| Flower
wholesalers face mounting pressure to vacate their enclave
on W 28th Street and Sixth Avenue where they've set
up shop for 160 years, as residential development closes
in on the area.
The companies
are working to organize a mass move to the Hudson
River's edge - which would, at least, keep them on
the street that's their historic home.
They're in discussions
about putting the flower market under one roof at
the Tenninal Stores Warehouse, a massive 1850s industrial
building on the comer of 12th Avenue that fonnerly
housed an infamous nightclub called the Tunnel.
"It's time to
move - or retire," said Sal Sadek, the owner of Nature's
Foliage and Gardens. He expects to be gone by year's
end from the open lot on the comer of W 28th Street
and Sixth Avenue that he's occupied for 15 years.
Thirty of the
60 businesses in the flower district are ."strongly
interested" in going to the Tenninal building, said
their real estate broker, Vincent Sheehan of nyspace.
Another 15 companies from other Manhattan locations
and from Astoria want to join them in leasing 60,000
to 100,000 square feet at the warehouse.
It has modest
rents - $25 per square foot for the ground floor,
$20 for the second floor and $6 for the basement -
and lots of loading bays.
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A few companies
want to move to Long Island City instead, and some
want a flower market to be built on Pier 40, an idea
that hasn't blossomed in the past. Some refuse to
leave their current locations. But
many see the Terminal building as a solution to the
problems in their congested neighborhood, which has
been rezoned for residential development High rents
are draining their profits, as well as parking tickets,
sanitation tickets if they don't sweep the street before
the inspector arrives, and noise complaints called in
nightly, since the district is a nocturnal operation.
Deliveries arrive from midnight to 3 a.m., and customers
shop from 3 a.m. to noon.
Wholesalers have
been trying for five years to find a new home. In
the summer, they nearly did a lease deal at 636 11
th Ave., at W 46th Street - but it fell through. Before
that, they were in talks with the Terminal building.
Earlier, they tried to move to Harlem.
But now the urgency
is rising, as construction of a cream-brick and glass
apartment tower at 28th and Sixth nears completion.
They expect noise complaints will flood city hotlines
once peopie start moving in. If they don't do something
soon, some fear it will be too late.
"There will be
a method of distributing flowers in the boroughs of
New York one way or another," said Jeff Serafini of
flower and plant wholesaler Fischer & Page. "But the
market as we know it, with' its mix of companies,
probably would not survive."
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