24 THE QUEENS COURIER • QUEENS BUSINESS • AUGUST 13, 2020 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
queens business
Astoria small businesses
owners call for rent forgiveness
BY ANGÉLICA ACEVEDO
aacevedo@schnepsmedia.com
@QNS
State Senator Michael Gianaris stood with
some small business owners of Astoria and
Long Island City to call for rent forgiveness
on Wednesday, Aug. 5.
In front of Katch Astoria, located at 31-19
Newtown Ave., Gianaris spoke about
his legislation that would forgive three
months of rent for small business
owners, tenants and some homeowners.
Th e Astoria representative
introduced the bill (S8125A) back
in March.
“Not nearly enough has been
done to help our small businesses
survive the pandemic,
and now we’re starting
to feel more dramatically
the consequences of
that inaction,” he said.
“As many as a third of
small businesses may
never reopen because
of what’s happening,
because of the fact
that they haven’t gotten
enough assistance from
their government.”
According to areport
by the New York
Hospitality Alliance,
83 percent of New
York restaurants, bars
and nightclubs did not
pay their full July rent,
with nearly 40 percent unable to pay anything
at all.
Gianaris said he craft ed the bill with the
help of his small business advisory council
months ago to off er rent relief.
Th e proposal would allow residential and
commercial tenants to have 90 days of rent
forgiven if they lost their work or closed due
to the COVID-19 pandemic.When it was
fi rst written, it was intended to be 90 days
from the beginning of the emergency, but
Gianaris said that will be amended to clarify
exactly what time it would need to be in
eff ect if it passes in the Legislature.
“If we forced their businesses to shut
down, why are we still insisting that they
pay rent for a business that’s not operating?”
he said. “Let’s give them at least that help. By
the way, that alone is not enough, but at least
that would be something to allow them to
keep functioning now as we start to slowly
reopen.”
Roseanne McSorley, co-owner of the relatively
new gastropub Katch Astoria, said
businesses won’t be able to run the way they
did before.
“Every corner here has a closed business,
we are the last man standing on this street,”
said McSorley, who also heads Gianaris’
small business council. “Our landlords are
trying to work with us but they have bills
as well. We have three and four months of
rents piling up, our Con Edison bills, our
supply bills. We just can’t survive; we need
targeted relief.”
McSorley also spoke during last week’s
small business presser at Queens Borough
Hall, organized by Queens Together and
the Queens Chamber of Commerce, where
small business owners called on elected offi -
cials to off er real economic relief.
Shawn Dixon, owner of Otis and Finn
barbershop with locations in Long Island
City and Greenpoint, said small businesses
operate “as much like a family as they do
businesses.”
Dixon and McSorley recently wrote an
op-ed for the New York Daily News calling
for bold relief from city and state lawmakers.
Shawn Dixon, owner of Otis and Finn
barbershop in LIC/Greenpoint, said they
closed for 3 months bc they believed “we’re
all in this together.”
“But now here we are, having put thousands
of dollars into our business to reopen
& like many of our neighbors, 3 months
behind on rent”
“When the governor and the mayor called
on us to close our business indefi nitely this
year as part of the PAUSE program, we did
that in the name of public health,” Dixon
said. “We went over three months, 95 days,
with almost no revenue at all. But we did
that because we believed our leaders when
they said, ‘We’re in this together.’ But now
here we are fi ve months later, having put
thousands of dollars back into our business
to reopen, and like many of our neighbors,
three months behind on rent and small business
have been left alone holding the bag.”
Dixon and McSorley later mentioned
Queens Together’s newpetition to garner
support for actions like creatingan immediate
path to commercial rent relief, fund
a new round ofNYC Department of Small
Business Services’ disaster grants and loans
with improved guidelines and make permanent
the caps on third-party app delivery
fees for restaurants.
At the presser, Gianaris mentioned that
nonprofi ts are also at risk of disappearing.
He introduced Sheila Lewandowski, the
executive director of the Chocolate Factory
Th eater in Long Island City. She spoke about
theaters being one of the fi rst to shut down
as a result of COVID-19.
“We had a show that was in production.
Th e artist had been in residence for three
weeks. Th e set sat there empty … for three
and a half months. We had six other shows
that were scheduled between that time and
the end of June — they all had to be canceled,”
she said. “We paid all the artists even
though we had no box offi ce, even though
our grants have been cut, even though we’re
expecting more grants to be cut from the city
and state to be cut because of the fi nancial
situation — yet our rent continues. Our electric
has gone up, our major medical has gone
up, our regular insurance bills have gone up.”
Photos by Angélica Acevedo
Jennifer Gualotuna, who runs Astoria
Express Transit, her family’s private bus service
company that has operated in Astoria
for more than 30 years, described a similar
dire situation.
“We’re going into six or seven months
already of not operating,” she said. “Our
landlord is already bothering and insisting
we give him the money that we owe, and
it’s over 5,000 dollars that we don’t have.
We have not made one cent, as much as
we’ve tried to ask for help, nothing has come
through.”
Gualotuna said the unemployment and
thePandemic Unemployment Assistance
they’ve received has all gone toward their
business.
“Th en there’s no more school bus for the
community, what we’ve been off ering for 30
years,” she said. “Th en I got to start over saying,
‘I’m 37 and I gotta look for a new job.’
My parents are 62 and 65, ready for retirement
soon and now they gotta look for
a new job. Imagine making a resume for
somebody that age? Who is going to hire
them, where are they going to go?”
She told QNS that if school doesn’t start
up in September and they don’t receive some
relief, the business may not make it. Th eir
savings are almost entirely gone.
“It’s very hard to make a decision
when you don’t even know what’s going
to happen in the future,” she said. “You
want to be prepared but at the same time
you don’t want to let go. It’s so hard to
let go of the business, because you built
it from scratch and you made it there
for so many years and you don’t want to
give up on a relationship you’ve built for
30 years.”
Roseanne McSorley, owner of Katch Astoria
Jennifer Gualotuna,
owner of Astoria
Express Transit
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