A shuttered business in Fort Greene. Photo by Craig Hubert
COURIER LIFE, JULY 31-AUGUST 6, 2020 3
TO WALK
certain conditions were met.
These conditions were not
met,” Menchaca said in a
statement. “I strongly oppose
this application and will vote
no if it comes before the City
Council.”
Menchaca’s conditions
included the elimination of
hotels from the application,
a reduction in retail space,
and the creation of a public
technical high school,
among many others. He also
demanded last September
that the mayor promise city
funds for the community and
that locals create a legallybinding
community benefi ts
agreement — all before developers
submitted their rezoning
application to the city.
Industry City’s owners —
a partnership between Jamestown,
Angelo Gordon, and
Belvedere Capital — agreed to
bow to Menchaca’s demands.
But the owners, who had already
delayed the application’s
submission for months
at Menchaca’s request, submitted
the application in October
before Menchaca’s last
two conditions were met,
kicking off the city’s sevenmonth
land use review process
known as ULURP.
As of July 27, the Sunset
Park councilman still had not
received a funding promise
from the mayor or a fi nalized
community benefi ts agreement
from locals, prompting
him to ask developers to pull
their rezoning application.
“I am asking that Industry
City offi cially remove
their rezoning application
before the mayor restarts the
ULURP clock next month,”
Menchaca said.
An Industry City representative
suggested that developers
won’t seek another rezoning
if they decide to pull their
current application, but will
continue their planned redevelopment
of the space, which
now houses light manufacturing
companies and job training
and placement services
tailored for locals.
This time, though, developers
can pursue signifi cant
as-of-right renovations without
any community benefi ts
or input. While the current
zoning forbids Industry City’s
owners from building on top
of the existing structures or
leasing space to hotels and department
stores, the owners
can still conduct internal renovations
without having to answer
to the community.
“Reactivation will continue
with as-of-right uses,
but that leaves no requirement
to preserve manufacturing,
operate Innovation
Lab or other job training programs,
recruit neighborhood
residents for available jobs,
or support local initiatives,”
Silberstein said. “The community
benefi ts agreement
that is being drafted would
not move forward. Beyond
that, no reason to speculate
on future actions.”
BY BEN VERDE
More than half of Brooklyn’s
small businesses are
struggling to stay open
through the summer, according
to a recent survey
conducted by the Brooklyn
Chamber of Commerce.
Out of the 233 small businesses
studied, 53 percent
said they would struggle to
stay open during the next
three months, despite the
city entering phase four of
reopening, the study found.
Among those who responded,
rent was cited as
one of the biggest burdens
small businesses face, with
28 percent reporting that
they did not pay rent in July,
61 percent reporting that
their landlords did not offer
any form of rent relief, and 74
percent responding that rent
relief is “very important” to
helping small businesses.
“We’re seeing rent as
an almost universal challenge,”
said Randy Peers,
President of the Chamber.
“Whether it is Coney Island
businesses suffering from a
closed amusement park or
Brooklyn Heights businesses
whose customers have fl ed
the city, it’s clear that rent relief
is urgently needed.”
Conversely, businesses
that have managed to work
out some form of rent relief
with landlords say even a
slight decrease in their largest
overhead cost has made
adjusting to doing business
during the pandemic all the
more smooth for them.
“We’re lucky to feel like
we’re able to come back
fairly well to where we left
off,” said Ray Cross, owner of
Bushwick Print Lab, whose
landlords cut their rent from
$6,000 to $5,000 a month.
“Now it’s just a matter of
shaking the dust off.”
With the city in its fi -
nal phase of reopening but
the coronavirus showing
no signs of disappearing,
small businesses have had
to adapt to quickly to operating
during the pandemic economic
slowdown in order to
weather it out.
For Margaret Barrow,
owner of Brooklyn Granola,
this meant becoming an ecommerce
focused business,
and doubling down on partnerships
with other Blackowned
brands in similar positions
to stay afl oat.
“We had been hearing
about Black-owned businesses
kind of just disappearing,”
Barrow said. “We
did not want to be one of
those businesses.”
Brooklyn Granola was
able to partner with organizations
for the creation of
“black boxes” — packages
stocked with goods made by
Black entrepreneurs, and
have had their crunchy products
featured on new online
marketplaces.
“While we are still struggling,
we’re able to connect
with people in ways we were
not able to connect with them
before,” said Barrow.
While they have learned
to adapt, Barrow says there is
much more the government
could be doing to help businesses
like hers, such as commit
to help small operations
as much as they’ve helped
large fi rms, support small
companies with marketing,
and distribute as much aid
to e-commerce businesses as
they have to brick and mortar
operations.
“We kind of got left out of
the conversation,” she said.
Industry City
50 percent of boro
small businesses
facing fi nancial ruin
scrapping rezoning plans