RIOC Real Estate Committee Meeting On Main Street Retail Disgrace, Thursday November 20 - Community Invited To Share Views
We all know that the long vacant retail stores on Roosevelt Island's Main Street are a disgrace and blight on the community. I can't even remember how many years it has been since these stores were occupied. The reason given for the inability to lease up these stores is the Public Authorities Act cumbersome procedures requiring the issuance of an RFP for each store lease.
What is RIOC's latest plan for Main Street? They are going to study the issue and hire a consultant. According to RIOC:
NOTICE OF THE NOVEMBER 20th, 2008 MEETING OF THE REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT ADVISORY COMMITTEE OF THE ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION BOARD OF DIRECTORSI am glad that something is being done but is it too much nitpicking and sniping to ask why has it taken so long to solve the Roosevelt Island Main Street retail problem?
PLEASE TAKE NOTICE that a meeting of the Real Estate Development
Advisory Committee of the RIOC Board of Directors will be held on
Thursday, November 20, 2008 at 4:00 p.m. at the RIOC administrative office, 591 Main Street, Roosevelt Island, New York. The committee will meet to discuss retention of consultant to assist in studying and making recommendations on optimizing Main St. use and space planning and ascertaining the community's preferred retail uses, and recommending most appropriate uses for market and community service needs.
2 comments :
In addition to the disgrace of empty storefronts (when there is demand from retail businesses to rent the spaces), there is the disgrace of having to pay yet another consultant to provide political cover for the paid employees of RIOC. There are tons of commercial brokers out there who will rent out the spaces and take commissions out of the rents charged. The island simply doesn't have the critical mass for some retail businesses that service very large populations - think of Forest Hills, for example, where you have the equivalent population of Roosevelt Island over just 2 or 3 blocks. Meanwhile, a strip like Austin St. services probably over 100,000 people. So ultimately if you can't rent to restaurants, which are numerous in the neighborhoods, you've really got to rent to the highest bidders. I've ridden through many NYC neighborhoods, and frankly a lot of the retail is crappy - I wouldn't patronize a lot of the businesses I see. You don't really have critical mass here for a GOOD supermarket, but a nice deli, with seats like the pizza parlor, and a really nice selection of prepared foods at reasonable prices, would be excellent, but really hard to achieve. Also, a Dunkin' Donuts/bagel bakery would be nice. We know they want to locate here - they've already tried. Besides that, what are we really lacking here?
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