Fieldston Market is latest to go out of business on Riverdale Ave.

An employee rearranges the few items left on the shelves at the Fieldston Supermarket on Monday. The current owners had operated the store for 16 years. A grocery occupied the space for 50 years. Photo by Claudio Papapietro

An epidemic of shuttered shops

By N. Clark Judd

A thin layer of ice coated the snow that settled on Riverdale Avenue last weekend, a crust that crunched loudly underfoot.

Rose Ann Milo cleared the sidewalk in front of her store, Baby It’s You, on Monday, but she was one of an ever-shrinking number of people on Riverdale Avenue with storefronts to care about. Just two doors up from her, Zealous Inc., the skate shop and art gallery, closed on Dec. 31. It hadn’t survived a year in business.

Across the street, the shelves at Fieldston Supermarket grew increasingly bare. The store’s owner, Kwang H. Kim, could no longer pay rising rent and overhead in the face of lagging sales. He expects to close soon.

Gelato Creamery, part of Polombo’s Bakery just a few doors down the hill, was empty, with a “FOR RENT” sign in the window.

Three landlords on Riverdale Avenue are running out of tenants, and their former neighbors now worry if the Riverdale Avenue commercial corridor will be as viable by the time new businesses replace the ones that left.

“The avenue isn’t generating any business,” Ms. Milo said, “and I don’t know what we can do about businesses that have been sold.”

Mr. Kim’s supermarket, Palombo’s Creamery and other storefronts on the east side of Riverdale Avenue, south of the recently closed Paperbacks Plus, are owned by Leonard Franzblau & Associates, according to city records available online.

Fieldston Supermarket’s finances have been touch-andgo for about five years, Mr. Kim said, and he could not agree on a new lease with the landlord after his old one expired. Sales volume declined 15 to 20 percent last summer, which he attributes in part to the economy.

At 62, Mr. Kim now has signs hanging in his store windows that read, “Buy one, get one free.” When his merchandise is gone, he will close the supermarket he has operated for 16 years.

“I don’t have any plan now, no plan,” he said.

A spokesman for Franzblau & Associates declined to comment on Mr. Kim’s departure, or on what’s in store for his soon-to-be-former store.

Marilyn Sopher of Sopher Realty, a major commercial real estate developer, said that Mr. Franzblau has told her there are two prospective new tenants for the Fieldston Supermarket space.

Paulo Palombo, owner of Palombo’s, said he moved the ice cream shop into his bakery next door because there was space for it. There was no reason to pay rent on an extra storefront.

“I keep records of number of customers coming in … we have really not noticed any kind of drop or increase,” he said.

He acknowledged, however, that Riverdale Avenue doesn’t have the draw it should. And he said that may be about to change.

“We are confident that very soon, because Johnson Avenue is more expensive, that people will be moving to Riverdale Avenue,” said Mr. Palombo, who owns six bakeries.

On the west side of Riverdale Avenue, the sign for Zealous hangs over an empty storefront. Landlord Jeffrey Abend said Zealous simply went out of business, and he will try to fill the now-vacant space.

Five side-by-side storefronts on the east side, including the much-beloved Paperbacks Plus bookstore, have been vacant for months. Four of them are owned by Riverdale Ave. LLC, which is controlled by the family of developer Jacob Selechnik, and were cleared out to make way for a change to the property. A spokesman for Mr. Selechnik’s holdings, lawyer Jayson Blau, has said no decision has been made on what to do with the building.

Ms. Milo agrees that Riverdale Avenue needs a change.

“There’s really not a lot to come here for,” she admitted.

She and other Riverdale Avenue business owners hope change comes before declining revenues force others out of business. Some locals aren’t willing to wait for developers to do it on their own.

Kathy Goldstein, who moved here from Manhattan in 2001 and started raising her children here in 2005, has organized a meeting at her home on Jan. 18 to discuss the dearth of attractive businesses on Riverdale Avenue. The shuttered storefronts caught the eye of a number of residents, who took up the discussion on an online group for Riverdalians that boasts nearly 600 members.

“Bagels and cleaners and banks are the only things that seem viable here,” Ms. Goldstein said.

“People want answers. They moved here for a reason and something’s going on,” she later added.

But landlords also have a right to control their own property. Ms. Goldstein and Ms. Milo both said they’d like to find some way to get them to carry tenants and keep traffic on the avenue, however temporarily.

“In the meantime, it’s Dodge City,” Ms. Milo said. “There’s tumbleweed blowing across the street.”

This is part of the January 15, 2009 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

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