Williamsburg, NY – Businesses Fear Eminent Domain Will Steal Their Livelihoods for Broadway Triangle

Brooklyn, NY – If the city’s controversial plan to develop Williamsburg’s Broadway Triangle goes forward, at least six small businesses will get the boot – and others will be left with an uncertain future.

While the loudest battles over the plan to build 1,895 low-rise apartments on the 31-acre Triangle site have been over the allegations of political corruption, little attention has been focused on the fate of the existing small businesses in the area.

“I’m just living in limbo,” said Ernie Wong, 33, whose family owns Shanghai Stainless Product & Design Co. on Gerry St. and employs 19 people.

The Triangle, located on the border between Williamsburg and Bedford-Stuyvesant, is one of a dwindling number of areas in the city zoned for manufacturing.

The city plans to use eminent domain to force five property owners to sell. Another 14 businesses could be displaced by zoning rules that will limit their activities.

Wong, whose immigrant parents started the restaurant equipment business in 1989, received a letter in July from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development informing him that if the development plan goes through, it “would authorize the City to acquire your property.”

“The streets were rampant [then] with drug dealers, prostitutes, crack vials on the floor. “Now that the area’s much nicer, the city wants to come in,” he said. “It’s wrong.”

HPD officials said displaced businesses will get help finding new space and paying relocation expenses. But the agency said the details won’t be worked out until the plan gets final approval from the City Council.

Borough President Marty Markowitz signed off on the plan two weeks ago, but said the city should make sure the companies there can stay in business. He recommended putting off acquiring the property until relocation spots are found. He also said property owners should be paid “above and beyond” normal rates, like the city did with businesses at Willets Point in Queens.

Sara Gelb, 52, started Excellent Bus Service, on Bartlett St., with her husband 25 years ago with one bus. She now has 18, and recently started running service between Brooklyn and Toronto.

She said that while the neighborhood does need affordable housing – 905 of the new apartments would be affordable to low and middle-income tenants – it needs skilled jobs just as badly.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do. I still can’t believe that they could actually take away somebody’s property,” Gelb said.

Michael Retek, 35, runs Smartek, which makes irons and other garment-care products, at another threatened Bartlett St. property.

“It just doesn’t make sense,” he said. “When business is so tough, in a time when everybody’s cutting jobs and downsizing, let these few businesses live.”

He rents the space from his father, Abraham Retek, who also rents to a printing shop next door. “I’m not willing to sell it. Why should I sell it?” Abraham Retek said.

Aaron Jacobowitz, 44, said it took 14 years to build up a customer base at his Bartlett St. flower shop, Floral Expression. Losing the property and relocating would mean starting from scratch.

“It’s a back-room deal,” he said. “We’re determined to fight it all the way to the end.”

Opponents charge the land was handed over to two politically connected nonprofits without a fair bidding process. They say Ridgewood-Bushwick Senior Citizens Council and the Hasidic group United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg used their ties to Brooklyn Democratic boss Assemblyman Vito Lopez (D-Williamsburg) to be tapped as developers. Lopez and the groups have denied the allegation.