The people of Community Board 3 are quite adept at finding ways to reject viable businesses. The Board's SLA committee has long used "resolution areas" as a means to keep out potential nightlife (for better or worse) and, DNAinfo notes, some buildings in the area have even gone and made themselves an informal no-restaurant zone. Just cleaner, y'know?
The three buildings in the story—141 E. 3rd Street, 66 Avenue A and 172 E. 4th Street, all of which share Avenue A storefronts—have various reasons for not wanting cooking on their property. "Their issue is not about making money," CB3 district manager Susan Stetzer points out. "It is about balancing the money needs with quality of life."
At 172 East 4th Street (one of the lovely Art Deco Ageloff Towers) Henry Reininger "the building's treasurer and longtime accountant who doubles as a real estate broker" tells DNA that while the 17,000-square-foot corner space could make twice as much in rent as a restaurant ($25,000 a month), the Sovereign Bank ($12,000 a month) that is there now is "the cleanest option." The space was a restaurant before, but it had "unsightly air vents," "spewed kitchen odors" and came with a higher fire insurance risk (don't mention the fact that dramatically caught fire just two years ago), according to Reininger "who owns a few apartments at 172 but lives in another nearby co-op."
Now, we don't begrudge building owners deciding they don't want a certain type of business to open on their property—the problem is just, what happens when everyone decides they don't want them either? The crowds, noise and smells that some seem to be so bothered by will eventually leave. And as much as we like to complain about how the area has changed over the years, we don't think anybody wants to see the area empty again. Things like real estate warfare (see: the ill-conceived East Village Historic District) are not the way to go.
