Suspect that this will someday be an issue on Cookman.
`City Playing a Big Role in Screwing Up My Neighborhood'
By Sarah Ryley
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
BROOKLYN HEIGHTS The City Council is considering using "a big stick"
to stave off the extinction of "mom and pop shops," particularly in
the city's hardest-hit neighborhoods, such as Downtown Brooklyn, Fort
Greene and Brooklyn Heights. In these places, the proliferation of
banks, cell phone service providers, drug stores and other national
chains has many residents crying, "There goes the neighborhood."
City Councilman David Yassky, D-Brooklyn Heights/Downtown, said at a
hearing on the matter last week that he's counted 24 cell phone
service providers within eight blocks of his district office at 114
Court St. He later told the Eagle he considers Montague Street in
Brooklyn Heights among the commercial corridors where small, locally
owned businesses are the most endangered.
Seven banks and two drugstores dominate one block of Montague Street,
between Court and Clinton streets. Further down, locally owned
businesses are huddled next to national chain stores like Ann Taylor
Loft, Starbucks and Banana Republic, and the now-ubiquitous real
estate offices.
Those locally owned businesses, even those considered neighborhood
institutions for decades, are threatened, said Judy Stanton, executive
director of the Brooklyn Heights Association. Steadily escalating
rents and property taxes are chief among the concerns of property
owners and small businesses, she said.
"The [property] owners would say to us, `I can't help it, but my rents
are a reflection of our property taxes,'" said Stanton.
As for property owners who are the main proprietors of their building,
Stanton said they're asking, "If the tax increases continue, and
they're already escalating a lot, why should we struggle and stay in
our store when we could just rent to a Verizon, another AT&T, another
national chain?'
"We adore all these stores. We don't want them to leave, and we don't
want to be a mall where everything looks the same," said Stanton.
Chain stores "don't contribute to the community. When you go in and
talk about something, they refer you to a regional manager who never
calls you back."
Melissa Ennen, who owns a building on Atlantic Avenue and counts three
non-profits among her tenants, said her yearly real estate tax went up
this year from $26,000 to $84,000. "That's not me raising their rent,
that's the city raising my real estate tax. And the city is playing a
big role in screwing up my neighborhood right now."
Ennen brought with her a "retail rental corridor study" published by
Massey Knakal Real Estate Services that she said cites much higher
average rental prices than many of the small businesses are paying, or
could afford to pay.
"It's a lot more complicated than greedy landlords trying to raise the
rent," said Ennen.
On Montague between Court and Clinton Streets, Massey Knakal said the
average rent is $112 per square foot. Estella Johannesen, owner of
James Weir Floral Co., said she now pays about $80 per square foot for
the space she's rented on that block for the past 15 years, but her
lease is up for re-negotiation at the end of the month.
Johannasen said her business would be in trouble if she were forced to
pay what the real estate firm is suggesting, but a bigger concern for
her is the proliferation of online florists. "A lot of people buy from
the Internet these days, that's what's hurting us the most."
Ellen Hamilton, who owns Hamilton Design Associates on Hicks Street,
an interior design firm that sells home furnishings, testified that
she'd like to move to Montague Street but can't afford the rent.
"I'm deeply frustrated because my business, though it's extremely
well-appreciated, I still can't compete with Verizon, real estate
offices, banks," she said. "I want to get to [Montague Street] before
Pottery Barn does."
Yassky, chair of the Small Business Committee, said the Council is
open to considering a variety of measures to protect small businesses,
from zoning and tax reform to policies in other cities such as San
Francisco, where residents are notified whenever a chain store applies
to open and can request a hearing.
Yassky said he was intrigued by a suggestion Vanessa Gruen of the
Municipal Arts Society made: "to regulate `formula businesses,' which
are defined as establishments that are required by contract to adopt
standardized services, methods of operation, décor, architecture or
other features identical to businesses located in other communities.
Gruen said, "These laws do not prevent a chain store from coming in,
but they do require that the incoming chain not look or operate like
any other branch in the country. This had proved to be a deterrent to
chains, which generally refuse to veer from their standardized,
cookie-cutter approach."
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
