By Skye H. McFarlane
Fulton St., west of Gold, and the red-lined section of Nassau St. will be closed to most traffic for the next 2 ½ years. Work will begin July 23 and the street closures are expected to start sometime in August. Emergency vehicles will be allowed through and delivery trucks will be able to get close to stores. The Lower Manhattan Development Corp. is considering a plan to give ground-floor store owners a reimbursement of $2.50 per square foot for each month the street is closed.
The denizens of Fulton St. are largely in agreement — the new Fulton St., with its safe sidewalks, attractive plantings and fixed-up utilities, will be a dream. But the locals are waiting to see whether their nerves and their businesses will survive the reality of a two-year construction blitz, scheduled to begin on July 23.
The first phase of the project to spruce up Fulton and its surrounding side streets will also require the replacement of a 150-year-old water main. That arduous process will force the city to close Fulton St. from Church St. to Gold St. for the better part of two-and-a-half years. Street closures will begin sometime in August.
Although merchants and residents alike acknowledge that the street and the water main need to be repaired, they worry about the impact the non-stop construction will have on their daily lives. In order to finish the first phase of the project by 2009 instead of 2015, the city will be working double shifts six days a week, occasionally working all through the night so that water shut-offs will not affect businesses during the day. The second phase of the project, which will revamp side streets and expand two local parks, is estimated to begin in 2009.
“After a job like that, it’s going to be super nice here,” said Tony DeMartino, manager of Caruso’s Pizza at 140 Fulton St. “But that’s not the point. The point is we need to survive. We need money now.”
DeMartino said he worries that the small, locally owned businesses along Fulton St. will not weather the reconstruction and that the newer, nicer Fulton St. will become a corridor of big chain retailers. Because the street closure will make the thoroughfare unappealing to pedestrians, DeMartino fears that he will see a big drop in foot traffic — a significant component of his counter service business.
Caruso’s has already sacrificed for city construction once before. Caruso’s used to operate out of a store on Broadway, just south of Fulton St. The pizzeria dutifully reopened shortly after 9/11, but was told in 2004 that they would be evicted to make way for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s new Fulton Transit Hub. Caruso’s “Grand Opening” banner was still hanging on their new Fulton St. location when DeMartino learned that the city would soon be closing the street to cars.
“It’s going to kill the business,” DeMartino said. “I wish there could be a miracle and they could delay the work until we get back on our feet.”
Downtown businesses have complained in the past about a lack of information about construction projects on their streets. The agencies involved in the Fulton St. project have therefore stated that they are deeply committed to keeping residents and business owners informed as the work moves forward. Most of the merchants we spoke to were, at the very least, aware that the street would be closed and that work would begin July 23. However, neither DeMartino nor Joyce Huang, the manager of the Subway/Carvel store, were able to make it to a recent informational meeting for local businesspeople.
Huang said she wished that the agencies would send representatives into each store, to inform the businesses in person. At a June 21 meeting with Southbridge residents, the Department of Design and Construction pledged to have community liaisons on hand in the neighborhood once the project begins.
However, at least one local business appears to have fallen through the notification crack. When asked what he thought about the Fulton St. project, newsstand owner Taslima Akter gasped.
“Nobody tells me nothing about this,” said Akter, who purchased his small shop at 88 Fulton St. in January. “Oh my god, this is very bad news. How are we to do business?”
Akter said that the work on the sidewalks will be especially hurtful to his business, since he relies on passersby to purchase his newspapers, candy and Lottery tickets. The sidewalks will be given a tinted treatment and granite curbs similar to those that the Downtown Alliance has installed elsewhere in the neighborhood.
Not every local business is panicked about the upcoming project. The managers at one of Fulton St.’s larger chain stores, who had been instructed by their employers not to speak to the media, said that they weren’t too concerned about the construction. Since most of their customers also work in the area, the managers surmised, they would likely continue to walk down Fulton St. and patronize the business. Another big business, the Millenium Hotel, sent reps to the June 21 meeting to express their concerns about getting delivery trucks in and out of the construction zone in a timely manner.
For those businesses that are concerned about pedestrian traffic, the city is working on a plan to lend a hand. Working with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the project plans to use public art to make the construction area look more appealing to pedestrians. The construction art program was first developed by the L.M.C.C. and the Downtown Alliance after merchants on Maiden Ln. begged for help in bringing foot traffic down their oft-closed street.
Beyond the public art, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation is in the process of developing a grant program to help soften the blow of street closures on small businesses.
As it is currently proposed, the grant program would give small businesses south of Canal St. money for each month that their street is closed for a public construction project, provided they can prove the street closure has hurt their bottom line. The amount of money granted would depend on the physical size of the retail space — $2.50 per square foot per month. L.M.D.C. spokesperson Errol Cockfield said the agency is committed to the grant program but is still working out the fine details of exactly who would be eligible, how they would apply and when the program would go into effect.
Although the Fulton St. businesses we spoke to generally thought the grants were a good idea, some shopkeepers were skeptical as to how much the grants would help in the long run.
When told of the possible grant, an exasperated Akter looked at his small newsstand space and said he thought the grant would be good for bigger businesses.
“Two-fifty? Our slices are $2.25. So basically, they’re going to buy like five pies a day,” said DeMartino. “Will that make up for the pies we lose? I guess we’ll have to see.”
Also watching and waiting are the residents of the neighborhood, who have been told that the excavation work will not be terribly noisy, since it must be done by hand. Representatives from the city Department of Transportation also pledged that the D.O.T. will work to keep traffic moving in the neighborhood, possibly by reversing certain one-way streets or restricting loading and parking.
Wally Dimson, who heads Southbridge Towers’ co-op board, said Monday that he’s unsure whether any D.O.T. actions could truly fix the traffic problem, especially when a separate street work project closes off Beekman St. in 2009. He was happy that the agencies had taken the time to meet with residents and he is hoping that the project will run smoothly.
“I’m from Missouri, as they say. They’re going to have to show me,” Dimson said. “It’s going to happen. There’s nothing [the city] can do except to fix the water main…But it’s definitely something we’ll continue to monitor. If there are issues, like with noise, we might request a follow-up meeting.”
Beyond watching the construction, Dimson and his fellow board members must decide whether to sell the city a patch of land at the corner of Fulton and Gold Sts., which Southbridge owns. The city would use the land to create a park on the area that currently holds a set of landscaped benches, concrete curb, and an unregulated turning lane onto Gold St. Dimson said that the city will present its park ideas to the Southbridge residents on July 18 and that the co-op may hold an advisory referendum to help the board make its decision.
Skye@DowntownExpress.com
