Remaking a Neighborhood; Just Like the Mall Back Home
Posted: December 10, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized 8 Comments »When I discovered who is behind the giant new sweet shop and restaurant that will occupy five full storefronts on Amsterdam Avenue between 78th and 79th Streets, I began to see a significant cultural marker.
The stores we lost provided services that residents in this neighborhood used every day. There was a locksmith; a shoe repair shop; an optician; and the much-loved Shining Star Restaurant, whose closing provoked long-time customers to post loving notes on the dark shop windows for weeks after it had served its last meal. Each of those businesses, it’s interesting to note, was owned by a first-generation immigrant. They were from Israel, Ecuador and Nepal.
Those business as are gone, as are the hard-working immigrants who made their home and their livelihoods in New York. The new shop is the brainchild of Lamia Jacobs, a wealthy former oil trader who lives in Greenwich, Connecticut in a home valued at over $10 million. The baked goods served by the establishment will be made at a factory in Moonachie, N.J. and trucked to the site by a specially chartered trucking company.
Jacobs was quoted as explaining why she chose to open this chain of restaurants: “Since I moved to America from Paris, I’ve been searching for a place where I could take my kids and my friends for a nice, relaxing meal any time of the day. That’s when I realized I had to be the one to make it happen!”
To someone who has raised two children around the corner from a restaurant she displaced, her comments seem shockingly out of touch. But it makes sense if you think of this restaurant being aimed at visitors from the suburbs who want a place just like they can find at the mall back home.
Jacobs is the wife of Bradley S. Jacobs, one of the richest men in America who made his money in oil trading and rolling up the waste management and equipment rental businesses. A roll up is Wall Street jargon for putting together a company big enough to force small and local competitors to either sell out or go out of business. The Wikipedia page about this gentleman and the associated articles are quite illuminating. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_S._Jacobs
Suffice it to say, with his background in waste disposal you should be careful in criticizing Mrs. Jacobs’ pet project, because in addition to 9 and perhaps 10 figures of net worth, I am quite sure Mr. Jacobs has some interesting affiliates from his prior career.
Really? What is so threatening about conversations about how a space that size is going to function in the neighborhood? Speaking of waste how will they manage theirs? Trucks? Traffic? How many deliveries per day and at what time of day? WIll the people who live above them be affected by the lights and noise? Will it put smaller businesses on the block out of business? I can’t imagine anyone feeling threatened by these simple questions.
mr David Schatsky.need to do something more imporant with is time,Mrs Lamia Jacobs.is helping the economy by opening Sugar& plumm so some people can have jobs.what are you Mr Schatsky is doing to help people ,rich are poor we all have rights so does Mrs Lamia Jacobs.
It’s not yet known whether the jobs she creates will outnumber those that were destroyed when the businesses that used to accept that space were forced out. Thanks for your comment.
Send her back to Paris, Texas, please.
While negative comments about the proprietors and establishment abound on this blog, I wonder if any individuals have actually frequented the initial Sugar and Plumm restaurant?
Having been to Sugar and Plumm numerous times since it’s opening, I have been eagarly awaiting the opening of the NYC branch. With the numerous options that the city offers, I can only imagine how the proprietors will enhance the beauty and spelendour of an already flawless establishment!
And yes, I am a New York City resident, and appreciate the variety that the city offers in terms of small business and populations, but if empty storefronts remain empty, by no means is that a neighborhood of any value.
Lastly, on a personal note, judgement of the Jacobs name is insensitive and rude if you do not know the family. Take notice and ask if you would be offended by statements made if the family and/or friends in question were those of yours…
Happy Holidays!
Thanks for your comments. I certainly haven’t been to the first Sugar and Plumm restaurant, so I appreciate that perspective. And I would oppose any negative characterization of the owner in the absence of any wrongdoing on her part. (Though we can reasonably disagree about her aesthetics and we could mock her judgment that, without her new restaurant there would be no “place where I could take my kids and my friends for a nice, relaxing meal any time of the day.”)
Regarding the “empty storefronts,” though, it’s worth repeating that the landlord -emptied- the storefronts of viable businesses that served the neighborhood with the intent of combining them and leasing the space to a single, giant tenant. That tenant turned out to be Sugar and Plumm.
My only problem with this is that if this kind of place is what the majority of “New Yorkers” want now, then maybe those of us that don’t are simply not the majority anymore and if that’s the case… is this the city we wanna live in anymore?