Council Member Maloney questions Khan on tracking legacy business closures and displacement
Maloney asks how SBS tracks longstanding businesses being closed or displaced and the scale of the problem. Khan says SBS tracks occupancy and vacancy rates but not length of ownership, and notes complications like businesses that change ownership but keep the same name, such as Nathan's Hot Dogs.
I now turn it over to Councilmember Maloney.
Any questions?
Thank you, Chair.
I would plus one my colleague from Manhattan on the commercial rent tax being an undue burden on Manhattan-based businesses south of 96th Street.
I want to turn to the legacy business bill, intro 874.
How does SBS, we've kind of gotten into this a little bit, but how does SBS track longstanding businesses that are being closed or displaced?
And do you have a sense of the scale of this problem?
We know that businesses of all ages, when we say it, businesses of all ages are impacted by closures and the challenges of running a business that are so varied across the city.
We, through the database and the tracking work that we do of occupancy and vacancy rates, we have a sense of how neighborhoods are shifting.
how business rates are shifting.
It doesn't go into the level of detail on the length of ownership.
It also wouldn't tell us if ownership has shifted, but the business is the same, which I think is another level of data that may be interesting as we explore what it means to be a legacy business in New York City.
A lot of them seem to be multi-generational.
Businesses, to your point.
Yes.
But there's also businesses in Council of North Santoso's district, Nathan's Hot Dog, that transferred ownership and it was initially a family-owned business and is no longer.
And one may think if they don't follow up on the ownership status that it is still a family-owned business, but it's not.
It's owned by a...
Larger corporations.
So it's difficult and there's no clear precise data for this, there's no databases for this, which is why we support the registry proposal that you've made in the legislation in Intro 874.
We think a way by which
trusted, credible community leaders are identifying legacy businesses that have made contributions to the community and the city could benefit from additional marketing and
featuring them on a registry or a map would be something of interest to us where businesses could be promoted and New Yorkers who are interested in supporting those legacy businesses know exactly where to go, which intersection to go, and how to get in contact and
get the products and services these businesses have offered for generations of New Yorkers.