Many business owners in the Norwood section of Webster Avenue were caught unaware last week when the city began its formal approval process for a rezoning plan to revitalize the commercial stretch.
“What rezoning?” asked Maurice Sarkissian, 40, whose Sarkissian Food Service Equipment & Supplies, a restaurant supply business, has been in his family – and on Webster Avenue – for 50 years.
If the plan is approved, Sarkissian and his business colleagues along the corridor may soon find out that it involves less commercial use on Webster Avenue from East Gun Hill Road to the north to East Fordham Road to the south. The cutbacks would make way for the development of nearly 740 units of affordable housing and 100,000 square feet of retail space. The goal is to make Webster Avenue a safe, lively and walkable corridor.
The Department of City Planning certified the plan last week, offering it for public review for up to 60 days. From there, the plan faces several more levels of approval before making it to city council for a final vote. Community Board 7 District Manager Fernando Tirado, 40, estimated that the vote could happen by March, and that construction could begin as early as the spring.
Sarkissian believes Webster Avenue’s wide boulevard will never be safe for children. He believes that crime is not caused by businesses, but by poor policing. The 52nd Precinct reported a five percent increase in crime complaints from early September to early October as compared to the same period last year. Sarkissian blames businesses that are open until 2 or 3 a.m. “They need to cut out all the hangouts,” he said.
Sarkissian defended most of the businesses in the area. “We keep the neighborhood nice, clean,” he said, adding that businesses like his were vital to the local Norwood economy because they bring customers into the big retail hubs along 204th Street and Gun Hill Road. “To make a neighborhood, you can’t chase good people out,” Sarkissian said.
But Tirado said that the area has to look ahead. “We want some smarter development,” he said. According to a city planning spokesperson, existing businesses would be grandfathered into the new zoning plan. They can remain and invest in their properties, and potentially benefit from an expanded customer base and revived corridor.
A number of business owners, like Sarkissian, still felt their futures were in jeopardy, unsure if the changing dynamic of the neighborhood would create public pressure for commercial businesses to leave.
“That’s not too good cause we don’t know where we’re going to go,” said John Joe Bennett, 51, of the plan. Bennett, a 51-year-old Jamaican immigrant with a wife and eight children to support, owns John Joe Auto. His shop has been on Webster Avenue since 1992, and he said he felt secure only until his current lease ends, in December 2012. “My customers are mostly local,” Bennett said. “If we move, will they follow?”
One customer at an unmarked auto repair shop a few storefronts north of John Joe Auto thought the move was a good one. Miguel Alcantara, 45, who drives a taxi for New College Car Service, praised the plan, saying “It needs to be safer here.” He said in the future he wouldn’t mind driving to a repair shop further away.
Public pressure could be a factor for Bennett, as his business does not fall within the confines of a three-block sliver of Webster Avenue north of 205th Street that will remain zoned for exclusively auto-industry businesses.
Neither does Edmund Tierney’s business. Tierney, 50, owns Tierney’s Auto Repair in the same building as Bennett’s. “if it brings more people to the area, it has to be good,” said Tierney, who lives in Yonkers with his wife and three children.
Residents tend to share Tierney’s optimism. “It’s not safe at night,” said Floyd Middleton, 44, who lives around the corner from Webster Avenue on 204th Street with his wife and two children. “There’s a lot of gang-related violence at night.” He believes the uptick in crime is related to fewer jobs; he has been looking for work himself for nearly a year. Middleton thinks that bringing more retail positions to the area will help.
“If we develop, it’ll be a good thing,” he said. He hoped to see large chain stores and a supermarket on Webster Avenue, so his family would not have to trek to Fordham Road or 125th Street in Manhattan for clothes and groceries.
But Chris McDonald, a 43-year-old Jamaican immigrant who is an apprentice auto mechanic at John Joe Auto, scratched his head over that notion. Norwood is already awash in retail, he noted. Not to mention his prospects for future work. “I’ve just started,” McDonald said. “I’d like to stay a while.”