking for is some level of negotiating power. We need something to help us stop the bleeding."

Unlike rent-stabilized units, or rent-controlled apartments, under the SBJSA, there wouldn’t be state-dictated increases or freezes. However, the all-powerful Real Estate Board of New York has viewed even a discussion of the law as an affront to good manners, and gotten City Hall to label the proposed legislation as rent control.

Forest Hills business scene changing rapidly

From DNA Info:

A number of popular Forest Hills stores and restaurants have shuttered recently, prompting some residents to worry their neighborhood may be losing its unique character along with its mom-and-pop stores.

“I feel that Forest Hills is losing its class and distinctive nature and becoming a more predictable and generic community,” said Michael Perlman, a local resident and historian.

Danny Brown Wine Bar and Kitchen on Metropolitan Avenue, which was awarded a coveted star in the Michelin Guide, was unable to renew its lease and will close by the end of the year.

It will follow several other longtime restaurants in the area, including Pasta Del Giorno on Austin Street, as well as Uno Pizzeria and Santa Fe steakhouse on the so-called Restaurant Row on 70th Road, between Austin Street and Queens Boulevard — all of which closed after decades in business.

Brandon Cinemas, a two-screen movie theater on Austin Street, closed last year, as did the nearby Strawberry clothing store earlier this year. Barnes & Noble is set to close in January.

Some venues are replaced quickly with similar types of establishments, like Mexican eatery El Coyote which took over for Garcia’s Mexican Cafe on Austin Street. The new restaurant Rove is also replacing Bonfire Grill, which closed earlier this year.

But in some cases, like Santa Fe, storefronts remain empty for months. Other venues, including Brandon Cinemas and Pasta Del Giorno, have been taken over by banks and walk-in medical facilities. Barnes & Noble, on Austin Street, will be replaced by a Target.

Target replacing Forest Hills B&N

From the Daily News:

A new Target store is slated to take over the space formerly occupied by Barnes & Noble at 7000 Austin St., in Forest Hills, the Daily News has learned. The store will be the first flexible-sized location in Queens for Target, which has recently been offering more compact shopping experiences for city-dwellers.

Target inked a deal for a 15-year, 20,795-square-foot lease and is slated to open at the property in mid-2016.

Can NYC be saved?

From the Daily News:

God forbid we should need our shoes repaired or shirts cleaned. Small businesses are being decimated. Every month, we lose another thousand mom-and-pops .

They’re not closing because business is bad. They’re closing because the landlords are doubling, tripling, even octupling the rents — or simply denying lease renewals. With no penalties to stop them, landlords leave the spaces vacant for months or years, waiting for a national chain, a bank or a high-end business to pay the asking price of $40,000, $60,000, $80,000 a month.

Apparently, New York’s been waiting for you Starbucks, Olive Garden and Applebee’s. And for you Ralph Lauren, Marc Jacobs and Michael Kors.

Small businesses in New York City have no rights. You’ve been here 50 years and provide an important service? Tough luck — your space now belongs to Dunkin’ Donuts. You own a beloved, fourth-generation, century-old business? Get out — your landlord’s putting in a combination Chuck E. Cheese and Juicy Couture.

And despite de Blasio’s rhetorical fears about gentrification, his progressive pro-development push may well only hasten the trend.

That’s why I started the #SaveNYC campaign. We’re collecting video testimonials from New Yorkers and out-of-towners, celebrities and small business owners, asking City Hall to preserve the cultural fabric of the greatest city on earth.

First, we must pass the Small Business Jobs Survival Act. This bill, languishing for decades and quashed by Christine Quinn when she was City Council speaker, would give small businesses a fair chance to negotiate lease renewals and reasonable rent increases. It would keep our neighborhoods cohesive, helping to slow the tsunami of chain stores and put an end to landlord warehousing of empty, blighted spaces. It is our best hope.

Imagine a city filled with empty super-condos, money vaults in the sky. Our streetscapes will be sleek windows on the dead space of bank branches and real-estate offices.

There will be no more bookstores, no more theaters, no more places for live music. No more places to sit on a stool and drink a beer with regular folks.

When that day comes, and in some ways it is already here, what city will this be? It will be a hollow city for hollow men.

Check out savenyc.nyc

Meeting about burned-out building

From DNA Info:

Residents who have ideas for the future of the damaged Bruson Building can share them at an upcoming town hall sponsored by local pols, officials said.

The building — which was heavily damaged in a multi-alarm fire last April — is currently undergoing renovations and is looking to fill multiple empty storefronts and offices by next year, according to a member of the trust that owns it.

The meeting will be held Jan. 22, 2015, at 7 p.m. at the Jewish Center of Jackson Heights, and is co-sponsored by by Sen. Jose Peralta, Rep. Joe Crowley, Assemblyman Michael DenDekker and Councilman Danny Dromm.

Craig Bruno, who is part of the trust that owns the Bruson Building, told DNAinfo New York earlier this month that he'd like to see "major" chains, including Popeye's and Burger King, fill up the stores on 37th Avenue.

Ah, they want your crappy fast food ideas.

Queens loves its chain stores

From the Queens Courier:

The consumer market for national retailers is expanding faster in “The World’s Borough” over anywhere else in the city as a new report showed national brands have opened more new locations in Queens during the year.

Dunkin’ Donuts, 7-Eleven and T-Mobile were among retailers that added the most new branches in the borough, and the number of national chain retail locations in Queens increased 6.4 percent to 1,770 stores this year from 1,663 in 2013, according to the Center for an Urban Future’s State of the Chains.

While Manhattan still has more than 1,000 more national chain locations than Queens, Manhattan only added .4 percent or 10 new locations. Brooklyn, which has 1,593 chain stores, saw a 3.4 percent gain, and the Bronx added 4.2 percent. Staten Island is the only borough that didn’t see an increase.

T-Mobile, which had the most new locations in Queens, added 17 new outlets to bring their total in the borough to 55, followed by CVS, which opened 14 new locations to expand to a total of 48 stores. Dunkin’ Donuts, which added seven stores, still tops the list in total locations in Queens with 161 stores.

It's the rezoning, stupid

From the Daily News:

Small businesses provide significant community benefits. They boost the local economy, contribute to civil society and help to define the cultural identity of a place — the sense that a neighborhood is unique. Rightly or wrongly, chain stores are perceived as a threat to all of this.

But while Starbucks and Whole Foods are convenient villains in the narrative of neighborhood decline, blocking chain stores alone is not enough to save a community’s small businesses. Armed with a decade’s worth of business directory data, our research team at Hunter College mapped commercial changes in Brooklyn between 2002 and 2012, curious about where and why small businesses were displaced.

Here’s what we found. Although isolated chain stores chip away at mom-and-pop shops, the most substantial displacement of independently owned business occurred in areas that were rezoned by the city and rebuilt by private developers. In these neighborhoods, commercial turnover was less of a “slow burn” than a slash-and-burn.

When the city adds commercial space through rezoning, landlords receive an incentive to redevelop or sell their properties and replace existing commercial tenants. If big commercial storefronts are included in a rezoned area, national chain stores are likely to swoop in.

The city can do something about this as well. The Small Business Jobs Survival Act, currently under consideration by the City Council, would grant commercial tenants more leverage in their negotiations with landlords, extend commercial leases and protect business owners from rent gouging and under the table extortion.

Why would a chain clothing store want a liquor license?

From DNA Info:

Urban Outfitters' grand plan for its first multi-sensory consumption haven in New York, where shoppers down booze and drunkenly buy floral skirts, might not have a shot at seeing the light of day.

The chain store, which is proposing a three-story center in a converted North Sixth Street warehouse, was denied its liquor license by the local community board's liquor license committee Thursday night after an hour-long exchange between impassioned Urban Outfitters staff and perturbed local residents.

The staff insisted the booze was part of a way to become "an integral part of the community" with a restaurant, pop-up booths and a rooftop space, but the committee didn't buy their pitch.

Too main chain stores spoil the nabe

From the Times Ledger:

Chain stores in Queens grew at half the rate of last year, a report released Monday showed, though their effect on the borough is not always positive, according to business experts.

“State of the Chains 2012” is an annual report published by the Center for an Urban Future, a Manhattan-based nonprofit, and showed that the city as a whole added 2.4 percent more chain stores this year, while the stores in Queens grew at a slower rate of 2.1 percent.

Seth Bornstein, executive director of the Queens Economic Development Corporation, said chains can add a value to the business landscape of the borough, but having too many of them can create a drag on the economy.

Queens boasts the second-highest number of chain stores in the city — Dunkin’ Donuts has set up more franchises in the borough than in any other — but this year ranked behind the Bronx, Manhattan and Brooklyn in its growth rate. State Island actually lost chain stores over the last year.

The growth rate in Queens is about half of what it was in 2010 and 2011, when the borough saw a 5.4 percent increase in chains.

Heading into 2012, Queens had 1,624 of the businesses, with Dunkin’ Donuts and Subway leading the way. By the end of the year, 34 more stores had opened up shop.

“An overabundance of chain stores can attack an area’s retail fabric, usually by causing rent increases that make it impossible for small, independent businesses to thrive. This can lead to fewer unique services and products and really change a neighborhood’s character,” [Bornstein] said.

Practice what you preach

From the NY Times:

Guess what: Your neighborhood isn’t a Hollywood back lot. “Liking the idea” of a store doesn’t pay its bills. I’m not talking here about the venerable old places that close because the landlord is quintupling the rent, or because the proprietor’s children are not interested in continuing the family business and would rather be rap producers or America’s next top model. I’m talking about the businesses that are gamely hanging on and would gladly continue — if they had customers.

So don’t just stand there and admire Russ and Daughters’ retro neon sign. Go in and order a quarter-pound of their life-changing whitefish salad. Buy a book at an independent bookstore every once in a while, instead of ordering it on Amazon. Patronize a restaurant that offers “chops.” That quaint old hardware store that’s been around since the Truman administration? Venture in and buy some light bulbs. Yes, they may cost a little bit more (although finding an actual clerk or the product itself in a big-box store will almost certainly cost you more in time), but I consider it a tax to ensure that New York City doesn’t look like anywhere else.

You’re only allowed to complain about that Chase bank or Duane Reade on the corner if you actually give business to the mom-and-pop stores that you cherish so much. Otherwise, I don’t want to hear about it.

Where's the outrage?

From the Times Ledger:

Seven small businesses along Queens Boulevard will not see their monthly leases renewed and will have to clear out of the block above the Continental Avenue subway station to make way for a large national tenant.

The businesses, some of which have been at the same location for nearly 30 years, will have to leave the premises as part of a long-term development plan by Cord Meyer, the owners of the property. But a Key Food on one end will remain open.

“The whole building will be demolished,” said Anthony Colletti, a spokesman for the company. “The new building will be built one story high and house a national retailer.”

Rumors that CVS will be the next tenant were neither confirmed by Colletti nor the pharmacy.

Where are the protests over the loss of small businesses? Why were no elected officials quoted in this article?

Atlas Park ready for new chapter

From Crains:

Nearly 18 months after lenders seized The Shops at Atlas Park when its developer defaulted on a $128 million loan, a new life for the Queens mall is close at hand. Foreclosure proceedings are expected to be completed in the next two months, clearing the way for lenders—French banks Société Générale and Calyon—to sell off the property and bring in new owners and ideas.

For residents in the surrounding neighborhood of Glendale, it's been a disappointing four years. Opened with great fanfare on the former site of the Atlas Industrial Park—one of the largest manufacturing centers in the city—the 25-acre retail development initially seemed like something from an upscale retailer's dream. The 400,000-square-foot center featured pristine whitewashed stucco buildings, lush lawns, gurgling fountains, stately magnolia trees and a handsome outdoor promenade.

In retrospect, it was simply all a bit much.

“If you put it in Boca Raton, you'd have a beautiful mall,” says the new court-appointed receiver for the property, Paul Millus, a lawyer with Snitow Kanfer Holtzer & Millus. “But you're in Glendale, and that set it back significantly.”

“We've weathered the storm,” says Mr. Millus. “All we need to do now is get through the foreclosure, close the door on uncertainty, and then great things will happen at Atlas Park.”

Jackson Heights a cauldron of corruption....wow!

"As I write this, the Art Deco Eagle Cinema on 73rd Rd. in Jackson Heights is being gutted to make way for a Rite-Aid drug store. The so-called Jackson Heights Historic Assn and so-called Jackson Heights Beautification Group have been totally silent on this, basically because they don't seem to recognize the part of Jackson Heights that lies west of "Little India" on 74th St. "Little India" has been failing for years; attendance was off over 50 per cent before its closing, which was blamed on a Mumbai studio strike in an article in the Times over a year ago. But while that Times article suggested the Bollywood cinema would revive after being shuttered, it was already known to local pols that the drug-store chain had made its move.

These phony civic groups have their match in local politics. A traffic survey commissioned by the Queens DOT (which used a consulting firm--who paid? from where?) and whose public forums were heavily attended by two elected officials (Dromm, Peralta) and one appointed via backroom deal (Den Dekker) reached several conclusions—part of a "solution" to the intense traffic and environmental assault along 73rd Street and 37th Avenue, its epicenter being that dreadful intersection (which Environmental Defense once labeled "a canyon of death.")

Now, why the person who advises Danny Dromm and serves as a go-between to the "godfather" of Tammany Hall East, Congressman Joe Crowley — the person who brokered the Den Dekker backroom deal — would have known about the conclusions of this report IN JUNE is already curious, because it would indicate that politics, and not necessarily sound planning, influenced this report. That would not be unusual, as there was a 1998 and a 2007 report that already made practical recommendations that the then-local-Councilperson (Helen Sears, for one) buried, because a major source of her campaign financing came from the Jackson Heights Indian Merchants Association, which wanted to push back residential parking and replace all of it with meters to accommodate the EXTRA vehicular traffic they wanted to attract from the burbs to the bargainland of JH.

And they want to turn the street in front of the Rite-Aid Theater into a pedestrian mall. Aside from the discussion we could have about how destroying all the movie theaters in a neighborhood will come back to bite the community (and JH has capitulated on all but one, which is in its death throes) when they wind up as check cashing places and crap merchants once the retail-store accommodation turns sour. And it will--with a Duane Reade a block away and FIVE MOM-AND-POP pharmacies along 37th Avenue before you reach 75th St., you have to wonder why the self-proclaimed "progressive" Mr. Dromm signed on to this travesty. Den Dekker, who NO ONE VOTED FOR and who lives in Woodside, is also on board.

The results of the current study, due to be presented in Sept at CB 3 for a kangaroo-court vote, has been held back for many months now--why? Maura McCarthy of the Queens DOT is a functionary, a puppet, she's proven that by years of inactivity and ineffectiveness in this district, for sure. One can only surmise that the Dems game plan is to use it as a carrot before this fall's election to make sure that the "team" wins and Hiram Monserrate goes down in flames. But that 'carrot' feels more like a stick to all residents west of 74th St, who have nothing to do with Hiram and his issues and are being sacrificed in the pursuit of partisan politics. It will be brutal for the residents of 37th Avenue, where the commercial trade ends and it becomes all residential down to the massively botched repair and redirection of entrance/exit of the BQE. We're already buried in noise, exhaust, 24-hr commercial activity, and no enforcement of traffic or sanitation law. (I would go as far as to say that the traffic report protects some really bad actors, including Apna Bazar and Subzi Mandi, both registered in Middlesex County, New Jersey, but major contributors to the JH Indian Merchants Assn, who in turn are major contributors to local pols.

I was once told, with a shrug—by the same Dromm-Crowley Dem party apparatchik I mentioned above—that the noise and traffic and environmental assault of western Jackson Heights was "mostly a cultural issue." In that context, the forthcoming traffic study; the destruction of the Eagle Cinema to make way for yet another chain drug store; the laissez-faire attitude about some of the most awful instant-ghetto buildings that have gone up on 73rd St. (self-certified by scammers); the accommodation of EVEN MORE vehicular traffic on a street that already is clogged and jammed all day long (just ask the Elmhurst Hospital ambulance drivers who cannot get through on 37th Ave west of 73rd St. NOW); the lack of enforcement needed here (foot patrol for the 115th ends at 74th St.) all says one thing to me: "Don't worry Jake, it's Chinatown."

We need your help!!!" - anonymous

Photo from Lost City

Catwoman caught on video

From the Village Voice:

Police have released video of the "Catwoman" in action. As reported yesterday, this woman has robbed an Arche shoe store in the East Village and a Body Shop in Queens, as well as a Nine West in Queens. She wears a black scarf around her face, black clothing, and a cat mask as she enters stores, passes a note that says she has a gun, and then makes off with register money. She's in her 20s, 5'6" and 115 lbs. Video after the jump. (She is rather feline!)

Breaking News: Queens has a lot of chain stores

From the Daily News:

Attention, Queens shoppers: The nation's largest retailers are making it easier to shop in your own backyard.

The borough has 1,448 national chain stores - the second highest in the city, according to a new survey by the Center for an Urban Future.

It's only bested by Manhattan, which has a staggering 2,552 national retail stores.

"Queens has a lot more wealth [than some other boroughs] and it does have some really popular malls and established shopping districts," said Jonathan Bowles, executive director of the think tank.

"Up until five or 10 years ago, Queens was probably very underretailed," he said. "There were a lot of working- and middle-class people who drove out to the suburbs looking for shopping values and different options."

Dunkin' Donuts tops the list with 132 stores in the borough, followed by the Subway sandwich chain with 81 stores, Baskin-Robbins with 67 stores and Rite Aid with 63 stores.