Talking Points
At last, small business bill has a champion
BY SHARON WOOLUMS
For our lawmakers, when is enough enough?
The slow destruction of the Village continues
year after year while they “talk” about the importance
of small businesses and concoct yet another
survey to assess the damage.
How many iconic businesses must close because
merchants have no rights when their leases expire
before our local politicians fi nally take action to save
them? Soon another beloved Village business, the
40-year-old Cornelia St. Cafe will close in January.
But now, fi ve years after The Villager’s Small Business
Series began, there is some good news! Councilmmember
Ydanis Rodriguez, the prime sponsor of
the Small Business Jobs Survival Act, or S.B.J.S.A., is
standing up for mom-and-pops against the real estate
lobby, i.e. the Real Estate Board of New York.
At a press conference in Queens for mostly ethnic
media, Rodriguez made it clear he will fi ght to pass
legislation to stop the store closings and save jobs.
“For years, even before being elected, I have advocated
for the rights of immigrant families who are
not respected by government for their contributions
to our local economy,” Rodriguez said. “They are
treated as second-class citizens and their problems
have been ignored. Immigrants own the majority of
small businesses and thus create the majority of immigrant
jobs in New York City. They face a crisis to
survive, which means their workers also face a crisis
Councilmember Ydanis Rodriguez, left, and
“Small Business Godfather” Sung Soo Kim
shake on it: No changes to the S.B.J.S.A. that
would hurt mom-and-pop shops.
to survive. I call my bill the Immigrant Jobs Survival
Act because the immigrant employees are forgotten
victims in the out-of-control real estate speculation
that is destroying the American Dream for all small
business families.”
At the October hearing on the S.B.J.S.A., many testifi
ed that the bill must be changed before voted on.
Asked if there is any part of the bill nonnegotiable to
changes, Rodriguez, “I said I am open to changes if
they offer a better solution to stop the closings. But
this bill was written to give rights to commercial tenants
when their leases expired — rights needed to
keep long-established good businesses who are willing
and able to pay a fair rent in business, and rights
needed to negotiate fair lease terms.
“It’s a tenants’ rights bill and, as such, any changes
that would take away the rights of the tenants would
be nonnegotiable because the changes would harm
the intent of the law,” Rodriguez declared.
Now that the S.B.J.S.A. has 29 sponsors, it could
pass the City Council. Rodriguez has not yet had discussions
with Council Speaker Corey Johnson’s Offi
ce concerning changes to the bill. As the bill’s prime
sponsor, Rodriguez must approve any changes.
Sung Soo Kim, recognized as the “Godfather of
Immigrant Small Businesses,” endorsed Rodriguez
in the upcoming special election for public advocate.
Kim drafted the original version of S.B.J.S.A.
“I call upon all the city’s immigrant communities to
fully support Councilman Rodriguez for public advocate,”
Kim said. “He is a strong voice for immigrant
rights and will fi ght to see they receive justice and
fair treatment at City Hall. He knows from personal
experience our government has not done enough to
protect them, and that the role of small businesses is
vital to every immigrant community.”
The Cornelia Street Cafe: This one really hurts
BY MICHELE HERMAN
I got one of the landlords of the Cornelia Street Cafe
on the phone this morning, but as soon as I said
my name and “The Villager,” a gruff voice said “no
comment” and hung up. So that leaves me to tell the
sad story of the cafe’s imminent closing through the
eyes of owner Robin Hirsch.
If you’ve been to a poetry reading or concert in the
skinny basement room, you may remember the oftrepeated
credo of this charming British-German-Jewish
expat with former lives in theater and academia,
and one of the cafe’s three founders: We support the
arts by making frequent trips to the bar. Calvin Trillin
once immortalized Hirsch this way: It took a Brit to
reinvent the Village.
Cornelia Street, a cozy, rambling restaurant and
performance space with cheery red and white décor,
exposed brick, a moderately priced menu and a
vast assortment of wines, has announced its closing
on Jan. 2 after more than 40 years of business, many
expansions and awards for food, wine and culture.
There is still a slim chance of saving it, but the details
aren’t being made public and Hirsch is not hopeful.
And what has brought about the demise of this latest
beloved, still bustling local business? The usual,
according to Hirsch: “It’s about the rent.”
When the cafe opened in 1977, about half its current
size, the rent was an affordable $450. Over the
years, the building changed hands a few times. The
landlords were local people who asked for moderate
rent increases. Notably, the lawyer son of the longtime
plumber-turned-landlord came up with the equivalent
of a 30-year lease for Cornelia Street.
“It was very fair,” Hirsch recalled, “tied to the consumer
price index. It carried us through handily.”
The cafe had two opportunities to buy the building.
The fi rst time, Hirsch and his then-partners, a
pair of artists, couldn’t come up with the down payment.
The next time, Hirsch recalled, “We gathered
the money, but by the time we were ready, the owner
sold it to someone else, who fl ipped it and made a
huge profi t.”
Over the years, the cafe took over the two adjoining
spaces. But when Eugene McCarthy came to read his
poems early on, there wasn’t enough room. So they
famously cleaned out 50 years’ worth of accumulated
junk in the basement and turned it into arguably the
city’s narrowest performance space, referred to as
“the Downstairs.”
“I arrived in the U.S. in 1967,” Hirsch explained,
“and McCarthy was a heroic fi gure for me. That was
an incredible night. Every word sailed out and came
back home.”
The current landlords, Beach Lane Management,
own a lot of property in the city but are headquartered
in Westchester. Rent negotiations have been
quite different from those with the local plumber:
Cornelia asked for a 10-year extension with a 15%
rent increase; the landlord offered a 5-year extension
and a 50% increase.
The next time the lease was up, the cafe caught a
break because of residual effects of the 2008 recession.
But Hirsch ended up putting most of his family’s
life savings into keeping the place going.
“My incredibly supportive wife fi nally said, we
can’t do this anymore,” he said.
“Do you know the joke about how to make a million
dollars in the restaurant business?” he asked.
“Start with 10 million.”
The ins and outs of the ensuing negotiations are too
complex to detail. Suffi ce it to say there was a court
case, which Cornelia Street won, but the relentless
march of rent increases took its toll. Hirsch regrets
not having found a way to stabilize the place earlier.
Though he’s exhausted dealing with the costs, he
still has plenty of juice for the shows.
“Last night we had Russian poetry,” he told me,
“and before that, Swedish jazz singers, and the Lazour
Brothers.”
When I asked about the Brothers, he told me excitedly
that they will be the next Simon and Garfunkel.
Recently, Hirsch got offi cial 501c3 nonprofi t status
for the Downstairs, which has quite a following.
“David Amram the musician wrote to say, ‘I will
follow you and we will do Cornelia Street in exile,’”
he reported.
One question much on Villagers’s minds watching
the recent loss of so many well-loved local anchors
(Tortilla Flats, Amy’s Bread, Gourmet Garage, the
Integral Yoga health food store): Does the blame
lie mostly with normal market fl uctuations, with a
changing economy battered by technology, with onerous
regulations, or is it just about greedy landlords?
I googled the cafe’s landlords. The guy who hung
up on me before I had a chance to say why I was calling?
He’s on a New York Press list of “50 Most Loathsome
New Yorkers.” His partner? A disbarred lawyer
who has done time in Rikers.
Schneps Media TVG December 20, 2018 13