“I”™m hoping to do a story on the town,” I say as I arrive on East Hartsdale Avenue.
“What town?” a worker asks.
The exchange crystallizes the sense of unease and disenchantment that laces East Hartsdale Avenue, the cozy, beloved business district anchoring the hamlet of Hartsdale in the town of Greenburgh.
A major axis in Westchester County that links the tony Tudor homes of Scarsdale with the sprawling strip malls of Central Avenue for a seemingly unending stream of motorists, East Hartsdale Avenue is itself in transit. It”™s a thoroughfare at once beset by socioeconomic challenges, buoyed by a United Nations of eateries and haunted by its small-town past as it faces the future with determined optimism.
It is, in many ways, a microcosm of an America in which change is the sure bet. On East Hartsdale Avenue, the exact nature of that change is, like everything else, open for discussion.
“This very long block, which is central to our town, has undergone constant turnover,” says Marcia (Mar-see-a) Kent, who has lived in Hartsdale for 22 years and feels protective toward her hometown.
But Thomas Madden, commissioner of Greenburgh”™s Department of Commercial Development and Conservation, says: “It”™s the evolution of business. Every 15, 20 years you”™re going to go through that cycle. Hartsdale”™s going through it now.”
Once home to several banks and pharmacies as well as stores that sold children”™s clothing, jewelry, books, hardware, groceries and office supplies for many years, East Hartsdale Avenue has of late seen businesses come and go. Within the last year alone, it has lost three ”“ Oporto, a Portuguese restaurant; Hartsdale Farm, a fruit-and-vegetable market; and the Hartsdale Cheesery. For residents and merchants alike, the recent loss of the Cheesery was particularly tough as the 30-year-old county icon helped set the rhythm of the seasons: You knew Passover and Easter were here by the lines snaking down the street or the bags of specialty goodies standing at attention in the windows.
“What happened with the Cheesery going out, it”™s horrible,” says Chris Romani, who has operated Hartsdale Automotive on the lip of East Hartsdale Avenue for 26 years. A woman in a man”™s world who”™s an avid skier, Romani does not rattle easily. But, she adds, “To see four stores empty (including the former Big Top)”¦frankly, it”™s scary.”
The one thing that everyone in the business district seems to agree on is that the recession has wreaked havoc.
“The economic recession has a huge impact,” says the ebullient Martin A. Deitch, founding partner of Aires Deitch & Endelson Inc., a retail brokerage firm that handles many of the stores on the block. “It”™s the most important factor in this discussion.”
Deitch says he had a Greek restaurant for the former Big Top locale but the restaurateur couldn”™t get funding.
A couple of doors down at Hunan Village II, co-owner Gloria Jeng reflects on the economy. A kindly, industrious woman who offers you one of the cinnamon-raison bagels she”™s toasted for her staff and herself as they prepare to open for lunch, Jeng came to America from China in 1982 and has been living the American dream. Now she has seen its dark side.
“When we opened (Dec. 29, 2007), it was busy, traffic was busy,” she says, looking past a wall of windows to the Starbucked Metro-North Railroad station across the street. “You see three, four buses taking commuters to Ardsley. Now people getting off train, you can count them. If you can count them by numbers, you can count our business by numbers”¦.People tell me they have no job, no money to spend. Customers I see in the supermarket say, ”˜Sorry, Gloria, I miss your food”™.”
Stiff taxes add to the burden, Jeng says. But others point to the landlords.
“Rents are very high,” says Joseph Archina, who as pharamicst and owner of Hartsdale Pharmacy for the last 11 years is in a virtually recession-proof business. “If you”™re not doing a lot of business, it”™s hard to make it.”
“I”™d be the first to admit that rents outpaced reality,” Deitch says. “But rents are now 20-30 percent off from their highs. The problem is nobody”™s looking to open a business. The market has dried up. The only deals that are being done are with retailers who were previously locked out,” he adds, referring to Shop Rite going into City Center in White Plains and into the former Linens ”™n Things spot on Central Avenue.”
Back on East Hartsdale Avenue, store rentals start at $35 a square foot.
“There”™s nothing cheaper,” Deitch adds.
But Phil Benincasa Jr., who has owned King-Aristocrat Dry Cleaners there with his father Phil Sr. for 16 years, says, “(rents) should be no more than $25-$30 a square foot.” Benincasa Jr. ”“ who looks like Mickey Rourke before he went to seed ”“ is one of the sharpest observers of the strip, from what he describes as unfinished bases of the street lamps to the flood of April 2007, which is more famous on East Hartsdale Avenue than the one that set Noah sailing.
Benincasa”™s was one of a dozen businesses across the street from the Metro-North station in 2007 that sustained substantial losses after floodwater from a Bronx River tributary and storm runoff from the dense residential and commercial area ruined the contents of their basements and forced them to close for a time. Some never recovered. Benincasa and other merchants have sued the town of Greenburgh, the Hartsdale Public Parking District, the Scarsdale Golf Club and landlord Ellar Realty Corp., contending that construction and poor maintenance were the real culprits in the flooding. The town and the parking district, a separate entity, have denied culpability.
Though some wonder about the effects of a storm now three years old, anecdotal evidence supports repercussive ripples. As Benincasa Jr. talks, a customer drops off some tops for dry cleaning. She and her husband are among those couples who have undergone a “cleaners”™ divorce”: She has remained with Benincasa”™s business while her husband takes his shirts elsewhere.
“People found other places to take care of their needs,” Benincasa says.
(Next Week: The winds of change blow through Hartsdale.)
