The local paper for the Upper East Sidee
WEEK OF DECEMBER
2017
21-27 2017
◄ P. 11
A POST-WALLERSTEIN WORLD? COMMUNITY Pondering the health and future of Manhattan’s civic organizations as one of the East Side’s most fabled community organizers prepares to step down BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN
The city does not currently collect statistics on storefront vacancies. A new city council report calls for improved data collection, among other recommendations intended to address the loss of neighborhood businesses. Photo: Pierre Crosby / @ pierrecrosby
PRESCRIPTIONS FOR VACANT STOREFRONT EPIDEMIC BUSINESS Council lays out proposals for helping small retailers BY MICHAEL GAROFALO
Like overcrowded subway platforms and gleaming new high-rise condo buildings, the sight of shuttered storefronts along Manhattan’s retail corridors has become a familiar fact of life for the borough’s residents in recent years. The narrative is familiar: neighborhood businesses, squeezed by the steady rise of online shopping and exploding retail rents — which rose 44 percent in Manhattan from 2006 to 2016 — increasingly find themselves priced out of their longtime storefronts, only to be replaced by chain stores or left vacant
for extended periods of time. Though there is abundant anecdotal evidence and broad consensus among business owners and lawmakers that storefront vacancies are an issue, the city has yet to conduct a broad study on commercial vacancy rates and their causes. “One of the challenges that we have is really measuring the impact that this is having across the city,” Rachel Van Tosh, a deputy commissioner with the city’s Department of Small Business Services, said at a Dec. 14 city council hearing on the economic impact of empty retail space. “We don’t have scalable ways to collect data on storefront vacancy right now, including not just counting, but understanding all of the underlying causes.”
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Every once in a while, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer says, she will receive a “lovely, personalized, handwritten thank-you note” that seems to harken back to a different era in the life of New York. The missive doesn’t travel through cyberspace. The sender never, ever communicates by email. Instead of hitting the send button, she affixes a postage stamp, and the correspondence arrives via U.S. mail. It’s the “old-fashioned way of working,” Brewer said. The approach is so novel these days that the letters have actually become keepsakes: “I have saved at least 10 or 15 of her thank-you notes,” she marveled. At this point, most Manhattan elected officials, city commissioners, community board members, senior City Hall staffers, cops, cab drivers, sanitation workers and Upper East Side doormen will readily be able to guess the letter-writer’s identity: “She is a unique person, and you are never going to find another Betty Copper Wallerstein,” said state Senator Liz Krueger, who represents the East Side and Midtown East. “There is no one like Betty Cooper Wallerstein, and she can never be replaced,” said East Side Council Member Ben Kallos, who, in keeping with local tradition, also uses all three of her names. “She’s the gold standard, and no one in history will ever replace Betty
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Betty Cooper Wallerstein receives her 2016 OTTY Award from Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney. Photo: George Cade Cooper Wallerstein,” said Valerie Mason, president of the East 72nd Street Neighborhood Association. Why all the panegyrics? Wallerstein has served as president of the East 79th Street Neighborhood Association for 33 years. Through sheer will and force of personality, she’s built it into one of the most historically effective and accomplished civic organizations in Manhattan. After co-founding the group in 1984, originally along a three-block stretch of 79th Street between East End Avenue and Second Avenue, she guided its expansion to encompass 49 blocks, with members as far afield as 72nd Street to the south and 96th Street to the north. Now, she’s finally ready to step down next year. “I’m an old work horse, and it’s a lot of work,” she said. The organization’s new leadership team hasn’t been unveiled. Possible changes in its direction have yet to be announced. There’s a clear need to bring younger leaders into an aging organization. Informally, there’s even
talk about merging the 72nd and 79th Street associations, but it’s preliminary and may or may not prove viable. Still, Wallerstein acknowledges, one change is certain: “I’m totally nontechnological,” she said. “I don’t have email, I don’t have a computer, and I don’t miss it. I find it very impersonal. I like to speak to people. “But that’s not the way the world is, so I think there’s zero chance that whoever takes over won’t be into technology and email.” Absent a Facebook page and a website, how did she get the word out and notify people about her meetings? She did it the old-fashioned way.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 31 Jewish women and girls light up the world by lighting the Shabbat candles every Friday evening 18 minutes before sunset. Friday, December 22 – 4:15 pm. For more information visit www.chabaduppereastside.com
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