Economic morbidity takes Manhattan

 

THE CITY

 Simply put, the rents are too damn high,” said Jason Hairston, explaining on Thursday why he’d closed his popular 14th St. eatery, The Nugget Spot, in September of 2020. 

“I was on the way,” Hairston recalled. “I had spent money on a logo and redesigning my store. I was getting ready to open another location in Columbus Circle [in the new Turnstyle Underground Market] and to be in Citifield for the 2020 season. I’d been open for seven years and I was getting ready, getting my sauce made, my flour made — things were lining up and falling into place and then we had to shut our doors.”

In a business with thin margins to begin with — and uncertainty about how long the pandemic, and the city’s shutdown, would last — “there was no way I was going to make money,” said Hairston, a lifelong New Yorker who’s now living in New Jersey while consulting for a Korean hot dog franchise.

“The only reason I would be there would be to support my landlord,” he added.

 The Nugget Spot was one of the 4,040 private establishments the city lost between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the fourth quarter of 2021, according to a new report from New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, as huge losses in Manhattan wiped out gains in Brooklyn. Over the same two-year pandemic stretch, “jobs in New York City fell by approximately 295,000, or 7 percent,” as THE CITY previously reported.

 he rare citywide drop in the number of private establishments since 2019 — including a loss of 2,023 retail locations along with 2,482 private household employers, as families let go of on-the-books nannies and maids during the pandemic — was easily the biggest recorded at least since the feds implemented their current counting system in 1990. 

Since then, the number had steadily gone up except during the recession in the early 1990s and the years just after the 9/11 attacks. 

Manhattan’s share of the city’s private establishments dropped below 50% for the first time, according to Lander’s report, as Brooklyn gained 1,267 over the same period — continuing a 30-year growth trend in which the borough has surged from 17.8% of the city’s total in 1990 to 24.4% in 2021. (The Bronx gained 109 private establishments and Staten Island eight between 2019 and 2021, while Queens lost 158.)

Queens has reached a level of grand larcenies not seen in 30 years

NY Post 

Queens is being hit hard by a dramatic surge in thefts this year — almost topping levels not seen since the NYPD started compiling statistics decades ago — and business owners are calling on cops to step up.

As of last Sunday, the borough had recorded 1,236 grand larcenies in 2022, which is only a few dozen shy of the tally logged during the same period in 1993, the earliest for which records are available, when 1,326 major thefts occurred, a Post analysis of police data shows.

A store manager of JMart on Main Street in Flushing told The Post his store loses up to $2,000 on any given day.

“I’ve never seen it like this before,” the manager, Lee said. “Maybe it’s the pandemic. It’s bad. Before you’d have one or two [ shoplifters] per week but now it’s like almost every day.”

This year’s tally is more than double what it was in the same time period last year and more than 40 percent over what it was two years ago. It’s also 75 percent more than 12 years ago. 

While grand larcenies have been up citywide, with police data showing a more than 60 percent uptick from last year and a 6 percent increase from pre-pandemic times, businesses owners in just a few Queens neighborhoods have been disproportionately hit harder.

Nearly half of the major thefts in the borough have been recorded in only three of the county’s 16 patrol areas.

Governor Kathy still thinks its the pandemic of the unvaccinated

 

NY Post

Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered offices, restaurants and shops statewide to require that staff and customers either show proof of vaccination or wear masks — or face a $1,000 fine per violation.

The new mandate on businesses — many of which are struggling to recover from pandemic lockdowns and battling workforce shortages — will take effect Monday and applies statewide.

Businesses that fail to enforce the rules could be subject to civil and criminal penalties, including a maximum fine of $1,000 for each violation.

It will remain in force until Jan. 15, when it could be extended, officials said. The governor’s office said local health departments will be in charge of enforcement.

“I speak all over the state and they’re asking for help. They’ve done everything they can, I applaud our local governments, our county executives, our county administrators and the local public health departments for doing what they can do,” Hochul told reporters after an unrelated event in Manhattan on Friday. “I said I’ll give them air cover, I will give them the protection.”

“This was completely avoidable — [a] completely avoidable circumstance,” the governor continued. “This is a crisis of the unvaccinated.”

Poor poor Kathy, poor stupid stupid Kathy. 

Businesses and schools in Kew Gardens and Far Rockaway will have to shut down for a month because of rise of COVID-19 infections

 

 

NY Daily News

New York City is moving to shut down schools, restaurant dining and nonessential businesses in nine Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods undergoing a surge in COVID-19 cases, Mayor de Blasio said Sunday.

The shutdown — which would mark a significant reversal to the painstaking, months-long process of reopening the city — will start Wednesday pending state approval, he added.

“The goal here is to do everything we can to stop something bigger from happening right now,” Hizzoner said at a press conference.

“It will require sacrifice. We’re talking about people who have been through so much,” he continued. “But it’s something that we believe is necessary to keep this city from going backwards towards where we were months ago.”

The city is targeting nine areas, including predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, where cases began to flare up last month. Those include Bensonhurst, Borough Park, Gravesend, Midwood and Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, along with Far Rockaway and Kew Gardens in Queens.

If the state approves de Blasio’s plan, students in those areas will be able attend public and private school in person on Monday and Tuesday, but will have to shift to online-only learning starting Wednesday.

“Those two days are going to give us crucial time to make sure students have the devices they need for the remote learning tenure they will have,” said Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza. “They’ll allow us also to communicate with families, to set up schedules for remote learning.”

Both indoor and outdoor dining would be banned, but houses of worship will be allowed to stay open for now.

THE CITY

Most New York City schools haven’t even been open a full week, and already Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plans have hit a major setback: He wants to shut down campuses as of Wednesday in nine ZIP codes where coronavirus positivity rates had surpassed a 3% over at least the past seven days.

The closures, which de Blasio announced Sunday, would affect about 100 public schools in Far Rockaway, Southern Brooklyn, and Central Queens neighborhoods. Some 200 private schools in those areas are also slated to close.

Children in closed schools will begin learning remotely on Wednesday, less than a week after all but one district building officially reopened for hybrid learning, a model that allows students to learn in-person one to three days a week in socially distanced classrooms, while learning remotely the rest of the time.

Schools will be allowed to stay open through Tuesday so teachers can help students prepare for fully virtual learning and hand out additional devices, de Blasio said.

That decision immediately prompted outcry from some city lawmakers and educators who wondered why they need to be closed imminently but are safe enough to stay open for the next three days.

The mayor “just announced that it’s NOT safe to go to school in 9 zip codes, but is encouraging kids to get 1 more day inside school before they close,” tweeted Councilman Mark Treyger, who is the chairman of the city council’s education committee.

New York City is back open

NY Post

The Big Apple will enter Phase One of reopening Monday amid the coronavirus — with retail shops set to start curbside or in-store pickup service as construction and manufacturing rev up again.

“It’s a big day for New York City,’’ Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Sunday, adding that the Apple “has met all the [health] metrics,’’ including the one involving its number of new infections, which dropped to 781 cases, or around 1 percent of those tested, Saturday — the lowest rate since March 16.

The city’s subways should be at 95 percent of their pre-pandemic service by Monday to help get people around, officials have said.  Masks are required and will be handed out to straphangers as needed, although ridership is expected to be no more than 15 percent of its usual level.
New York City is the final region in the state to go to Phase One.

In addition to retail curbside service and in-store pickups and drop-offs, construction is allowed to resume, as is manufacturing, wholesale trade and agriculture work under the state guidelines.

Retail-industry groups have predicted a trickling of city businesses starting up again Monday, as they begin to maneuver the new normal of social distancing and heightened health concerns amid the deadly pandemic.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday that he is still “cautious’’ about moving into Phase Two, which would allow many workers to return to their offices, restaurants and bars to offer outdoor seated service, retail shops to operate in-store business and other places such as hair salons to reopen, although at 50 percent capacity.

While Phase Two could occur as soon as two weeks from Monday, or June 22, under state guidelines, Hizzoner repeated that he wasn’t ready to commit to that date, instead saying, “Think about the beginning of July as the target.

“I want to keep expectations low on that,” he said of Phase Two.

“We are not like other regions of the state. We were the epicenter, and we remain the epicenter,” the mayor said.

Get this fucking straight; The only reason de Blasio killed his dumbass curfew is because the city is reopening tomorrow. And as this article shows, the city isn't fucking ready at all.

And get this also straight; because de Blasio's daughter got arrested protesting against the NYPD, he decided to ground the whole city for a week.

 

DOT is at it again

From the Queens Tribune:

Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi (D-Forest Hills) and Councilwoman Karen Koslowitz (D-Forest Hills) are calling on the city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) not to follow through on plans to expand loading zones on Austin Street’s busy commercial strip.

Hevesi and Koslowitz said that they are attempting to facilitate a dialogue among the DOT and the Forest Hills Chamber of Commerce and local business merchants, who say that the expansion of the zones would limit parking for their customers.

The DOT has proposed a variety of changes to Austin Street, including new 60-foot loading zones that would provide 36 spaces with 30-minute limits for trucks. The zones could be utilized from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Monday through Friday.

Between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., there would be eight loading zones providing 24 spaces, while three loading zones with nine spaces would be available between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m.

“If the businesses that these loading zones are intended to help are against them, then what is the point of this proposal?” Hevesi said. “Unless the DOT provides some reasonable explanation, then this remains an unnecessary solution in search of a problem.”

In a statement, a DOT spokeswoman said that the aim of the initiative is to establish curbside regulations that help to ease congestion and promote safety.

Is this the way to stop rampant K2 use?

From CBS 2:

Neighborhoods demanding a crackdown on the dangerous synthetic drug K2 rallied today describing the way the narcotic poisons their communities.

The neighborhoods might be different but the effects are the same, reports CBS2’s Marc Liverman.

CBS2 exclusive video taken back in 2016 show people on K2 passed out on chairs in the middle of the sidewalk, seen again in 2018 all around New York City.

Others are seen leaning against buildings and nodding out as mothers pushed their strollers close by. That was in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx, and now it’s happening in Williamsbridge.

Just ask pastor Janet Hodge.

“Every morning that we arrive, we find that people have used the bathroom on our property,” she said. “Every day I come outside and I find that there are men and women loitering on our stoops and they are in a stupor.”

“We have people walking around zombie-like, in catatonic states, up and down White Plains Road,” said State Senator Jamaal Bailey.

At a rally Monday, local politicians and residents said enough is enough. King introducing new legislation that would hold landlords and area businesses accountable.

“The store will be shut down and you will not be able to reopen the same business or rent it out to the same business,” he said.

The new legislation would also slap on a $100,000 fine on any business caught selling the synthetic cannabinoid.

Shovel shaming

From PIX11:

As the temperature starts to rise, and the snow slowly starts to melt, some New York City sidewalks remain covered by their white blankets - and that's a problem a councilman is working to fix.

City Councilman Justin Brannan hopes to do it by introducing what he calls "Shovels of Shame." He wants fines for failure to shovel to rise. In the meantime, he's started posting pictures of snowfall scofflaws on social media with the Shovels of Shame tag. He's hoping if extra fines won't convince the businesses to shovel, maybe public pressure will.

"When the average small business owner gets out there and shovels, when the average homeowner gets out there and shovels, you would think that some of these big corporate chains can get out there and shovel just like everybody else," Brannan said. "If you're not going to do it, then we're going to put you on blast. That's what Shovels of Shame is all about."

Right now the city requires responsible parties to shovel their sidewalk between 4 and 14 hours after the snow stops falling. If you don't, fines range between $100 and $350. Brannan wants to increase the fines for chain retailers. The new penalties would range from $1,000 to $5,000 and would apply to businesses with 10 or more locations.

Pool party needs to be shut down

"I've been trying for five years to shut this down. All summer long there are strangers in and out of the backyard, cars parked all over the street, children's birthday parties, no lifeguard, no CPR equipment and no bathroom access! I've had children urinating on my fence!! Any ideas on how to stop this?

Here's a recent ad: https://beta.groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/kghsingles/conversations/topics/19289

I've contacted DOH, DOB, CB8, etc. just sent to Avella's office today as he seems to be the only one who gets anything done in Queens." - anonymous

Diner deathwatch

From Crains:

Historians devoted to the study of diners—yes, that's a thing—estimate there were 1,000 diners in the city a generation ago. There are now only 398 establishments that describe themselves as diners or coffee shops, according to city Department of Health records. Recent casualties include Soup Burg on the Upper East Side, the Café Edison in midtown and the El Greco Diner in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. (See sidebar below for our explanation of exactly what a diner is.)

The star-shaped, 1962-vintage Market Diner in midtown figures to be next. In July, The Real Deal reported that developer Moinian Group had filed with the city to demolish the 11th Avenue building and replace it with a 13-story condominium.

Indeed, something of a diner deathwatch exists among New Yorkers concerned about losing their favorite places for affordable comfort food. Earlier this year, a rumor surfaced on Reddit and Twitter that the popular Neptune Diner in Queens would close, which owner George Katsihtis denies. The clock is also ticking for the Evergreen Diner, which occupies part of the first floor of a parking garage on West 47th Street, just off Times Square. The Evergreen generates about $1.5 million in annual revenue, but barely makes a profit. "One day they will raise my rent and I will close," said co-owner Ilias "Lou" Argena, who pays about $25,000 a month.

"To me, it's not surprising that diners are closing in New York," said Jan Whitaker, a historian in Amherst, Mass., who writes a blog called Restauranting Through History. "Given how expensive everything is in New York, the wonder is they survive at all."

2 long time businesses close

From the Queens Courier:

Seafood restaurant Pier 25A in Bayside closed its doors this week after 33 years on Northern Boulevard.

According to Pier 25A’s website, the restaurant was forced to close after the landlord declined to renew the lease for the iconic building, which is designed to resemble a wooden ship, at 215-16 Northern Blvd.

The landlord opted instead to tear the building down and build new storefronts over the next year.

Also got word that the Hilltap Tavern, which is probably older than anyone reading this post, closed for good Monday. It was located on Grand Avenue in Elmhurst.

One business replaced by another in residential zone

It looks like World Financial Group has vacated the premises on Himrod Street which was featured in this July 2013 post and now Legacy Planning Solutions has moved in. And although WFG they claimed they were moving into these digs on Metropolitan Avenue, that has yet to happen.

Bill threatens to take away business licenses of scofflaws

From the Daily News:

A new City Council bill would yank the licenses of businesses that rack up thousands of dollars in unpaid fines.

The city is owed $1.5 billion in uncollected penalties on building and fire code, sanitation, health and other violations - all judgments handled by the Environmental Control Board.

Under the bill being introduced by Councilman Ben Kallos (D-Manhattan) Wednesday, businesses could lose their licenses or permits if they have $50,000 overdue for two years, or $25,000 overdue for five years. They’d also get hit if they owe $10,000 and fail to make three straight payments on a payment plan.

“There’s $1.5 billion that’s sitting on the table,” Kallos said. “Passing these laws to revoke permits would do a lot to improve quality of life.”

The legislation would mean construction sites that rack up debt for dangerous building code violations would have their permits taken away.

Other targets could be restaurants that don’t pay their health code fines, or businesses that leave sidewalks covered in litter or don’t shovel snow.

City keeps driving jobs away

From the Daily News:

No amount of scrumptious dessert makes the news go down easier that Junior’s, maker of Brooklyn’s signature cheesecake, will soon shut its Queens bakery and reopen in New Jersey.

The move comes not because Junior’s is fading; its flagship restaurant beams brightly at the foot of Flatbush Ave. But the company, which churns out more than a million cheesecakes a year, cannot justify the cost of industrial real estate in the five boroughs.

Founded in 1950, Junior’s joins an exodus of established New York food-makers.

Streit’s, the venerable matzo baker still in its 1925 Lower East Side home, is decamping to Pennsylvania while pondering a move to Rockland or Westchester counties.

Hummus giant Sabra left Queens for Virginia.

Stella D’oro, whose heavenly scents once kissed the Deegan Expressway; Taystee, which moved its 400 Flushing baking jobs to Pennsylvania after fleecing the city for tax breaks; Bazzini, the Bronx firm that roasted Yankee Stadium’s nuts; and Old London Foods, a mighty maker of Melba toast, linger only in the sense-memories of New Yorkers.

Firms like those were canaries in the coal mine, lured away with the honey of tax breaks or repelled by the vinegar of union combat. Junior’s is the coal mine. That an employer of 60 felt it had no choice but to leave is a distressing sign of the city’s inability to retain middle-class jobs.

Among other forces, conversions of factories to living spaces — hello, Williamsburg and Long Island City — have helped drive the cost of manufacturing space out of reach.

DeBlasio now making friends with big business

From the NY Times:

Gone are the self-conscious jokes, the dry references to business leaders as a tough crowd. His vocabulary is careful, smoothed free of buzzwords likely to offend. Mayor Bill de Blasio still talks about inequality, but for these audiences he emphasizes that the causes of New York City’s economic divide are complex and global in nature.

More than a year after taking office, Mr. de Blasio is engaged in his first sustained courtship of the city’s most powerful private sector executives. The mayor, who ran for office railing against “moneyed interests,” is now making what corporate chieftains describe as a long-delayed, sometimes awkward, attempt to meet them on their home turf.

He has wooed them in private phone calls and unannounced meetings at City Hall, and has staged several striking events: On a visit last month to Morgan Stanley, for example, he posed for selfies with employees and joked that moving into Gracie Mansion was like living in a museum. Mr. de Blasio, as part of his getting-to-know-you tour, also dined recently with about a dozen business and nonprofit leaders at the home of Ralph Schlosstein, chief executive of the investment firm Evercore Partners.

As a candidate, Mr. de Blasio defined himself in opposition to big business, vowing to increase taxes on the rich and to turn the page on the policies of his billionaire predecessor, Michael R. Bloomberg. Upon taking office, he quickly pressed for a new tax on wealthy New Yorkers to pay for universal prekindergarten. (Mr. de Blasio got a prekindergarten program, but state lawmakers blocked the tax.)

Mr. de Blasio has not abandoned his populist rhetoric: Meeting with finance leaders at City Hall in early March, he urged them to invest in companies that pay their workers well. Addressing the Association for a Better New York, a business-minded civic group, at the Pierre Hotel, he called on companies to raise wages voluntarily.

The mayor also hosted a meeting for liberal activists at Gracie Mansion on April 2 and announced plans for a national agenda intended to address economic inequality.

Yet business leaders say they have also detected a softening of Mr. de Blasio’s tone and posture, and perhaps new traces of ambivalence about wielding the executive set as a political foil.

Business owner underreported income

From the Daily News:

The owner of an Edible Arrangements store in Queens has admitted to gorging himself on tax money, prosecutors said Thursday.

Maurice Letman, 42, of Springfield Gardens, pleaded guilty to lining his pockets with $185,000 forbidden fruit — money that should have gone to the city and state.

“Sales taxes are meant for the public treasury — not to line the pockets of businessmen,” said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.

Letman has agreed to repay the full $185,000 plus interest and penalties.

He was charged last year with underreporting income from his Springfield Blvd. franchise of the popular fruit basket chain.

College Point Corporate park is a waste of dough

From the Times Ledger:

The city Economic Development Corporation is exploring different options that would enable businesses in the College Point Corporate Park to have more of a say in how the park’s funds are being used.

About 50 businesses in the College Point Corporate Park — a 550-acre office park with more than 200 companies and 6,000 employees — are required to pay into the park’s improvement fund. The fund finances the park’s management and maintenance program as well as business assistance training, beautification projects, such as tree planting, cleanups and signage, and capital improvements.

But the businesses contend that the money is not being used efficiently. Over the last 20 years, the fund has accumulated roughly $5 million, said Vito Tautonico, director of constituent services for City Councilman Paul Vallone (D-Bayside).

“The big issue is that 50 or so of the businesses that are in the corporate park are mandated by the deeds to pay into the improvement fund every year and a lot of businesses were very upset that they weren’t seeing any improvements,” Tautonico said at a recent College Point Civic & Taxpayers Association meeting. “They’re essentially paying a tax that did nothing for them.”

The options being considered include the creation of a business improvement district, a board of directors, an advisory board or a nonprofit made up of the businesses, the EDC, community members and members of Community Board 7.

Businesses being fined in the middle of the night

From The Forum:

The city Sanitation Department this week promised to investigate an area civic organization’s claim that the agency is engaging in an “unfair practice of issuing tickets to property owners in the middle of the night for garbage dumped outside their properties.”

According to the Woodhaven Residents’ Block Association, in a statement issued on Monday, it is a common nighttime occurrence for people to dump trash outside Jamaica Avenue storefronts. Then, DSNY agents write summonses in the middle of the night, fining the victimized property owners for failing to dispose of garbage that they had actually never seen. These owners, the WRBA said, are getting fined for dumping “they could not possibly have prevented or corrected.” Additionally, the civic detailed how the agents many times take the trash with them when they write the ticket, without providing any photographs to the fined party.

“The property owners have no evidence of the infractions for which they are being fined,” the WRBA noted. “This practice not only adds insult to injury; it also costs struggling business owners hundreds of dollars.”

The community organization indicated that it, too, had been ticketed in the overnight manner. In recent weeks, the WRBA has received Sanitation fines at 1:05 a.m. and 3:30 a.m. for trash dumped long after business hours outside its Jamaica Avenue storefront.

In a message addressed to Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia, members of the civic called on her to put an end to the practice. However, “previous efforts to communicate with Sanitation Department personnel have not resulted in any discernible changes,” the WRBA wrote.

Businesses to boycott

I saw the above front page story on the cover of this week's Ridgewood Times, and I said hmmm, signs are a problem throughout the city, so what can we do about it? Taking them down is one tactic, and reporting them to DSNY is another. But I had another idea: Compile a list of slobby businesses and let the world see just who they should boycott. I started a photo collection of ones I found in my travels, and I ask that you send me shots of the signs in your neighborhood as well and I'll add them to the album.

We can skip the lost/found flyers, the ones about yard sales and charity fundraisers. Let's go after the for-profit people who think city property, like lampposts and tree pits, are there to provide free advertising for them.


And here's the link to report them to DSNY.

Junior's owner has change of heart on development plans

From the NY Times:

Junior’s Restaurant has earned a lot of superlatives since it opened in Downtown Brooklyn on Election Day in 1950, among them the one that adorns every orange takeout box: “The Best Cheesecake in N.Y. — New York Magazine” (a distinction that dates to 1973, but still).

It was headed for another distinction this year, when Alan Rosen, who took over the business in 1992 and whose family has owned the restaurant since its first cheesecake, decided to sell the two-story building. In a neighborhood where real estate brokers talk about record-setting prices and rents the way pilots used to talk about breaking the sound barrier, the sale was major news. Offers to buy and build an apartment tower poured in from Brooklyn, Manhattan and abroad. The highest bid: $450 per buildable square foot, well over the previous high for Brooklyn of $350, for a total of $45 million in cash.

If the right firm buys up the land and air rights for the entire triangular block around Junior’s Restaurant in Brooklyn, shown, it would be quite possible to build to heights of 1,000 feet or more.

That’s a lot of cheesecake,” said Mr. Rosen — who, nevertheless, and after much agonizing, a visit to his therapist and a series of sleepless nights, turned it down.

Mr. Rosen turned down a bid as high as $450 per buildable square foot, well over the previous high for Brooklyn of $350, for a total of $45 million in cash. Credit Kirsten Luce for The New York Times
“This is Junior’s identity, is this building. This is the one where I came on my first dates. It’s where my family spent most of their waking hours,” he said in an interview on Monday, about a week after making his decision, as he contemplated his stewardship of a legend in Brooklyn. “Not the one down the street, not the one below 20 stories of condos. This one.”

When Mr. Rosen, 45, put the site up for sale in February, he said he would insist that the buyer bring Junior’s back to the ground floor of any new building. In the meantime, he said, the restaurant would open at another Brooklyn location and temporarily relocate the flagship within the neighborhood. (It also has outposts in Times Square, Grand Central Terminal and at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut.) But he wavered over the summer, saying he would consider leaving the building permanently for the right offer.

The $45 million offer would not have accommodated a ground-floor Junior’s.

Mr. Rosen said he also received offers worth half that amount that would have allowed the restaurant to return, but after receiving disappointed calls from customers and talking it over with his longtime employees, his wife and his 81-year-old father, Walter Rosen, who still walks around the dining room some mornings, he decided he could not give it up.

Though Mr. Rosen insists the turnabout was a personal decision, not an attempt to preserve the old Downtown Brooklyn of which Junior’s is one of the few remnants, he is bucking a trend.