Vows to save supermarkets
To The Editor:
Re “Do something meaningful for supermarkets” (talking point, by Kirsten Theodos, March 30):
Thank you, Kirsten, for being such a huge voice on the small-business crisis. I’m running for New York City public advocate because I’m tired of politicians saying one thing about protecting mom-and-pop stores but doing nothing to stop the carnage.
As a candidate, I’ll be calling out all our elected officials — including the current public advocate — who have failed to prioritize the crisis.
On Day One in office, I will kick off the process of finding a real solution by calling a public hearing on how to save our affordable supermarkets. Protecting small business equals protecting jobs, job creators, immigrants and single moms. Doing nothing is no longer an option.
David Eisenbach
Pledge to push S.B.J.S.A.
To The Editor:
Re “Do something meaningful for supermarkets” (talking point, by Kirsten Theodos, March 30):
I could not agree more with this opinion. As a candidate for the City Council for District 2, I pledge to co-sponsor the Small Business Jobs Survival Act and do everything within my power as a councilmember to make sure it passes. But sponsorship is not enough: We need people at City Hall willing to fight for Joe Falzon and his Associated supermarket and the thousands of Joes whose small businesses are forced to close every month in our neighborhoods simply because they lose their leases.
The arguments against the bill do not justify denying it a hearing, and, anyway, this is the point behind a hearing — to hear the arguments for and against and to hear how the bill might be tweaked to make it work better.
It’s clear that things could not be going worse. As I walk around my neighborhood, Astor Place and the East Village, I pass by empty storefront after empty storefront. Some, like the Associated market on Third Ave., have been vacant for more than a year. Many blocks — in this city that supposedly doesn’t sleep — never open up for business while the landlords wait for an ever higher rent to materialize. In the meantime, human beings, who are the lifeblood of our city, find it harder to supply their basic needs: affordable food, shelter, medical attention.
The City Council must reverse the disastrous focus on the rights of the landlords (the lords of the land) instead of the inhabitants of the land. The city must begin a process of self-examination and undertake real city planning, and the City Council must be the place this starts. Advocacy is a wonderful tool to bring about legislation. It’s past time to get down to the legislation.
Erin Hussein
What has Chin done?
To The Editor:
Re “Do something meaningful for supermarkets” (talking point, by Kirsten Theodos, March 30):
Three days before the Met Foods at 251 Mulberry St. closed, Councilmember Margaret Chin stood outside proclaiming that she wants affordable groceries to survive because without them the community’s seniors will suffer.
Four months after that announcement, what has she done to remedy this suffering for seniors? Has she or her office staff thought of a way to bring back a replacement for the Met Foods? Has she found a solution to provide affordable groceries to seniors? Has she done outreach to those seniors that continue to suffer?
Until 2013, Chin was the prime sponsor in the City Council of the S.B.J.S.A. However, the tides changed once the Real Estate Board of New York-backed super-PAC spent more than a quarter of a million dollars on Chin’s re-election campaign.
Who does the councilmember now really represent — the mom-and-pop shops that saw her as their champion in 2008, or the top real estate developers that helped re-elect her in 2013?
Christopher Marte
Marte is a candidate for City Council in the First District
No excuse not to vote
To The Editor:
Re “Do something meaningful for supermarkets” (talking point, by Kirsten Theodos, March 30):
Ms. Theodos is absolutely right. The City Council should bring the Small Business Jobs Survival Act up for a vote and pass it because this would be in the interest of small businesses — and New Yorkers. There is no excuse for not putting the S.B.J.S.A to a vote. Our progressive leaders need to be brave and stand up against the real estate lobby in a meaningful way.
Alison Greenberg
Real figures worse
To The Editor:
Re “Do something meaningful for supermarkets” (talking point, by Kirsten Theodos, March 30):
This is a good basic summary. However, as a practicing attorney representing small businesses in New York City for more than 30 years, I can say that only about 15 to 20 percent of businesses will either wait to be evicted or try to fight. That means that the real number of merchants that can’t renew their leases because of the huge greed and jacking up of the rents is about 80 percent. This translates into much higher numbers of small businesses unable to renew their leases, which can be seen by the vacancies on every commercial strip in every neighborhood in all five boroughs.
City Hall is rigged by the Real Estate Board of New York! That is the bottom line. Learn the facts, New York — not the phony excuses and alternative facts from people like Councilmember Johnson.
Steve Barrison
Barrison is co-chairperson, Coalition to Save NYC Small Businesses
Do the right thing
To The Editor:
Re “Thanks, ‘Crusty’ Club” (letter, by Michael Novogratz, March 30):
I was startled by the vitriol in Mike Novogratz’s comments on the Pier55 decision and by his attempt to cast “shame” on those of us who have pursued legal challenges to Barry Diller’s fantasy island. I mean, wasn’t this same guy formerly on the board of the Hudson River Park Trust and then chairing its Friends of Hudson River Park group when the Trust got the state Legislature to sign off on transferring “air rights” from Pier 40, thereby enabling Novogratz’s firm to sell its stake in the nearby St. John’s Center property at a magnificent profit?
I guess we all have our own definition of civic responsibility.
For the record, our campaign is motivated by two non-monetary desires: first, to reform the administration of our public spaces, especially along the waterfront, in order to eliminate the kind of secrecy and self-dealing that seem to seep in when “development corporations” are put in charge; and second, to compel the city and state to live up to their own environmental commitments and acknowledge the critical importance of a healthy, functioning harbor and estuary.
“They have pushed this lawsuit to destroy this gorgeous new park, and would prefer to have nothing in its place,” Novogratz writes in his letter. But to us the water is not “nothing.” Nor was it “nothing” to the Legislature when it created Hudson River Park. The law that the representatives wrote clearly defines the park’s waters as a marine sanctuary whose principal purpose is to protect wildlife and provide habitat. We’re gratified that a federal judge read the law carefully, and called out the Army Corps permit as the emperor’s-new-clothes fraud that it was.
An admirable legacy of the Bloomberg era is its vision of New York as a sustainable city capable of facing up to the climate challenges that are bound to come. Any rational person knows that to realize that vision we need to begin to pull back from the waterfront’s edge and, where possible, soften it. Yet, at the same time — another Bloomberg legacy — we perversely continue to line our waterfront with 40-story glass towers. Diller’s would-be island is both symptom and cause of that mad rush, and of the consequent division of our city into rich edge-dwellers and everyone else. Is it really the direction we want to be heading?
Rob Buchanan
Buchanan was a plaintiff on The City Club of New York’s successful federal lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ granting a permit for Pier55, and is co-founder, New York City Water Trail Association
‘Throttling’ traffic
To The Editor:
Re “ ‘Flip Fifth’ plan to create protected bike lane” (news article, March 30):
Community Boards 2 and 5 have voted to throttle traffic on Fifth Ave. from 23rd St. to Eighth St. This will create the requisite traffic chaos and congestion it is designed to do.
Remember that bicycle lanes are not about bicycles (which carry under 5 percent of the city’s total passengers). They are about creating congestion. This should be of real concern to readers of The Villager since the politicians of the area, including Deborah Glick and Brad Hoylman, support traffic throttling on 14th St. due to the L train shutdown “crisis.”
Expect more misery and delays from all of this. Congestion pricing failed totally politically, so this is the passive-aggressive answer: Create enough congestion and eliminate parking places, so we cannot park cars in the area.
The throttling of traffic on 14th St. will create congestion on the Village side streets, as well as a fight for parking spaces as those on 14th St. are eliminated to make room for Select Bus Service lanes. Bike lanes on 14th St. will just make it worse. It’s time to call our elected representatives.
John Wetherhold
Planters get trashed
To The Editor:
Re “Trash talkin’ in Soho; Raising awareness is key” (talking point, by Yukie Ohta, March 30):
Soho’s streets are now overflowing with trash because ACE no longer has funding? No problem! Mr. Henry Buhl, ACE’s founder, wants to add numerous new planters along the sidewalks. Aside from obstructing legal street vendors and blocking access by E.M.S., police and firefighters to building entrances, the planters will soon be filled with all of that trash.
What a great solution to the problem!
Robert Lederman
Lederman is president, A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists’ Response to Illegal State Tactics)
L.P.C. loses its way
To The Editor:
Re “What’s wrong with the Landmarks Preservation Commission?” (talking point, by Andrew Berman, March 23):
Unfortunately, rather than taking very seriously its mandate, the Landmarks Preservation Commission too often acts as an expediter for developers, allowing extreme and history-destroying changes to landmarked buildings and districts.
Just consider that the chairperson of L.P.C. appointed by the mayor came from the Board of Standards and Appeals — which focuses on zoning — having no preservation background. The B.S.A. has been criticized for years for working hand in glove with developers and very generously doling out community-opposed variances where the zoning law is often ignored.
So, the Landmarks chairperson serves at the discretion of the mayor, who clearly is enamored with the real estate set, perhaps for their generosity to his now-ended Campaign for One New York super-PAC and his election campaigns.
What’s clear is that we need a Landmarks Commission whose mission is entirely preservation and the proper interpretation of the Landmarks Law. We are increasingly throwing away the rich historic legacy of New York in exchange for money and architectural blandness that could be Anywhere U.S.A. Thanks are due to the preservationists like Andrew Berman who fight a lonely and endless battle to protect the historic footprint and soul of New York.
Susan Simon
Abrasive, awesome!
To The Editor:
Re “Trumped-up borders came with the territory” (The Angry Buddhist, by Carl Rosenstein, March 16):
Thanks to The Villager, it’s refreshing to hear the abrasive voice of the Carl Rosenstein (The Angry Buddhist). He knows how to stoke the fires. Whatever one believes, it’s now time to wake up. Complacency is no longer justifiable.
Crista Grauer
E-mail letters, not longer than 250 words in length, to news@thevillager.com or fax to 212-229-2790 or mail to The Villager, Letters to the Editor, 1 MetroTech North, 10th floor, Brooklyn, NY 11201. Please include phone number for confirmation purposes. The Villager reserves the right to edit letters for space, grammar, clarity and libel. Anonymous letters will not be published.
