The award-winning hospital complex on First Avenue was evacuated and shut down on the night of Hurricane Sandy when heavy flooding knocked out its backup generator. According to CEO Robert Grossman, the complex sustained $1.1 billion in damages.

“I was here that night and I saw the East River blending into Second Avenue,” Cuomo said in his announcement. “We knew right away the damage that was going to be done to this great institution.”
Workers are now in the process of drying out flooded areas in the complex, and Langone aims to restore full service by January.

CONGRESS MEMBERS ASK FOR POST-SANDY FOOD STAMP RELIEF
Members of Congress including Carolyn Maloney and Jerrold Nadler demanded easier access to federal food stamps for New Yorkers still suffering from Hurricane Sandy last week. The members wrote a letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg requesting looser eligibility requirements and expanded eligibility zones for the U.S. Department of Agriculture-administered Disaster Supplemental Food Stamp (D-SNAP) program, which provides relief funding to help feed those who were hit hard by the October storm.

“Making it as easy as possible for those affected by Hurricane Sandy to have access to the resources they need to recover will also help our city rebuild,” the congress members wrote. “Allowing survivors better access to relief programs like D-SNAP will mean more people will be able to sign up, which will also translate into more profits for local small businesses such as grocery stores.”
The members noted that many New Yorkers whose homes were damaged by the storm’s extensive flooding were elderly or handicapped, so they would particularly benefit from easier access to the federal benefits.

MOUNT SINAI OPENS NEW MEDICAL CENTER
Mount Sinai Medical Center opened the Leon and Norma Hess Center for Science and Medicine last week. The new 500,000-square-foot, $440 million clinical and research facility, located at 1470 Madison Ave., features eight floors of laboratories and outpatient care offices that will treat a range of diseases and disabilities, including cancer and autism. A new 52-story apartment building next to the center at 1214 Fifth Avenue will be used by the hospital for primary care and diabetes work in addition to providing luxury and affordable housing. At the hospital’s opening on Thursday, Mount Sinai reps said that in the coming years the new center is expected to generate over 800 jobs and garner over $350 million of National Institutes of Health funding.

CITY’S CREATIVE ECONOMY GROWING, BUT MINORITIES BEING LEFT BEHIND
Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s office released a report last week on the city’s entrepreneurial economy. Titled “Start-Up City: Growing New York’s Entrepreneurial Ecosystem for All,” the report summarized recent growths in “entrepreneurial” industries like finance, fashion, marketing and technology, but also addressed these fields’ limited accessibility, citing census data that showed only 29 percent of employed Blacks and 20 percent of employed Latinos work in these “creative economies.”

“Too many working-class New Yorkers lack the resources and skills to share in this growth,” Stringer said in a statement, noting that annual salaries for jobs in this new tech economy often start at $65,000, well above the city’s median family income. “We need to turn this engine into a pipeline to the middle class for thousands of New Yorkers.”

To achieve this end, the report recommends increasing office and housing affordability, expanding computer science training in public schools and improving transportation to growing business districts, among other initiatives.

The New York civil court system is supposed to serve as an integral resource for residents seeking access to justice. But a slew of recent cuts, combined with an influx of cases in some courts, has significantly slowed the wheels of justice in the city, and attorneys, advocates, judges and court staff say that it’s a serious problem.

The root of the problem is that New York state’s courts have been tasked with doing more with less—$170 million less. While that impact has been spread around the state, many courts in New York City have seen dramatic effects.

At the end of last year, the New York City Lawyers’ Association (NYCLA) commissioned a report (see sidebar), conducted by its task force on judicial budget buts, to find out the impact of the 2011-2012 fiscal year cuts. They surveyed 759 people, including private practice attorneys, court system employees, government attorneys and judges. Over 80 percent of respondents reported that they strongly agreed or agreed that the court’s efficiency has been compromised and that the budget cuts have had a negative effect of the administration of justice.

The cuts include offering early retirement packages and putting a freeze on hiring new employees, in addition to layoffs. Interpreters are harder to find, and security has been reduced. The courts have also practically eliminated overtime, and in perhaps the biggest and most consequential change, implemented shorter hours, closing the courts at 4:30 p.m. instead of 5:00 p.m.

“It was a drastic budget cut that had not happened before. The court budget had not been slashed in decades,” said David Bookstaver, communications director for the New York state court system. “We are good partners in government. We realize our budget was cut because of the incredibly difficult fiscal times that the state was going through at the time.”

The cuts come as a direct result of a dire budget situation for the entire state. Although the state court system, as a third and separate branch ofgovernment, doesn’t submit its budget in the same way that state agencies do, it is not immune to the fiscal crisis that has hit every state-funded entity in the past year.

Bookstaver said that the chief administrative judge, A. Gail Prudenti, who supervises the administration and operation of the state’s trial courts, did not take the cuts she imposed lightly.

“We have not had to lay off anyone in the court system in almost two decades, and we had to lay off over 400 employees,” Bookstaver said. “The chief judge felt that the court’s mission was to not close courthouse doors, as other states were forced to do.”

Slashing services and staff across the board was the better alternative to closing courts for a full day every week, Bookstaver said, but acknowledged that that extra half an hour lost every day isn’t just two and a half hours a week. The reduction in overtime allowances means that if a witness in a trial is ready to testify at 4 p.m., a judge might push the testimony to the next day, instead of risking running past 4:30 p.m. In the past, judges would routinely stay until 5:30 or 6 p.m. in order to finish out a motion or hearing, so the real time lost is much more substantial than a scant 30 minutes.

“You will start a hearing and continue it weeks later,” said Stewart Aaron, the president of NYCLA. “There are these long delays in getting resolutions with matters that are important to the litigants, leaving people and issues in complete limbo. Obviously that’s not the way to administer justice.”

Some attorneys say that the cuts disproportionately affect those who should be getting the most help to navigate the system
“We saw an almost immediate impact on the court, because there were both layoffs and earlier closures. The shortened hours definitely are a hardship in civil court,” said Dora Galacatos, senior counsel to the Feerick Center for Social Justice at Fordham Law School and a volunteer with the Civil Legal Advice and Resource Office, which helps low-income New Yorkers being sued for debt collection. Galacatos said that the court heard over 134,000 debt collection cases in 2011 alone, and that the defendants in these cases often have a difficult time getting through the process.

“Many of them are economically distressed and working poor people, so shortened hours mean less flexibility in getting to the court,” Galacatos said. Other services designed to help working people, like free childcare programs, have been cut, forcing parents to drag small children through a day in court. Small claims court used to stay open several nights each week to accommodate people who work during the day, and is now only open on one night.

The cuts have a ripple effect on litigants and the system as a whole. If someone is supposed to be in court at 3:45 p.m., they might take off work and head down to the courthouse with time to spare, only to be met with a longer-than-normal line to get through security and into the doors, due to reduced staff. Earlier closing times with less wiggle room means people are more likely to miss their times altogether, further burdening the court calendar.

In housing court, which is a specialized court that only exists in New York City, the urgent problems people come to address—tenants not receiving crucial services or landlords not receiving rent—are often stretched out and resolved in a matter of months instead of weeks.

“Let’s say you have a landlord/tenant proceeding, a simple, easy case,” said Glenn Spiegel, a real estate and housing attorney and partner with the Newman Ferrara law firm. “The landlord starts a case against a tenant because the tenant didn’t pay their rent. How long is it going to take the landlord to get their apartment back? The landlord isn’t a corporate landlord, it’s an individual, relying on those rents to pay the mortgage debt. How much longer does it take the landlord to evict that tenant that’s not paying?”

In his experience, it’s now taking two or three months for these kinds of cases, Spiegel said—and that’s if everything is perfectly by the book with no mistakes in the paperwork. If something has to be resubmitted, that can double the amount of time, he said.

Spiegel said that these types of delays could also have greater ramifications for all renters in general in the city. Landlords, knowing that if a tenant doesn’t pay up they won’t have a quick recourse to get them out, could become more skittish in choosing renters and raise their required income threshold, locking lower and middle income residents out.
It’s costing everyone more money to drag out cases, whether in legal fees or time spent away from work.

“It’s already expensive enough to be involved in litigation. If you have to sue somebody, you’re talking about a private case,” Spiegel said, adding that he doesn’t like having to explain to his clients why a proceeding that should take a lot less time and cost them less is suddenly going on for much longer.

Family court litigants are suffering as well. Briana Denney practices matrimonial and family law through her firm Newman & Denney, and said that she’s unfortunately grown accustomed to incredibly lengthy cases over the past year.

“Families are really in crisis by the time they go to the court system, and most people have an expectation that it’s going to be dealt with expeditiously,” Denney said. “The cutbacks have really impacted how much time judges have to deal with people. Unless it’s the worst of the worst, like serious abuse, things are getting pushed out for months or even years.”

Denney recalled a custody case where a divorced mother moved out of state with her child, legally, and when the father sought to change the custody arrangement and get the child back, the judge sided with him—three years later.

“It’s a strain financially, and it’s a huge emotional strain,” Denney said. “When the issues are dealing with kids and visitation and custody, everything is in flux and it’s really stressful for [kids] too.”

Some involved with the courts say that the slowdown can’t be attributed to budget cuts alone, however. Louise Seeley is the executive director of Housing Court Answers, an independent group with a contract from the city to set up information tables inside housing court buildings, in order to assist pro se litigants—both tenants and landlords—who appear for housing cases and need help to understand the process and their rights.

“It’s hard to tell how much of it is the cutbacks or the economy, because filings are up,” Seeley said about the backlog in housing court. She said that some days there is standing room only at the clerk’s office. “With the economy, more people are falling behind on their rent. It’s a combination of less people being able to staff windows combined with increased filings.”

Another aspect of the economy that still haunts the courts is the foreclosure crisis. State Sen. Liz Krueger said that she’s heard from many judges how backlogged the civil court system has become across the state because of the avalanche of foreclosure cases that have inundated the courts.

“There still is an enormous problem with cases coming before the courts with whoever is doing the foreclosure does not have the correct paperwork and doesn’t have the facts, and the judge has to put a delay in the case and call them back,” Krueger said. “It’s a continuing saga of an enormous waste of court resources as well as pain to the people who are at risk of losing their homes.”

Krueger said that she’s supported increasing filing fees in certain cases in order to help alleviate some of the courts’ budget constraints, enabling them to hire more clerical staff and get everything running faster, but that none of the state bar associations have supported this kind of measure.

“If the banks created this problem, I think the banks should have an obligation through increased filing costs for going to court, to pay for the increased burden on our courts to ensure that justice is done correctly,” Krueger said of the foreclosure cases.

The Office of Court Administration is gearing up for another budget season and preparing to present next year’s fiscal budget proposal this December. While no one believes that the cuts will be fully restored, there is hope that enough outrage will bring back some of programs and staff.

“The civil court is the people’s court. It used to be the jewel of the judicial branch,” said Spiegel. “There has to be a better solution than limiting access to the courts.”

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Council Speaker Christie Quinn announced on Tuesday that a study by the City Clerk’s office  and NYC & Company, the city’s tourism agency, estimated that same sex-marriages have contributed $259 million to the city’s economy since New York passed the Marriage Equality Act one year ago on July 24.

“Marriage equality has made our City more open, inclusive and free – and it has also helped to create jobs and support our economy,” Bloomberg said in the statement. “New York has always been a great place to get married and since the passage of the Marriage Equality Act, we’re welcoming more and more couples, their families and friends from around the country and the world.”

According to the survey, over 201,000 same-sex wedding guests visited from outside the city. They booked over 235,000 hotel rooms at an average rate of $275 a day, as well as paid for dining, celebrations, gifts and various other wedding-related purchases. Add this income to at least 8,200 gay-marriage licenses that were purchased in the last year (couples are not required to disclose their sexes) and $16 million in tax revenue from the marriages, and you start to get a sense of the same-sex wedding business’s size.

“Thirteen months ago our legislators did the right thing and voted to make same-sex marriage a reality, ensuring that New York State was among the leaders in equality,” said City Comptroller John Liu in a statement. “Today’s announcement is simply the icing on the wedding cake.”

In addition to New York, same-sex marriage is legal in Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and the District of Columbia. Massachusetts led the charge in 2004, and found similar economic growth: gay marriage added an estimated $111 million to the state’s economy in five years.

By Jeanne Martinet

The cocktail party was crowded, as every self-respecting cocktail party should be. I was therefore making depressingly slow progress in my foray to the bar, during which I overheard the following conversation:

“So how are you doing these days?” asked one man, sipping his drink.

“It’s been pretty tough. And you guys?” said another man. He was wearing a wine-colored bow tie. (It’s a fact that parties on Park Avenue contain more bow ties per capita than parties in any other neighborhood.)

“Horrible,” replied the first. “We haven’t had any profits in two months and now our health insurance went up again.”

“You think that’s bad,” said Mr. Bow Tie. “I lost my job nine months ago; I’m losing my insurance altogether.”

“Jesus, sorry to hear that. Well, at least you don’t have that terrible commute to New Jersey anymore. I’ve been having to go there to visit my sick aunt and it takes forever.”

Mr. Bow Tie nodded eagerly. “I wish my relatives were in New Jersey. I’ve been traveling to Philadelphia every weekend to take care of my mother-in-law. Try that for a couple of months.”

Hello? I thought. What is wrong with this picture? Exactly when did complaining become a competitive sport? What happened to bragging about fabulous Caribbean vacations, or the perfect tennis game? When did one-upmanship become one-downmanship?

New York City has always engendered a competitive spirit. It’s almost as if in order to compensate for how expensive and hard it is to live here, we have to believe everything—including people who move here—is the best, the biggest, the most, the ultimate. Moreover, to survive, you needed to present a positive image; you were always supposed to project confidence. Now it seems we are taking the opposite tack. Ten years ago, when you heard people talking about real estate, it was usually about a killing they made. Now you are more likely to hear them say, “We bought our apartment at the height of the market; man, I really took a bath.” Instead of smug talk about the success of financial investments, now it’s a conversation about who has more credit card debt. And it’s not just conversations about financial matters. I hear people complaining about relationships, health, the weather—even their kids. Rather than “My Johnny aced the SATs, we are so proud,” parents these days are more likely to complain, “For a kid who aced the SATs, my Johnny is certainly having trouble getting into the college of his choice. It’s a nightmare.”

Although more and more people seem to be in competition about how bad their lives are—instead of how good—it’s still about winning. You may be winning the Booby Prize, but it’s still a prize. As long as your case is the most extreme, you still get to feel superior. If you are the most miserable, the poorest, the unluckiest, that makes you the most important, most impressive person in the conversation.

It’s not surprising that people should complain during a Recession. If one-downmanship is a bellwether of the economy, perhaps we will know we are in economic recovery when we once again start bragging about our golf scores and country weekends.

But is one-downmanship a symptom of the state of our economy, or is it a symptom of the state of the economy experienced by a heretofore spoiled population? Have we all become whiners and crybabies? Maybe we’ve discovered that it feels better to be pitied than envied, and that vying for the bottom spot seems less egotistical than seeking praise. I can’t help wondering if social gatherings underwent this kind of conversational transformation during the Depression. I’m certain people talked about their troubles, but did they compete about them quite as much as we do now?

Right before I left the Park Avenue party, I happened to overhear the same two men, still tête-à-tête:

“Well, I’ve got to head out—I really should have left 10 minutes ago,” said Mr. Bow Tie.

The other man scoffed. “Ten minutes?! I was expected home two hours ago!”
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Jeanne Martinet, aka Miss Mingle, is the author of seven books on social interaction. Her latest book is a novel, Etiquette for the End of the World. You can contact her at JeanneMartinet.com.

By Jim Gerace

In these uncertain economic times, it is critical that our lawmakers in Albany make good decisions that promote jobs, investment and innovation. Wise public policy decisions are those that encourage job creation and investment in communities throughout by helping to grow the state’s “innovation economy.”

New York’s innovation economy is based on our strengths—a well-educated work force, a strong higher education sector, a commitment to research and innovation, and a robust telecommunications infrastructure. These assets are the key to our success in the global economy today and for our children in the years to come, because they facilitate growth in emerging arenas.

Unfortunately, some lawmakers in Albany have lost sight of the need for investment in the telecommunications infrastructure, such as broadband. They are pushing a bill, inspired by outdated economic theories, which would require some telecommunications companies to turn over 40 percent of their New York-based infrastructure to the government if they are ever sold or decide to merge with another company.

This bill would severely hurt Verizon, New York’s leading provider of broadband infrastructure, by, in effect, imposing a 40 percent tax on the proceeds of telecommunications company business deals. This is 1970s regulation policy run amuck.

This bill would also hurt New York’s economy. It would impose a huge obstacle to anyone who wants to invest in the state’s telecommunications infrastructure. Would you invest in a broadband company if you knew that the government might swoop in and grab nearly half of your investment? Most people would not.

Verizon is a part of New York’s innovation economy, and its network is part of the fabric of New York. We want to help the state grow and succeed, and to create high-paying, quality jobs. Statistics show the average salary of an individual who works in the innovation economy is more than double that of an individual who works in the non-innovation economy. These jobs also have a higher “multiplier effect” than the non-innovation economy, meaning that for every job that is created in the innovation economy, 3.5 jobs are created overall, compared to 1.7 jobs in the non-innovation economy.

New York has the tools to succeed in a number of key innovative industries—strong educational institutions focusing on life sciences, clean technology and nanotechnology. We also rank among the nation’s leaders in science and engineering, patent development and alternative energy use.

But if we undermine our commitment to a robust telecommunications infrastructure, then we undermine the innovation economy.

Rather than help grow New York’s innovation economy, this bill will stifle it. We can’t afford to make this mistake.

We need to encourage Albany, especially the State Senate, to focus on economic growth and building on our strengths. Broadband investment is an essential component of a successful 21st-century economy.

Imposing a 40 percent tax on the companies that want to invest in New York is simply not the way to encourage investment in our broadband infrastructure. It is a giant step backwards, not the way to grow New York’s innovation economy.
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Jim Gerace is president of Verizon’s New York region.

By Kirsten Gillibrand

As I meet people during my travels across the state, New Yorkers of all ages and backgrounds have the same thing on their minds: jobs. With unemployment in New York City still in double digits, and an estimated 15 percent of our state’s construction workers out of work, it is clear that we must continue to help working families weather the economic storm. For example, since the downturn began, more than 40,000 construction and manufacturing workers in New York state lost their jobs, and millions more workers across the country suffered significant losses.

Tough times demand bold action and seizing opportunities. One of those opportunities is reducing our dependence on foreign fossil fuels. Bush-era policies were about talking tough when it came to fighting terror and defending America, but it was their policy that sent a billion dollars a day to oil-producing countries that some of the most dangerous terrorists in the world call home.

That is money that should be spent here. By decreasing our dangerous reliance on foreign oil and making smart, green investments, we can create quality jobs and put our construction laborforce back to work.

The Building Star legislation, which I am pushing in the U.S. Senate, would create as many as 12,500 new, good-paying jobs for hardworking New Yorkers, providing incentives to retrofit co-ops, apartment buildings and commercial buildings and rid them of dirty fuels and pollutants.

Not only would this proposal boost our national security and save condo-owners, landlords and building managers millions in energy costs, but it would also protect New York City families by cleaning the air we breathe. According to a recent air survey by the New York City Health Department, the Upper East Side and Midtown’s business district are just two of the neighborhoods in the city with alarming levels of dangerous contaminants in the air. Many of the city’s residential and commercial buildings burn heavy amounts of heating oil and emit large amounts of sulfur dioxide and other pollutants. If these buildings were to use cleaner fuels, you could see reductions of harmful emissions between 65 and 95 percent.

City landlords and building owners concerned about the high cost of replacing outdated boilers or switching to cleaner fuels, such as natural gas, would benefit from the Building Star rebates, which are designed to cover 20 to 33 percent of the installed cost of equipment. This initiative also covers other energy efficient programs to help ease installation costs, including window renovations, duct testing and sealing, and energy audits.

The process for applying for a rebate would be clear and straightforward: An owner would run an energy audit on a building, then submit an application to the Department of Energy. Once the department verifies the project, a rebate would be issued within 30 days.

There is much to lose and little to gain if we do not begin to rebuild our economy by putting more money back into the pockets of city residents and taking them out of the hands of hostile regimes. For every dollar we invest in energy efficiency, we save $3 in energy use down the road. In the long run, residential and commercial buildings citywide could save up to $407 million in energy costs, nearly $160 million of which would benefit Manhattan alone.

Manhattan renters, owners and residents have an opportunity to make the most of their energy dollars and move away from decades of dependence on foreign oil. It’s time to act. 

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U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand sits on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and Subcommittee on Green Jobs & the New Economy.

By Melissa Mark-Viverito and Mike Fishman

With the shift in our city’s economy from manufacturing to service jobs, the percentage of low-wage workers has reached record, if not epidemic, levels. Nearly one-third of working New Yorkers are struggling to stretch their paychecks to cover high prices for rent and rising costs for groceries and transportation. In order to stem the tide of what threatens to undermine not just our economic recovery, but the future of our city, we need to invest in increasing the number of good jobs.

Yet, while millions of tax dollars are being invested to redevelop buildings, blocks and entire neighborhoods, these projects do not always create family-
supporting jobs. In many cases, our tax dollars go to developers in the form of tax breaks and other incentives. This ends up creating low-wage service jobs that leave working families unable to make ends meet and communities deprived of much of the economic benefit, even though they helped subsidize the project.

New Yorkers can’t afford to see their hard-earned tax dollars go toward developments that leave their families and neighbors unable to pay their bills. Government should be creating jobs that do more than add to the number of working poor people in the city. We need job creation that will put our families and our city’s economy back on track.

Cities from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles are addressing this problem by instituting policies that ensure that when developers are given financial incentives from taxpayers, they give back good jobs to the community. The City Council is considering the Good Jobs Bill based on this model. The bill does not ask developers to pay extra for the workers at their sites; simply that they pay the going wage or “prevailing rate” that most established businesses already pay.

Although naysayers claim that job standards will somehow hamper businesses, guaranteeing good jobs through economic development programs is a smart public policy. Cities are establishing measures that guarantee good wages and health care at subsidized developments so workers can make ends meet, contribute to the local economy and get off public assistance for food, housing and health care.

Here in New York, less ambitious policies to ensure that development creates good jobs have proven not to stymie economic growth. The city’s 421(a) tax incentive program, which requires both affordable housing and good jobs, has not kept developers from taking advantage of this substantive tax rebate. And job-quality requirements, like those in the Good Jobs Bill, will create more than 500 good jobs for office cleaners, apartment building workers and security officers at Coney Island and Willets Point.

For all the good these small-scale, project-specific policies have done in New York, they don’t amount to the full-scale solution for good job creation the city needs. We need a reform of our economic development programs to ensure good job creation is a part of the tax-based incentive programs so that hard-working, tax-paying New Yorkers will see the benefits of these government programs. 

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Melissa Mark Viverito represents District 8 in the City Council. Mike Fishman is president of 32BJ. With more than 120,000 members, including 70,000 in New York City, 32BJ is the largest private sector union in New York. 

Gov. David Paterson signed a bill allowing the city to establish a $3 million tax credit each year for small biotechnological companies. If a company expands its workforce by 5 percent, it can receive a $250,000 tax break.

“We have some excellent healthcare facilities that I think will also help to attract the biotech industry,” said State Sen. Tom Duane, the bill’s sponsor. “This will make us competitive with states like Massachusetts and California that have been doing this sort of thing.”

With state approval, East Side Council Member Jessica Lappin sponsored the tax credit in the Council, which passed the bill. She said the tax credit will be an incentive for the city’s medical professionals to stay in New York and develop new biotechnological companies.

“The economy has been overly reliant on Wall Street,” Lappin said. “The goal with this legislation is to diversify the economy. We have the best and brightest medical research professionals. We want to keep them in our city.”

Nancy Ploeger, president of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, is one expert who sees firsthand the current challenges, as well as the opportunities, for local businesses.

“You have to look for the opportunities and you have to be positive,” Ploeger said. “And if you just stop listening to the media and stop thinking doom-and-gloom, you’ll have enough creative time to think about other ways that you can go out after customers.”

Andy Stenzler and Shari Misher-Stenzler, founders of Kidville, just acquired international chain JW Tumbles, with locations in Hong Kong and Singapore. Photo By: Andrew Schwartz

The credit collapse last September led short-term borrowers, including many small business owners, into some long-term problems. But many have managed to avoid it, Ploeger explained, especially those who don’t depend on credit to run their establishments.

“If you’re a good businessman and you always were able to keep a strong balance in your bank and not rely on month-to-month credit, those are the businesses that are going to be able to hold on longer,” she said.

Simply being in New York City, an international destination for tourists and transplants, is another factor working in favor of local businesses, explained Seth Bornstein, assistant dean for economic development at LaGuardia Community College. The tourism industry alone brought $30 billion in spending to the city in 2008, a record high.

“Traditionally, I think New York feels the effects of a national slump a little less than the rest of the country,” Bornstein said. “New York is always going to be a destination for a lot of people from this country and all over the world. That will never stop. People want to be here. No matter how rough things get in the next year or so, I think we will always be a destination for new energy and brains, and that’s going to help our economy.”

Whether it’s due to a limited reliance on credit, a creative service or product, or simply the ability to capitalize on being in New York City, the three businesses profiled here are unquestionably on the upswing. They’re growing in Manhattan, throughout the five boroughs and, in one case, across the globe.

KIDVILLE GOES GLOBAL
While others were still making New Year’s resolutions, one business was expanding all over the city, country and even internationally. Kidville, a one-stop-shop offering a range of services and early development classes for newborns through 5-year-olds, acts as a hub for city families. The business, currently in its fifth year, began as a single location on the Upper East Side and now has five outposts all over Manhattan. While a new annex in East Chelsea just opened, the big news at Kidville is its recent acquisition of international chain JW Tumbles, a kids’ gym with locations in the United States, Hong Kong and Singapore.

“One of the reasons we acquired Tumbles is because we are going to be able to add Kidville content to the facilities that are already all around the U.S., and internationally,” said Andy Stenzler, co-founder of Kidville with his wife, Shari Misher-Stenzler. “It was a great transaction for us.”

The business also underwent some major changes late last year, when it merged with Longfoot Communications and became Kidville, Inc., a public company. The merger allowed the local operation to open up franchising options—a location in Dallas, Texas, is in the works—and eventually led to the Tumbles acquisition.
But Stenzler believes part of the reason the Kidville brand is doing so well in tough times is because it is a family-oriented business.

“We’re in a sector, the children’s sector, where people would give up many more things before giving up something for their children,” Stenzler said. “Certainly the economic climate has changed, but we provide phenomenal services and classes that you can go to every week. And maybe people won’t go on as expensive of a vacation, but they want to come every week with their child because it’s so meaningful for both the parents and the children.”

Kidville’s success can also certainly be attributed to the growth of city families in the past several years, and the idea of creating an inviting community for kids and parents—something that didn’t exist when the founders had their first child, Kylie, who is now 6. Stenzler explained that the inspiration for Kidville came after his wife returned from taking the 6-month-old to her first music class. After waiting in line and dragging the stroller down the stairs, Misher-Stenzler and Kylie attended the music class in a rundown converted dance studio.

“There weren’t great quality places in New York and you had to trek around to all these different sort of mom-and-pop places,” Stenzler said. “We thought, why shouldn’t there be a great, quality place that has everything under one roof?”

Stenzler, who co-founded the sandwich chain Cosi, and Misher-Stenzler, co-founder of London Misher Public Relations, put their business sense and marketing savvy to work and created the kind of place they wanted to attend. In addition to classes, the larger Kidville hubs feature a café, indoor playground, kids’ boutique and kid-friendly salon for haircuts. The couple also hired talented and knowledgeable people already in the industry to create the development classes and programming that are now the staples of the business.

Classes range from art and cooking to gym and dance. One of the more popular courses is the pre-nursery program Run, Wiggle, Paint and Giggle, a smorgasbord of activities including art, ball play and a wiggling send-off with the house band. Another successful program is Kidville University, a preschool alternative, which slowly socializes toddlers into a preschool schedule and helps both kids and parents manage separation anxiety.

The class that has really caught the attention of families, however, is Little Maestros.
“Most music classes are just one person playing the guitar and Maestros is a full band with a lead singer, and a drummer and a keyboardist,” Stenzler said. “It’s a fabulous program with all original music.”

Little Maestros was founded by musician and city mom Marni Konner. Stenzler and Misher-Stenzler were customers of the class and knew it would be a perfect addition; now Kidville is the exclusive provider. The original Little Maestros band has even released three hit albums, been on tour and is currently in talks to have a television show.

Although Kidville classes fall into the premium price range, clients feel like they are getting good value for the expense. Enrolling in a class comes with an automatic “Silver Membership” to the facility, which includes perks like discounts at the café, salon and boutique, as well as passes to the indoor playground.

Upper East Side mom Lisa Schneider is one client who says she will continue bringing her 2-year-old twins, Ava and Gabrielle, to Kidville.

“Everyone is so nice and friendly and warm,” Schneider said. “It’s just run very well and that’s really why we keep coming back. They are very good at who they hire and the types of classes they offer. They seem to have their finger on the pulse of what kids enjoy.”

Schneider sad the convenience of having so many services under one roof, as well as friendly staff who know her and her children by name, make the price well worth it—even in tough economic times. And that’s exactly what Andy Stenzler and Shari Misher-Stenzler hoped customers would feel.

“It’s an exciting thing for a company that started in New York City just over four years ago to be at a point where we are already an international company with international distribution,” Stenzler said. “It’s been a tremendous experience. We love the New York market, we love the idea that we’ve built something here in New York City, and we love the idea that we’re taking that to the rest of the world.”

AN EMERGING GREEN ECONOMY
The global economy may be in the gutter, but a green economy is sprouting from the fallout. And Green Spaces, based in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, is one eco-business poised to lead the pack.

The company, founded by Jennie Nevin in May 2008, provides low-cost workspace for green start-ups to launch their businesses and connect with other eco-entrepreneurs. Renting space comes with perks like use of a conference room, wireless Internet, reserved spots at business seminars and workshops and even interns for project research.

“It’s really helpful as a start-up company to be able to talk with other start-ups and share ideas and figure out the best way to move forward in your business,” Nevin said.

Green Spaces, which is only two stops into Brooklyn on the No. 4 or No. 5 trains, is reachable from the East Side of Manhattan, so Nevin is planning a second location, scheduled to open in May or June, in the Hell’s Kitchen or Upper West Side areas. The company also recently announced the launch of the city’s first competition for green businesses, which seeks to highlight a start-up company with innovative ideas.

Taylor Mork, owner of Crop to Cup—a company that connects sustainable coffee growers in Uganda with roasters and retailers in New York City—is one Green Spaces client. He believes that even in this economy, green products and businesses have an edge over conventional ones, and spending habits will remain green once the economy starts to turn around.

Until four or five months ago, Mork did much of his work from his home in Harlem. Now he uses Green Spaces to grind and package coffee, and complete more typical office tasks.

“For a small business in New York City, you can’t afford your own office space, hands down,” he said. “This is necessary for any small business that wants to have a meeting place for staff or production facilities.”

In some ways, Nevin feels that the recent economy has helped her business grow and expand. Because it is expensive for start-up businesses to move into their own furnished and equipped space, entrepreneurs are looking for other options.

The new Obama administration, she added, is expected to direct an influx of funds toward infrastructure and green spending, encouraging even more new investors to start up businesses.

“People are seeing there’s an available market for these types of products and services,” Nevin said. “And we were seeing a lot of people from Wall Street that were looking at [the recession] as an opportunity to make a career change.”

CUPCAKES: THE “AFFORDABLE LUXURY”

Owner and founder Jason Bauer, with wife Mia Bauer, believes that Crumbs’ success has to do with the ability to generate and reinvest revenue in new stores, as well as the “affordable luxury” of the cupcake.

“People might not spend as much going out to dinner, but they’ll still treat themselves to a cupcake,” Bauer said. “It’s still something that they can enjoy, make them feel good, have fun with, but not cost them a fortune.”

The first shop only had three or four different cupcake flavors each day, along with other baked goods like brownies, cookies, pies and Danishes. But after a few months in business, the Bauers decided to focus mostly on the cupcake. Now display cases in some stores offer up to 45 varieties, from classic options like a homemade Hostess cupcake to the newly created mint chocolate chip grasshopper cupcake.

“Mia is constantly coming up with new combinations,” Bauer said. “Sometimes we have contests in our stores where we ask customers to come up with new products, sometimes we have our employees make suggestions and sometimes there are different things that we see throughout the world and use it as an influence.”
That creativity is trickling down into other ventures for the family. Last fall, Mia Bauer wrote a children’s book, Lolly LaCrumb’s Cupcake Adventure (DK Publishing, $16.99.), which came with a baking kit and recipes.

Storybooks aside, Crumbs’ success seems to be based on some very basic business tenets that stand true in any economy.

“It was always a neighborhood, old-fashioned bakery with a more modernized product line,” Bauer said. “We pride ourselves on knowing our customers by name and how they like their coffee and what cupcake they like. Lots of regulars—that will never change.”

SIDEBAR: MOM AND POP ON LIFE SUPPORT

“We’ve spent so much time worrying that the federal bailout comes down. And what do we worry about? We worry about Wall Street,” Stringer said. “There has to be a conversation worrying about the mom-and-pop stores.”

On the Upper East Side, the survey covered stores on Lexington Avenue between East 75th and 86th streets. On the Upper West Side, the focus was on Columbus Avenue between West 72nd and 83rd streets. In all, 125 owners and managers responded to the survey, a 10 percent response rate.

The result of the outreach is Saving the Mom & Pops: Ten Ways to Support Small Independent Retail Stores and Keep Manhattan Vibrant, a list of recommendations designed to target some of the biggest problems small businesses say they face in today’s economic climate. Stringer left commercial rent control, a hot-button issue that has stalled before, to the City Council. But ideas that did make the cut with the panel include altering zoning regulations to make room for small, independent stores and helping retailers reduce energy costs.

An empty storefront on Broadway last year. Phot By: Daniel S. Burnstein

“We asked them to come up with things that were not pie-in-the sky, that were actually achievable in a year or two,” Stringer said of the panel.

Carol Puzone, owner of Bazaar de la Paz, on Broadway between 101st and 102nd streets, was one of the small business owners that provided feedback to the borough president. Her boutique, which she says is the only 100 percent fair-trade store in New York City, sells eco-friendly furniture, décor and other handmade items from around the world. Artists must be paid up-front, which is why she feels the report’s most important recommendation is to increase micro-lending.

“For me, that’s the biggest issue,” Puzone said. “When you’re in retail, you have overhead.”

According to Stringer’s report, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has allocated an additional $5 million to an existing program that guarantees revolving loans (money that is lent, paid back with interest and then lent again). Stringer recommends doubling the pool of micro-loans by adding $20 million to the working capital of nonprofit lenders like Accion and Seedco, which specialize in serving businesses that can’t traditionally get money from banks.

Harris Healy III, owner of Logos Books, is another merchant who gave feedback to the borough president.

“It was really gratifying to see the city take the time to actually talk to small business,” Healy said. “That’s kind of a change in direction.”

Borough President Scott Stringer spearheaded a Manhattan-wide survey of mom-and-pop stores. Photo By: Andrew Schwartz

Lower taxes and more protection and support for commercial tenants are two things Healy said he’d like to see. For example, leaks in the building that’s home to his York Avenue store, near East 84th Street, have damaged merchandise, warped the floor and taken up precious time. It would be immensely helpful, he said, to have a city agency that could act as a point person with the landlord, or even explain his rights as a commercial tenant.

Stringer’s report suggests tax relief for struggling retailers and better connecting business owners with assistance and advice from city agencies and nonprofit organizations.

The report’s final recommendation is to create pilot districts where some of the highlighted ideas could be tested out on a smaller scale. Stringer said his office would be accepting applications from interested business improvement districts and groups of independent storeowners.

And there are still signs of life for many small businesses. Although the Wicked Wolf Restaurant, on First Avenue near East 75th Street, is closing, a second branch of the Second Avenue Deli is reportedly taking its place later this year. Across town, the highly publicized closing of the Emerald Inn, on Columbus Avenue near West 70th Street, was delayed because the landlord was reportedly unable to find a new tenant willing to pay the increased rent. Stringer agreed that lease extensions are something Manhattan may see more of in the coming months, but they do not offer long-term stability.

“I think that’s a great success,” Stringer said of the Emerald Inn situation. “On the other hand, it’s a short-term solution and we’re going to need to do more for the immediate future.”