BY LESLEY SUSSMAN | Reacting to community concerns about the retail woes along Clinton St., where there are currently 19 vacant stores, the Association of Latino Business Owners and Residents (ALBOR) and the Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES) community organization have partnered up to form a “business attraction program” in order to draw more small businesses to the struggling retail strip.
With $30,000 in funding from the city’s Department of Small Business Services, the hope is for the business attraction program to lure an initial seven to 10 stores to the three-block corridor between Houston and Delancey Sts. before the grant expires in July.
The coalition held its first of several scheduled community meetings on Tues., Nov. 13, at the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center, 107 Suffolk St., where the program’s organizers heard residents express their preferences for what kinds of businesses they would like to see open there.
Enrique Cruz, ALBOR executive director, and Yanni Deconescu, a GOLES representative, co-chaired the session. Cruz said, once they can “pinpoint” the kinds of businesses local residents prefer, the program will work with real estate brokers to attract these to the commercial strip.
Cruz told the small turnout of about 15 residents that while foot traffic along Clinton hasn’t dropped, retail business has, in part due to rising rents.
“I would say that that it’s a result of the gentrification that has happened in the neighborhood,” Cruz said. “This corridor has been very important to us, and in the last five years a lot of businesses have left it. We’re at a 20 percent vacancy rate and that’s unacceptable.”
Cruz said he has already met with various Clinton St. merchants and that the meetings have been “very productive.” He also said that in his initial contacts with several local landlords, they, too, have been receptive to the business attraction program’s goals.
“They tell me that they’re aware that rising rents is very much a concern in the neighborhood and that they’re willing to work with us,” Cruz said. “They said they’re willing to be flexible in adjusting their rental rates because they know that the community wants this.”
At the meeting, residents were given the opportunity to identify the types of businesses they want brought to the Clinton St. corridor. One of the major requests was for some type of walk-in medical facility.
Democratic District Leader Anthony Feliciano favored a walk-in or emergency medical clinic with an emphasis on serving the neighborhood’s growing senior citizen population.
“In the next five years, one out of every 24 people in our neighborhood will be a senior citizen,” he said.
Cruz, who serves on Community Board 3 and the board of Gouverneur Health, responded, “We are already talking about establishing emergency care and walk-in facilities in the neighborhood.”
Other suggestions ranged from an affordable family-style restaurant and a piano bar with an emphasis on poetry and the arts to a community-supported agricultural center that would accept food stamps, and a fitness center.
Longtime local resident Carolyn Williams said she would like to see a job-training and placement center opened along Clinton, especially one that catered to unemployed low-income women.
“We need something to train and stimulate employment in the neighborhood,” she said.
Several residents also suggested the establishment of some type of storefront museum that paid homage to the neighborhood’s Jewish, Irish, Italian, German, Polish and Ukrainian immigrant past.
“It would be good to remember what was once here,” Feliciano agreed. “Remembering the past will help us go forward to the future.”
Maria Cortez, a GOLES member and owner of the El Maguey Y La Tuna Mexican restaurant, at 321 E. Houston St., said she would like to see a holistic center established on the street, offering everything from acupuncture to native healing arts.
Cortez added that her main concern was whether “landlords along Clinton St. will work with us.” She said that would be the key to attracting more retail businesses.
Cruz assured her that, so far, that support seems to be coming.
Another concern of hers, she said, was that the boutiques and hip cafes now operating along the corridor “open for six months and then close due to high rents. We need more stable businesses,” she said.
Named for George Clinton, a Revolutionary War general and U.S. vice president from 1804 until his death in 1812, Clinton St. has always been a street of many different faces. At the turn of the century, it was a main shopping strip for mostly Jewish Lower East Side immigrants. By the 1950s and ’60s, however, it had become a grim, graffiti-riddled stretch. Today, it’s home to hot restaurants along with several boutiques.
