Iconic mom and pops stores throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn have been disappearing at a rapid pace and the Sunnyside Chamber of Commerce is backing a city council bill that it believes will stop the hemorrhaging before development and rent hikes set in here.
The bill called the Small Business Jobs Survival Act aims to provide commercial tenants with more clout at the bargaining table when their lease comes up for renewal. Furthermore, it also requires landlords to provide greater notification if they don’t intend to renew a lease due to development.
The Sunnyside Chamber board unanimously decided last month to advocate for the passage of the bill.
The bill has recently been pushed by a group called #SaveNYC that claims that New York’s small businesses continue to close at unprecedented levels and are being replaced by big-box stores such as banks and retail chains.
12 comments:
As commercial rents throughout NYC skyrocket, nothing can ensure that small businesses will survive.
On,y commercial rent control can save these mom and pop places. Otherwise, their time will come.
I save money by shopping at big box stores.
What's wrong with that?
KRAMER: Jerry, you know that shoe repair place at the end of the block? Well, if they don't get some business, they're gonna have to shut down and make way for one of those gourmet coffee or cookie stores.
ELAINE: I like coffee.
GEORGE: I like "cookies."
KRAMER: Yeah, of course you do. And do you know why? Because you're a bunch of yuppies. It's your go-go corporate takeover lifestyles that are driving out these Mom and Pop stores and destroying the fabric of this neighborhood.
GEORGE: Well, what's so great about a Mom and Pop store? Let me tell you something. If my Mom and Pop ran a store, I wouldn't shop there.
Fat chance once they roof over the yards, or even when the merchants get greedy like in Astoria when the former owners got bought out, or rents are raised.
Shame. Sunnyside has that old Queens feeling. Now they have new zoning and new buildings and new opportunities for bank branches to take up half a block.
Look what Jimmy is doing to the rest of his district. Time to move up Jimmy and out of the nabe. That will be expen$ive - time to do 'fund' raising!
Alas, the only other alternative to enforced, commercial rent control is the onslaught of hideous commercial strip malls that have completely dominated Manhattan, as well as all other formerly stable community neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs.
Ironically, New York is starting to resemble the generic strip malls of almost everywhere else---and everywhere else (that continues to maintain American middle class-friendly environments to the many newly relocated and transplanted streams of Mom & Pop commerce), is finally started to resemble what Old New York used to be.
Unless commercial rent control is sternly enforced, this is exactly what will happen to Sunnyside. But, hey look! Asheville, North Carolina is flourishing with interesting, Bohemian, privately owned boutiques, book shops, cafes, clothing stores and everything else that is now bereft in New York City---now, a hollow place of nihilism for hollow corporate, zombie robots of epic, humanitarian fail!
Mom and Pop stores are the current dinosaurs. The only ones that will survive is where they own the building.
Don't waste tax money on supporting failing businesses.
Young people, hipsters, metrosexuals, yuppies, etc. don't care about small business. They want it now and cheap.
Only people nostalgic for the past support nonsense like this. No one cares anymore. Move on, log onto amazon.com, then wait for the drone to drop the delivery at your door.
Great idea, deciding to "save" the mom and pop stores. And perfect timing too. At this point, I think there are about four or five left in Sunnyside. In a few years, someone might even decide to save the one-family home in Western Queens. Quick, the cows are all gone! Close the barn doors! SMDH
COMMERCIAL RENT CONTROL? How about limiting how much property sells for?
How about limiting the amount of tax on a commercial property? It has to be passed on somehow.
BTW....Whatever happened to the Sunnyside Foundation?
The only small businesses that seem to be doing well are all of those bars. Big drinkers in Sunnyside.
They support their local mom and pop gin mills.
Sunnyside needs a few mom and pop topless bars. Mom can put on a grass skirt and do a few gyrations while pop plays the banjo.
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