Chelsea team of rivals rallies to save Ninth Avenue shops

By Chris Lombardi

Storeowner Brian Reid stood in the Ninth Ave. bike lane near 17th St. on Saturday and blinked into the noonday sun. His voice was full of passion as he cried, “Don’t take away my American dream!”

Reid was speaking at a rally called to help save his store, Chelsea Liquors, and the adjacent shops lining that block just north of the Maritime Hotel. The stores—including a Chinese takeout, a barbershop and a candy store—now face possible eviction after a massive property purchase threatens to force them out.

Speaking after Reid, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer stepped up to describe why the group had gathered to “Save the Last Un-Gentrified Block in Chelsea,” as the event had been termed.

“The landlord raises the rent to a level they can’t pay. They kick ’em out, and soon the store stays empty, because no one can pay that!” Stringer said. “And then the one next door is empty, then another one. Finally they consolidate and bring in a big-box store. That’s how a neighborhood loses its character.”

The issue, Reid told Saturday’s crowd, amounts to nothing less than achieving the American dream, as the other storeowners come from all over the globe. “I am from the Dominican Republic,” he said. “The family in that restaurant? All from China. The deli? From Egypt. The coffee shop? Afghanistan. The check-cashing place on the corner? Four families make a living from that place. They are all working hard to accomplish their American dream.”

That dream, said Reid and the assembled advocates, has come up against the realities of Chelsea real estate—specifically in the form of hotel mogul Morris Moinian, who bought 112-119 Ninth Ave. last November for $31.4 million. Moinian told the New York Observer then that he planned to “renovate and upgrade, hoping to lure high-end retail to the storefronts on ground level.” On Saturday, organizers of the rally were busy passing out flyers plastered with a photo of Moinian, as if it were a mug shot.

It wasn’t until April, Reid said, that he learned what the purchase portended for his store. His rent would go from $2,400 to $6,000 a month. Other stores—including the 9th Avenue Gift Shop, Sweet Banana Candy Store, New Barber Shop and Famous Deli—face similar increases, rates that can’t be sustained by their modest prices and products. But it is these stores, many speakers said at the gathering, that keep a neighborhood alive.

Phyllis Gonzales, of the Elliott Chelsea Houses Tenant Association, noted that, “I can go to this Chinese restaurant, and within five minutes they come out, asking ‘Miss Gonzales, can I help you? What would you like?’ If I go to Starbucks, they’re more like, ‘Get out of my street!’ And you go a few blocks up Ninth Avenue, if you’re in a wheelchair, you have to go around the back to eat!”

Chelsea Assemblymember Richard Gottfried also came to survey the situation. “Ordinary people need not just affordable housing, they need an affordable economy, too,” he said. “You have to be able to afford food and to get your shoes repaired, and so on. For the people of Chelsea to be able to stay in Chelsea, they need the businesses we all depend on.”

The survival of mom-and-pop stores is not just a Chelsea problem, but also a citywide issue. Brooklyn Councilmember David Yassky, chair of the Council’s Small Business Committee, told the crowd, “When we had a hearing about the mom-and-pop stores, it was the most populated of any hearing we’d had all year.” And Stringer has convened one of his task forces to specifically address these stores and identify what could help them stay in place.

“They’re going to the most active retail corridors and asking question like, ‘What do you need?’ he said. “I have tasked them to come back within 100 days with some creative ideas.”

On Saturday, ideas for how to help the storeowners were aired with proposals to protect small stores from being overwhelmed by market pressures. In the short term, “We must pressure Mr. Moinian—give these owners leases with reasonable terms,” said State Sen. Thomas Duane. In the longer term, added Gottfried, “maybe we should consider some form of commercial rent control, like we had during World War II.”

Others spoke of introducing subtle changes to the zoning laws. “I propose a 500-foot rule for [limiting] banks,” said Community Board 4 chairperson Jean-Daniel Noland, who had just mourned the loss of three Hell’s Kitchen supermarkets.

In true Chelsea fashion, Saturday’s event also doubled as an informal opener to the 2009 election season, with representatives for mayoral hopefuls Christine Quinn and Comptroller William Thompson, and speakers including four candidates for the City Council seat currently held by Quinn. Two of the latter were also the event’s organizers: Andrew Berman, of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, and Miguel Acevedo, director of Fulton Youth for the Future and a member of Board 4.

“I hoped that everyone would concentrate on the issue, and leave their political aspirations out of it,” Acevedo told Chelsea Now this week. “And by the end of it, everyone did—they stuck to the issues.”

However, the neighborhood’s political players were still much in evidence, including members of both rival local Democratic clubs. Lynn Kotler, president of the Chelsea Reform Democrats and a former CB 4 member, said from the podium, “This community has re-gentrified to the point that we are losing our community residents. Now today, make sure you don’t just go home and say, ‘Great rally.’ Make sure you patronize these stores, too!”

Meanwhile, Velma Murphy-Hill of the Chelsea Midtown Democrats reminded the crowd of her club’s august roots, “including A. Philip Randolph, father of the civil rights movement, and Bayard Rustin, its greatest tactician.” She then spoke of a more recent struggle, fought by the Afford Chelsea coalition in the early 1990s. “We brought together unions, and housing organizations, and small businesses,” she said. “We need to bring that back together to support that task force the borough president has put together,” she said.

The co-chair of that task force, Board 2 chairperson Brad Hoylman, pledged at the rally, “I look forward to getting those recommendations done in 100 days. I think Senator Duane got it right—we don’t need another Gap, Banana Republic or Pottery Barn. We need local stores!”

Hoylman, like Acevedo and Berman, is also running for Quinn’s Council seat—as is Maria Montalvo, who was there representing the West Side Neighborhood Association, and civil rights attorney Yetta Kurland, who appeared on behalf of the Stonewall Democrats.

Kurland told the crowd that she’s both a Chelsea resident and a small-business owner. In addition to her legal work, in 1993 Kurland co-founded the Hello World Language Center on E. 23rd St. “I’ve seen the price of space go up and up,” she said. “We need to change the rules so that young people who have a great idea or a service that we need don’t get squeezed out.”

Acevedo laughed when asked by Chelsea Now about Saturday’s team-of-rivals effect. “I’ll beat ’em in November,” Acevedo said with a chuckle.

As for what can be done next, both Acevedo and Berman told Chelsea Now that they were heartened by the rally’s attendance. “It just shows that people have had enough,” Berman said. “The city has gone too far in one direction.”

One possible first step, Acevedo added, is a show of force at next week’s hearing to consider the application of Barrako Cafe, a proposed wine bar at 110 Ninth Avenue—next door to the stores. In Hell’s Kitchen, he noted, “That’s how it started—one of these wine bars serving high-end clientele. If that happens here, it’s all over.” By getting those who attended the rally to pack the hearing, Acevedo said, “maybe we can stop this before it starts.”

Doing so, many said on Saturday, is only fair to small-business owners who have put in long hours and sweat equity to serve local customers. “We need these stores,” Duane commented. “They’ve been with us when we’ve had hard times, and we’ll be with them when they have a hard time.”