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THE BEST OF 2019 ◄ CITY ARTS, P.12
A Petland Discount store on West 23rd Street off Eighth Avenue in Chelsea before it closed in March 2019. The pet chain, a fixture in Manhattan since its founding in 1965, shuttered all 11 of its stores in the borough and totally vanished from the retail landscape. Photo: Douglas Feiden
CHAIN REACTION SPARKS RETAIL MELTDOWN SHOPS
Scores of national brands are shrinking their footprints and others are disappearing from the landscape in the biggest mercantile shakeout in Manhattan in more than a decade BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN
Remember Radio Shack? In 2014, the popular electronics chain boasted 30 shops in all the retail corridors of Manhattan. Today, there are zero. Also vanished from the is-
Retired Army leader launches longshot bid to become city’s first female mayor BY EMILY HIGGINBOTHAM
After a decades-long career in the military, and the transient lifestyle that accompanied it, retired Army
I’m giving this everything I got. I’m not playing it safe here. I’m playing to win.” Loree Sutton
brigadier general Loree Sutton’s six years in New York has been the longest period of time she’s called any one place home during her adult life. During this time, part of which she spent running New York City’s Department of Veterans’ Services, Sutton says she and her wife have come to see the city as their home, but at the same time,
they’ve become worried about its future. It wasn’t until she saw hundreds of servicemen and women across the country stepping up in the 2018 midterm elections to run for office that she also saw an opening for herself to bring a different type of leadership to New York, and more specifically, to the
VISION ZERO'S BLEAK YEAR
Traffic fatalities increased citywide for the first time since 2014. p. 5
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GET MOVING TO STAY HEALTHY
The many benefits of regular exercise for older adults . p. 6
land’s shopping scene is Payless. Five years ago, the discount footwear chain had 15 stores. Now, there are none. And Petland Discounts met a similar fate. The seller of parakeets, fish tanks, terrariums and guinea pig food shrank from 11 outlets to zilch. Each had a long history – Radio Shack was founded in 1921, Payless in 1956, Petland in 1965 – and the demise of all three highlights a brutal trend in the transformation of the borough’s retail landscape.
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02-08 2020 INSIDE
A GENERAL’S NEXT CAMPAIGN
POLITICS
WEEK OF JANUARY
BITTERSWEET MEMORIES OF THE LOWER EAST SIDE Looking back at a childhood in Stuyvesant Town. p. 13
Mayor Bill de Blasio announces that Loree Sutton, MD, Brigadier General (Ret.), will step down as Commissioner of the Department of Veterans’ Services during an event on the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum on October 3, 2019. Photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office
CHAMPAGNE AND SHOES
Luxury stores adapt to the changing consumer. p. 16
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SPRING ARTS PREVIEW
WEEK OF APRIL
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FOR HIM, SETTLING SMALL CLAIMS IS A BIG DEAL
presided over Arbitration Man has three decades. for informal hearings about it He’s now blogging BY RICHARD KHAVKINE
is the common Arbitration Man their jurist. least folks’ hero. Or at Man has For 30 years, Arbitration court office of the civil few sat in a satellite Centre St. every building at 111 New Yorkers’ weeks and absorbed dry cleaning, burned lost accountings of fender benders, lousy paint jobs, and the like. And security deposits then he’s decided. Arbitration Man, About a year ago, so to not afwho requested anonymity started docuhe fect future proceedings, two dozen of what menting about compelling cases considers his most blog. in an eponymous about it because “I decided to write the stories but in a I was interested about it not from wanted to write from view but rather lawyer’s point of said Arbitration a lay point of view,” lawyer since 1961. Man, a practicing what’s at issue He first writes about post, renders separate a in and then, how he arrived his decision, detailing Visitors to the blog at his conclusion. their opinions. often weigh in with get a rap going. I to “I really want unthey whether really want to know and why I did it,” I did derstood what don’t know how to he said. “Most people ... I’d like my cases the judge thinks. and also my trereflect my personalitythe law.” for mendous respect 80, went into indiArbitration Man, suc in 1985, settling vidual practice
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MANHATTAN'S APARTMENT BOOM, > PROPERTY, P.20
2015
In Brief MORE HELP FOR SMALL BUSINESS
The effort to help small seems to businesses in the city be gathering steam. Two city councilmembers, Robert Margaret Chin and Cornegy, have introduced create legislation that wouldSmall a new “Office of the within Business Advocate” of Small the city’s Department Business Services. Chin The new post, which have up told us she’d like to would and running this year, for serve as an ombudsman city small businesses within them clear government, helping to get through the bureaucracy things done. Perhaps even more also importantly, the ombudsman and number will tally the type small business of complaints by taken in actions the owners, policy response, and somefor ways to recommendations If done well, begin to fix things. report would the ombudsman’s quantitative give us the first with taste of what’s wrong the city, an small businesses in towards important first step problem. the xing fi of deformality for To really make a difference, process is a mere complete their will have to to are the work course, the advocaterising rents, precinct, but chances-- thanks to a velopers looking find a way to tackle business’ is being done legally of after-hours projects quickly. their own hours,” which remain many While Chin “They pick out boom in the number throughout lives on who problem. Angelo, vexing most said Mildred construction permits gauge what Buildings one of the Ruppert said it’s too early tocould have the 19th floor in The Department of the city. number three years, the Houses on 92nd Street between role the advocate She on the Over the past is handing out a record work perThird avenues. permits, there, more information of Second and an ongoing all-hours number of after-hours bad thing. of after-hours work the city’s Dept. problem can’t be a said there’s with the mits granted by nearby where according to new data jumped 30 percent, This step, combinedBorough construction project noise Buildings has data provided in workers constantly make efforts by Manhattan to mediate BY DANIEL FITZSIMMONS according to DOB of Informacement from trucks. President Gale Brewer offer response to a Freedom classifies transferring they want. They knows the the rent renewal process, request. The city They 6 “They do whatever Every New Yorker clang, tion Act tangible signs go as they please. work between early, and some come metal-on-metal can construction any small sound: the or on the weekend, have no respect.” the piercing of progress. For many can’t come p.m. and 7 a.m., the hollow boom, issuance of these business owners, that moving in reverse. as after-hours. The increased beeps of a truck has generto a correspond and you soon enough. variances has led at the alarm clock The surge in permits
SLEEPS, THANKS TO THE CITY THAT NEVER UCTION A BOOM IN LATE-NIGHT CONSTR NEWS
A glance it: it’s the middle can hardly believe yet construction of the night, and carries on full-tilt. your local police or You can call 311
Newscheck
for dollars in fees ated millions of and left some resithe city agency, that the application dents convinced
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