Three small businesses that have served Battery Park City for decades are being forced out, because the landlord wants to rent to a more upscale tenant, according to multiple sources directly familiar with the situation. The three business, which occupy adjoining spaces on the ground floor of the 395 South Avenue building within Gateway Plaza (at the corner of Liberty Street and South End Avenue) are the Cafe Express delicatessen, the Blooming Nail and Spa salon, and the News Plus newsstand. A spokesman for the Lefrak Organization (which owns Gateway Plaza) did not respond to a request for comment. But employees at all three businesses confirm that they will be closing before the end of February.
Rashid, a counter-person at Cafe Express said, “we will all have to go find news jobs, because we lost our lease.” At News Plus, proprietors Rahmn and Vinnie tell a similar story. “We have no place else to go, so we will have to shut our business,” said Rahmn. “I offered to double the rent we were paying,” said Vinnie, “but the landlord didn’t want us at any price. We have been here since 1994.”
At Blooming Nail and Spa, where Grace Koh has done business since 2000, “we have been struggling since the financial crisis started in 2008,” she says. “Things have just started to get better, and we were looking forward to new customers as One World Trade Center opened.” Ms. Koh estimates that more than half of her staff will lose their jobs, but hopes that some can be absorbed into Cove Nails, another salon she operates at 21 South End Avenue.
The Lefrak Organization declined to reveal what will replace the small businesses being forced to shut their doors, but a source familiar with the situation says that Gateway plans to consolidate the three adjoining retail units into a single space, which it plans to lease to the Le Pain Quotidien chain of bakery-restaurants, a giant company with more than 200 locations in 18 countries.
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| Mohammad Rahman has been working at the newsstand since 2004 |
This account is confirmed by a staff member at Le Pain Quotidien’s location in Battery Park City, at Two River Terrace. This employee, who asked not to be named, said, “we’ll be opening in Battery Park City later this year, but we’re not yet sure of thetiming, because we don’t know how long construction will take.” This source was unsure of whether theRiver Terrace location would continue after the Gateway storefront opens.
Glenn Plaskin, president of the Gateway Plaza Tenants Association, said, “it’s disheartening to watch three of our small neighborhood businesses being evicted and replaced by larger more impersonal companies, a troubling trend that began when Gateway Cleaners was replaced by Chipotle. These local merchants stuck with us after the events of 9/11, and remained in the neighborhood, whereas other businesses might not have been interested in being here. Gateway has, for the last 30 years, been a uniquely friendly close-knit neighborhood, populated by the mom-and-pop businesses on South End Avenue that comprise a true community, and we would have wanted these merchants to remain.”
Matthew Fenton