Check out my piece from Sunday's New York Daily News!

Special thanks to one of the best journalism professors out there, Betty Ming Liu, for the hook-up and Bob Kapstatter at the Daily News for publishing the piece.

 
HOSP CLOSING PUTS BIZ ON CRITICAL LIST

BYALEXANDRA GALKIN SPECIAL TO THE DAILY NEWS

Photo by Andrew Savulich/Daily News

Kate Park (r.) and Lucy Herrera at West Village Florists, hit hard like many merchants by closing of St. Vincent’s Hospital.

WHILE THE St. Vincent’s Hospital complex stands empty and in search of a new life, Greenwich Village merchants are finding themselves hard-hit by its closure.

“For the first time in 20 years, I’m tipping waitresses from my own pocket,” said Nicky Perry, who owns Carry on Tea & Sympathy café at 108 Greenwich Ave. with husband Eric Kavanagh-Dowsett.

Perry said the shop has scaled back on its stock of British candy, tea and porcelain cups. “We don’t sell nearly as many gift baskets anymore. Business is down 20%,” she said.

Local retailers who have built their livelihoods around the 169-year-old hospital began feeling the downturn in April, when bankruptcy forced 3,500 St. Vincent’s workers out of their jobs.

After the hungry mouths and willing wallets departed, the restaurant Artepasta soon closed its doors at 81 Greenwich Ave. Down the block at W. 13th St., a prime corner retail space remains empty.

Mom-and-pop businesses that offered services directly to patients were the first ones hit.



“Since we don’t sell as much, we don’t buy as much,” said Lucy Herrera, an employee at West Village Florists. The store at 70 Greenwich Ave. has reduced its inventories, cut back its wholesale flower orders by a third, she said. Staffers are working less and even the delivery man was put on “indefinite vacation,” said Herrera.

Franchise businesses have also become more vulnerable since the hospital’s shuttering.

“Hospital workers, visitors, doctors, they all came during the day,” said Manuel Aquino, manager of Two Boots pizza on W. 11th St. “Now, we survive off the nighttime bar crowd.”

Amdadul Haque, who owns the Tasti DLite at 77 Greenwich Ave. said, “Two or three more months like this and I will have to shut down. It is just not the same as before.”

Assemblywoman Deborah Glick (D-Manhattan) noted that St. Vincent’s closure “took the daily foot traffic out of a neighborhood.”

Glick said that without significant help from the city, “these businesses have no means of reinventing themselves or marketing themselves effectively to a different crowd.” But there’s still hope in the neighborhood. Locals are hoping that an emergency care center or some type of medical facility will reopen on the old St. Vincent’s site.

“Unfortunately, the federal bankruptcy court is in the driver’s seat,” said Brad Hoylman, who chairs the St. Vincent’s omnibus committee. “They apparently have the mandate to sell the property to the highest bidder in order to repay the more than $1 billion of debt that is owed to creditors of the hospital,” he said.

The committee, an arm of Community Board 2, is studying the health-care needs of the community.

“There are numerous buildings on the St. Vincent’s campus ready-made for medical uses which would seem to make the case for cost effective reuse,” said Hoylman.

While the city awaits the bankruptcy court’s decision, the community is doing its part to focus attention on the issue.

A rally by the Coalition For A New Village Hospital last month drew more than 1,000 people to the site demanding medical services for the area.

But more is needed to keep the neighborhood’s retail cash registers ringing, say locals.

“Eat at the restaurants,” urged Yetta Kurland, a civil rights lawyer and founding member of the coalition. “Buy from the shops. It is now the community’s responsibility to help its own. Villagers from all ends must come out and support the local businesses that need them.”