Greenburgh Town Supervisor Paul Feiner, Town Clerk Judith Beville and Scarsdale High School senior Anthony Schepis have launched a campaign to help local businesses succeed. They are going to spend the next six weeks promoting local businesses. Short video’s highlighting participating businesses will be taped and aired on the Greenburgh You tube channel. This is part of a local effort to help businesses survive in this difficult economy.
This is just one of many action steps we plan to take to help local businesses. We plan to create a business registry, hope to list businesses to the towns GIS system to allow residents to seellocations of businesses and also want to publish a business directory and e list of Greenburgh businesses that will be circulated to the community.
We also want to create an interactive communication system where businesses can communicate with town officials when they need help from us. The town will also contact businesses advising of possible federal/state grant opportunities. We will also reach out to local businesses before the Town Board takes any action that could impact the business as it relates to any land use actions/development proposals. We also hope to host small business workshops to help businesses improve their existing venture.
If your business is interested in being interviewed for a You Tube segment highlighting your business – there is no cost involved to you. Please e mail pfeiner@greenburghny.com or call 993-1545 or 438-1343. Anthony Schepis will be working on this project every day – as part of his senior internship project.
PAUL FEINER
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29 comments:
What is a Scarsdale High Senior doing interning at the Town???
Too late to save Big Top in Hartsdale, an 18-year business that couldn't survive after all the money it lost following the April 2007 flood -- a flood that could easily have been prevented if Feiner had heeded the written warning two years earlier from the town engineer.
and the landlord agreed to lower the rent too?
and the economy is booming too?
I'm blaming Feiner. Big Top made it through the last two major recessions, in 1991-92 and 2001-02, and its owners were quoted as blaming their inability to recover from the flood.
Support your local businesses.
Unless "you" are the Town of Greenburgh.
QUIZ FOR BLOGGERS
How many private summer camps in unincorporated Greenburgh? _______
How many summer camps run by the Town are paid for by unncorporated Greenburgh? _______
Check out the rents that some of these business owners have to pay so the landlord can pay the high taxes imposed on them.
Not only does the business person have to contribute to the property tax he or she also has to pay their own taxes incurred with the money they take in.
Stop this madness with high property taxes and maybe someone can earn a living here in Greenburgh and this also goes for the homeowners.
How about ending the rent free Farmers' Market?
NONE of those vendors live or work in Greenburgh - and they are in direct, unfair competition with hardworking people who are local residents and employees. Let Square Deal Farm have an exclusive if you're so gungho on both having a market and supporting local businesses.
Not only are businesses being kick out of Greenburgh the home owners are facing the same dilema .
We are being chased away by the high taxes.
Who is kidding who that Greenburgh is cutting expenses.
You should have done this by not giving a gift to the retired Regula that of a consulting job and you should not have given a raise to Nanna after he retired .
Who ever heard of one retiring and then being rehired at a higher pay.
Paul how many blunders can one make.
They should crown you as the blunder king.
You want us to frequent the neighboring stores well tell me where does one park . We are not supermen or women that we can shop the stores one after another in the allotted time that is on the meters.
This problem must be resolved .
You are looking for the public to perform a miracle but the town will not look into how they can save the little people.
The farmers market should be charged for taking up space .
First of all the produce that he sells is not all grown on his farm.
He gets his produce from the same place that the square deal and all the other vendors do.
Yes he does bring in some items homegrown but why does this town allow him the chance to step on the little guys when he is sitting on a gold mine.
Now he will be permitted to make home baked goods ,this too will be cutting into the small business owner .
These are things that the town should be looking into but as they say money talks and BS walks.
Feiner start doing your homework as to what you could do to benefit the small business person.
Hall, I usually agree with you, but I'm not sure about your point with the summer camps. The privately run summer camps in Greenburgh that I know of (Hillard and Mohawk are extremely expensive, starting ranging from $4K to $7K per kid. Subsidizing summer camps is a proper town/community function. The more interesting question is why TOV has four (at least) subsidized camps in TOV: Rec, TDYCC, Police & Edgemont (the nature center also has a couple of weeks of camps).
here is an informed article from another blog. sounds like the anti feiner crowd is all wet.
Another big loss on the retail front! Big Top, a neighborhood staple for nineteen years will be closing its doors. Raj and Munish Kapur, brothers and owners, have been trusted friends to many for as long as we can remember. Open seven days a week and offering must-haves like stamps, greeting cards, school supplies, candy, gifts and toys, the store played a vital role in our lives.
Why are they packing up? A confluence of circumstances lead them away from town. The flood, which occurred on April 17, 2007 started a downward spiral. They lost thousands of dollars of merchandise to water in the basement and had to pay for the clean-up and the installation of new electrical wiring. Neither the landlord nor their insurance company picked up the tab. In addition, so many of the adjacent locations remained vacant that fewer shoppers visited Hartsdale, and sales dropped by 30%. Then Rite Aid opened and competed with Big Top for sales of school supplies, stationary and more. Despite adverse conditions and the recession the landlord refused to negotiate and the rent continued to rise between 2-4% per year. With so many factors stacked against the Hartsdale location, the owners decided to consider a change.
They spotted an open location in Yorktown Heights and found that the rent was half of the present tab and there was plenty of free parking for customers. Though they have watched many local children grow-up and took pleasure in seeing their first customers become parents themselves, they can no longer justify the cost of doing business in lower Westchester.
We will all miss Big Top. Stop by to say goodbye and store up on supplies which are on sale now.
Sounds like the 2007 flood played a big role in the closing. Feiner was warned by the town engineer in 2005 that the drains there were both too clogged and too small to withstand a major rainstorm. Instead of making sure the drains were cleared, Feiner issued a press release right before the storm congratulating himself for doing precisely that. After the flood, the Big Top owners took pictures of the tree stumps that were pulled out of the drain behind their store. Since then, Feiner's done nothing to implement any of the recommendations from the town engineer or from the outside professionals that were called in. I'd say Feiner bears a lot of the blame for Big Top's closing.
So (Bob?) you are blaming Supervisor Feiner because of the flood on private property. (Yes the drain behind the store is on private property!) Should that come from the A budget or the B budget?
I'm one of the store owners on East Hartsdale who got a copy after the flood of that town engineer's memo. He said it was the town's responsibility to make sure the drains were cleared. He warned Feiner of the consequences, but nobody warned us. He didn't say anything in there about it not being the Town's problem because the drains were on private property. Proper drainage for a commercial district that brings in lots of sales taxes is a town responsibility. How do you think those drains and pipes got put in there in the first place?
feiner is also responsible for swine flu and was probably advising madoff
perhaps the blogger with the feiner complex wants to do a citizen arrest?
To state the truth is not Feiner bashing. The truth is the Town Board, including Feiner, were advised that the storm drain lines were clogged. Whether it's the Town's responsibility to clean them or not is not the issue. If it was, they should have. If it wasn't, they should have and then they should have billed/assessed the owner. Instead they chose to ignore it. Keep in mind that the Town spent over $60,000 for a drainage study after the storm. The study was flawed but they accepted it nontheless. Also keep in mind that while the access to the drain system is on private property, the system itself is a public infrastructure. The drain in question is at the low point closest to the outlet at the Bx River. It picks up debris and storm water from as far away as Valhalla. Should one or two property owners be responsible for cleaning this up? Shouldn't our taxes be paying for this? In this case the Town is 100% responsible for this mess. They experienced the impacts of the 2007 flood yet they are doing absolutely nothing from keeping history from repeating itself. It's not Feiner bashing - it's the truth!
Did you know about the summer camp that is open to Edgemont residents only that is subsidized by Greenburgh residents? Seems that this is somewhat private, unlike the other camps in our town that are open to all residents of the Town. Check it out or ask Gerry.......
Whom in Edgemont is in charge of the summer program.
I live in the Greenville area of Edgemont and up until now I have not heard about this program.
If it's true my three children will be delighted and it will save me some money.
I don't know whose responsibility it was, but the flood was entirely foreseeable. I was in the NYSC (formerly Synergy) on at least two occasions prior to the April 2007 flood when the bottom floor of the gym was inudated because the drain in the driveway behind the stores had backed up during heavy rains.
The Hartsdale Flood Study was a work in progress and was "accepted" by the Town Board at least five months later than promised. The final copy followed revisions that the public was not privy to. Mr. Sheehan is the pioneer of the notion that only documents accepted by the Town Board are subject to FOIL.
What conclusions were in these earlier versions that were unacceptable must therefore be reconciled to the land of anyone's guess.
My guess is that if you were the contractor and wanted to get paid for your effort, you provided what was wanted, even if you tried round by round to preserve some shred of professional integrity.
In Real Estate appraisal, those with professional certification are allowed to distinguish themselves by a designation following their name. Accountants do similarly by their use of CPA. Appraisers employ MAI. Skeptics have put forth that what MAI stands for is "Made As Instructed".
And that's what the engineers of the Hartsdale Flood Study, "accepted version", did.
How many village store owners have gone out of business since the flood?
There you go again deleting what was written about you DPW dept. head.
You should be ashamed in removing the truth from this blog.
Don't you think that it makes you just as dishonest as they are.
To the dishonest ones you reinstate them and the honest you show them the door.
Who went out of business since the flood? Well there's at least four -- the bank, Big Top, Lia's and the dry cleaner. And they're still in litigation against the Town over what happened.
Kfung's also went out of business. That's at least five. All because of the Town's incompetence. What a shame.
We all know what happened,The Dpw boss did not do his job.
He still not doing his job even as a high paid consultant.
Goof off fellas and you will have a job for life in Greenburgh.
Try to do an honest day work ,,,,out the door.
And when they lose those lawsuits, which they will,what will you blame the Town for next?
K.Fung's was sold. Lia's was sold, the Dry Cleaner chose not to renew his lease. Big Top chose not to renew his lease. The flood was in April of 2007. HSBC Bank, like Big Top, got no assistance from their landlord to help with the clean-up and repair of the boiler systems. Big Top hasn't had air conditioning or heat since the flood. Big Top also had big name competition come in when Eckerd's opened WELL BEFORE THE FLOOD (now Rite-Aid). They've been threatening to leave for many years. Since their landlord rented all of his commercial properties, he refused to be fair about the lease renewal - nearly doubling their rent. You can't blame everything on the flood and we will see more vacancies as the economy starts to impact our area. The Bagel Store is complaining about a lack of business (cleaning it up might be a good idea), the new boutique is trying to find a niche, the new bank isn't drumming up new accounts, etc. Are we going to blame this on the flood as well?
K.Fung's was sold. Lia's was sold, the Dry Cleaner chose not to renew his lease. Big Top chose not to renew his lease. The flood was in April of 2007. HSBC Bank, like Big Top, got no assistance from their landlord to help with the clean-up and repair of the boiler systems. Big Top hasn't had air conditioning or heat since the flood. Big Top also had big name competition come in when Eckerd's opened WELL BEFORE THE FLOOD (now Rite-Aid). They've been threatening to leave for many years. Since their landlord rented all of his commercial properties, he refused to be fair about the lease renewal - nearly doubling their rent. You can't blame everything on the flood and we will see more vacancies as the economy starts to impact our area. The Bagel Store is complaining about a lack of business (cleaning it up might be a good idea), the new boutique is trying to find a niche, the new bank isn't drumming up new accounts, etc. Are we going to blame this on the flood as well?
NO MORE FARMERS MARKET! The concerts are great but the free farmers market needs to go. It is going to put our produce store and flower shop out of business! It's unfair competition. It's one thing for a competing business to open on the avenue - that's free enterprise. It's another for the Town to bring in the competition at $35 per weekend. Do you know how high the rents are on the avenue? You're not helping, you're hurting two of our local businesses. The restaurants and food stores love it because they purchase produce from them; would they love it if they had vendors with prepared foods? Big Top loved it because he thought it brought him customers. Would he love it if they brought in a vendor who sold newspapers, magazines, toys, candy & gum? Our produce store will probably be gone by summers end...they are barely scraping by. Why doesn't the town just put a padlock on their door?
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