Tony Danza Seeks Advice From Mayor De Blasio About High Rents For Family Businesses
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- One of New York City's celebrity residents took his complaints about high rents to Mayor Bill de Blasio Friday.
Tony Danza called into the weekly "Ask the Mayor" segment on the WNYC's "The Brian Lehrer Show" on Friday to ask about plans for mom-and-pop businesses.
They began with small-talk, as de Blasio said he had tried some of the smoked mozzarella at Danza's shop in Little Italy. But Danza was quick to point out that many businesses like the one he co-owns are struggling, or even going out of business.
"I'd just like to know what your thoughts are about what I like to call the 'neighborhood wasting disease.' You know we have so many longtime establishments that have anchored neighborhoods in this city that are just being pushed out by exorbitant rents," Danza said. "Now don't get me wrong, I don't know how you legislate that. But I'd just like to know what your thoughts are about going forward."
Danza added that even a Starbucks Coffee was priced out of his Upper West Side neighborhood.
Of his own shop – Alleva at Grand and Mulberry streets in Little Italy – Danza noted that it is set to celebrate 125 years in business in October. He said it was run for many years by the Alleva family, and he bought into it with a couple of friends a few years ago.
"We've been trying to run it and keep it alive because we end up feeling more like curators than store owners because there's, you know, because of this thing that's going on in the city," Danza said.
De Blasio was sympathetic.
"I agree with Tony's point," he said. "We've got to figure out every conceivable way to keep these particularly - these extraordinarily, meaningful stores that's so much the fabric of our community."
The mayor also put out some suggestions on making protecting small businesses.
"What we did that we could do, Tony, first, reduce the fines that – and we still have more to do on that," de Blasio said. "When I was – back when I was public advocate we found that previous administration had a pattern of over-fining stores particularly immigrant stores, particularly outer borough stores are all sorts of examples. But those fines were really making it impossible for a lot of stores to keep going."
De Blasio also called for legal assistance and small grant programs in particular for older stores, "to make sure that they're not being kicked out because some landlord cheated them on their lease or they didn't have a lawyer to protect their interests."
Host Lehrer asked Danza if he had a policy proposal of his own about commercial rent.
"I wish I did. I'm at my wit's end. I mean, I don't know what to say," he said. "I mean, you know, I'm particularly, because, you know, as soon as I walk out the building I see the empty stores."
Lehrer asked Danza if he would be in favor of some kind of commercial rent control. Danza replied that "at some point we many have to think about something like that," but he did not see a realistic way that it could happen "in our society."
De Blasio agreed that such a policy likely would not be realistic.
"It's a free enterprise society that is not particularly warm and friendly to things like older stores, mom-and-pop stores," he said. "I would urge the landlords to be less greedy. If you've got a store that's part of the fabric of a community, guess what -- you could stop overcharging and let them survive, and you're still going to be wealthy."
But he also agreed with Lehrer that asking landlords to be "less greedy" likely would not change anything. De Blasio also noted that commercial rent control is "very legally dubious."
But he said the city should "keep looking for a more stringent solution."
