It must be tough being the mayor of a big city, or running the office of economic development, or being the go-to real estate magnate with the clout and money to make things happen.
How do you in good conscience green-light projects that promote neighborhood gentrification even as they doom operators who put the area on the map? Restaurants, often pioneers in neighborhoods where earlier generations of politicians or developers might have pooh-poohed the community as unworthy of investment, often are among the first casualties when big-ticket construction projects or soaring rents turn what used to be no-man’s lands into glittering new hubs of life.
It didn’t matter that the famed San Domenico had the foresight to open across the street from Central Park the same year the Central Park jogger rape case made international headlines and crime and racial tension ran rampant throughout New York City. San Domenico hung tough and became one of this city’s icons of Italian dining. It’s moving downtown now because the landlord wants a 400-percent increase in rent, to $1.2 million per year.
It didn’t matter that Lorent, a late-night French restaurant, helped to transform the Meat Packing District when it opened there 20 years ago. At the time the district was a scruffy industrial park by day and a seedy den of illicit bars, drugs and sex playpens by night. Lorent hung tough, too. But it’s gone and may not return, another victim of rents pushed skyward when big hotel chains and other restaurant concepts move in to capitalize on an area turned trendy.
It didn’t matter that P.J. Carney’s on East 56th Street, with 40-odd years in operation under different owners, is the last of the bargain lunch spots outside of fast food in midtown. It and a dozen of its retail neighbors will be razed to make room for a high-end, high-rise condo.
All across Manhattan at key intersections, nothing is happening. Just look at the new World Trade Center and memorial plaza. Maybe the lack of activity is because of the subprime-mortgage mess, the flagging fortunes of Wall Street or high interest rates. Who knows?
But while progress is both good and necessary, does it always have to be at the expense of those who came first, paid their dues and did the hard work to make communities livable or businesses successful?
There’s a great line from the movie “Three Days of the Condor” that speaks to this, though the subject and the stakes are far different. The spy thriller deals with a dysfunctional CIA—not the culinary one; the other one—an oil embargo, voter apathy and distrust of government, high fuel costs, and a desperate bid to reclaim American clout on the world stage. A spy asks an older spy who is a veteran of World War II if he misses the old days. The old spy says: “No. I miss the clarity.”
So do I.