LeNell's Days Are Numbered
LeNell Smothers, owner of the eponymous wine and spirit shop in Red Hook, has been searching for a new space for her beloved store since last summer. Unfortunately — for LeNell and for all of her fans across the borough — her lease is about to run out and she’s still got nowhere to go….
LeNell Smothers, owner of the eponymous wine and spirit shop in Red Hook, has been searching for a new space for her beloved store since last summer. Unfortunately — for LeNell and for all of her fans across the borough — her lease is about to run out and she’s still got nowhere to go.
In a note to the shop’s mailing list (which wasn’t published online), LeNell explains that her current landlord, who apparently works for Baluchi’s, won’t renew her lease because he is planning to open his own business in the space. (No official word on whether he’s planning on opening another branch of the Indian chainlet.) LeNell says that she had a draft lease for the vacant lot next to Good Fork, but it fell through this week. One of the owners of the lot is Red Hook developer Greg O’Connell, who owns the Fairway building, among many other properties. LeNell writes:
“We had architectural drawings, had agreed on basic lease points, and I’ve been thinking all along that we were just finalizing details. The space included the store on the first floor and the bar on the second. After discussing this project for nearly a year now, I get a visit from Greg recently telling me that he has just realized constructions costs will be more than he wants to pay. He won’t entertain thoughts of my partnering in building out the space. Just flat out pulled out at the last moment…which happens to be a few days before the end of my current lease. I’m in shock.”
The second space LeNell was considering won’t work out, either, as her landlord wants her to sign a five-year lease, and she’s looking for a ten-year commitment. At the moment, LeNell’s is covered in plastic sheeting, due to a leak that the landlord isn’t interested in fixing, but there’s still time to stop by. The lease is officially up this month, but in LeNell’s words, “I know it will take months for a formal eviction should it come to that.”
Photo by jasminepark
You should have printed the whole letter, which goes into detail about how atrocious the landlord is being to all the tenants in the building. Also though there are empty storefronts, part of the problem is that the landlords won’t grant a 10 year lease–this is not unusual time span for a commercial lease–and LeNell’s already been burned once by the short lease she had on the current place. Couple that with the issues surrounding transferring her liquor license and it’s a nightmare. There’s much more to this story. But as usual Brownstoner reports the minimum of facts and presents them in a light that will get angry chatter going on the boards to up their site traffic.
Well put guest 11:23.
come to north side of prospect heights on washington ave. alot of new places opening and tons of empty store fronts for rent. alot of artist and other people.
I feel for her, but it’s always a bad idea to think of any arrangement as a “done deal” without putting it in writing. Without a contract, things can always fall apart.
This is a fine illustration of how brownstoner.com squeezes a story to fit the mold of “evil magnate vs. small businessperson”. By aligning the enermy with Fairway and a restaurant chain, this post attempts to paint the wine store owner as a hapless victim.
I can’t believe for a second that in a place like Red Hook, where unoccupied storefronts abound, Ms. Smothers cannot find another space. I seriously doubt that this is the end for her. In six months, she will likely be resettled, probably less than a block away from her current location.
nokilissa,
Neighborhoods are built around lower crime, good transit and better schools, not wine stores. Did you really think Red Hook would remain some bohemian hermitage?
Also, there are plenty of long term residents that do not share in your vision to preserve a decaying quasi-industrial playland for hipsters and their artsy, fartsy friends.
I don’t even know what to say… I actually gasped a little when I read the piece, and then felt utterly heart sick when I read the first three responses to it.
What is wrong with you people? I suppose on a very base level, you are right, but where is the heart? Where is the anger at the good faith year-long gentleman’s agreement being meaningless in the eyes of Greg O’Connell, earning ENORMOUS amounts of money with his Fairway? While the agreement meant everything to the proprietor of this tiny, beloved store, which was one of the bedrocks of Red Hook’s renaissance?
Red Hook is being peeled apart layer by layer as the long time residents and people who love it sit and sadly watch the once sleepy, utterly unique environs change before their eyes at warp speed.
I know so many of you will respond with something akin to “cry me a river”, and I guess I’ll say to you, Okay. I will. And part of that is in realizing how few seem to care at all. Simply saying let the forces of development and capitalism burst forth in whatever form it wishes.
But maybe I just like bourbon. And I’m biased. I also like wildly different, interesting, quiet, strangely artful, weedy, weird and beautifully urban areas too much.
This little patch of New York City simply couldn’t last. And I had hoped it would.
Now bring on the giant garden gnome in the Monet that is Ikea. But I don’t think I can watch.
7th Avenue in Park Slope.
one of the 50 vacant ones….
“How about showing the Roman Catholics some love?”
You have William Donohue for that.