Looking Ahead

LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis

Monday night I was passing the new Duane Reade super drug store on Third Avenue, corner 14th Street, in the latest NYU dorm building, erected on the site of that old hellhole, the Sahara Hotel. It is four blocks away from another Duane Reade, on 18th Street, in the space formerly occupied by Sloan’s supermarket. Its next door neighbor is a. CVS, on what I think was the former site of the D’Agostino supermarket. The CVS also has a twin, on corner 18th Street and Park Avenue South, in the location of the former Food Emporium supermarket. I guess supermarkets have had it, we also lost a Grand Union to the Cabrini Medical Center. The multi-job New Yorkers have no time to cook, that’s why we have so many restaurants and take -outs.. But why drugstores?
The lights were bright, the "Open" sign was clearly visible, and I decided to check out the ambiance. As I turned from the window, ahead of me a handsome tall man stepped our of the passenger side of a white unmarked van, straightened the jacket of his perfect pinstripe suit and walked into the store, cell phone in hand. After whispering a few words, he put the phone away and turned around, surveying the store with unmistakable pride of possession.
"How do you like this location?" I asked. "It’s great, but why are you asking me?" he wondered. "You look like the landlord." "I’m not the landlord but I am one of the executives."
"Great, there is something I’ve always wanted to ask one of you drugstore leaders. I write a local events column, and I could never figure out why there are so many large chain drugstores opening in the neighborhood, and all over the city."
"Well, a population of 50,000 supports one of our stores. In the suburbs we would be more widely spread." "Yes, but with another on 18th Street..." "It fits, demographically, New York is a vertical city, you know.". "Well, then, what about the CVS, next door, don’t they cut into the same 50,000 customers?"
"Please, you cannot compare them with us. Look at the height of the shelves, the richness of merchandise, the lights, the displays. People like a nice store" (he may even have called it elegant). "Besides, New York does not have convenience stores, no 7/11s, no Wal-Marts. None of those companies want to pay the rents for the large spaces they require. We fill a lot of that vacuum." (The economics seemed doubtful, but eventually I figured it out. Duane Reade, with mostly packaged food, bottled drinks, small clothing stock - stockings and underwear - and such electronics items as shavers, hair dryers and radios - can have a lot more per square foot turnover than the bulk merchandisers.) "But I think there’s enough business for all of us." "What about the Ma and Pa pharmacies?" "Yes, they have a problem."
"Where do you shop?" he now wanted to know. "At Elliott Pharmacy, and your 18th Street Store, and also on corner Broad and Beaver downtown (diplomatically, I skipped the CVS, which has a one-hour photo service)." "Ah, that’s a good store, don’t you think? We had to combine five small premises to make a single big one!" "Yes, it’s the only place on Broad where you can buy a two liter soda for the office at a decent price." "You see..." he looked at me . "But how many such stores can you have?" "Well, about a hundred, in New York and New Jersey, we are a metropolitan merchandiser, we will not go far outside. But it is getting harder.." he paused. After a greeting we parted.
A few steps away, I turned around. "Do you mind if I make an interview out of this chat? May I have your card?" He considered; "After you give me your card." "I’m down to my last, but if you’d like to look at it..." "Hm, Town and Village, what is your circulation?" "All of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, your customers." Another "hm," as he reached into his wallet to hand me a card, apparently his last one too. "Anthony J. Cuti, Chairman and CEO of Duane Reade, I’m much honored," there was not much else that I could say as we exchanged handshakes. It was a pleasant interview, and Mr. Cuti provided some hard-to-come-by insights into the minds of brick-and-mortar merchandising prophets in this rush-to-Internet era. Besides, there’s that neighborhood connection - James Duane, first Mayor of NYC after the British evacuation, once owned what is now Gramercy Park (alas, my histories are silent on the settler who gave his name to Reade Street. Help! Thomas Byrne?).
On the elevator I spoke to a neighbor, mother of two active youngsters: "Have you seen the new Duane Reade store on 14th Street?" "Yes, and I think they are all crazy, where will the business come from?" "I just met the CEO, and he finds that there are enough people in the tall buildings to support them all." "I still think they are all crazy," were her parting words.
Maybe yes and maybe not. The drugstore chains are taking huge risks, doing renovations and paying high rents, more than the supermarkets who could no longer afford the premises. The prices will have to go up, although volume is increasing. As the population is aging, we need more expensive medicines per capita, not just tubes of multi-colored toothpaste. Upstate, the Walgreens, Fays, CVS and Rite Aids are doing healthy volume, despite the drain from the mailing-in to Merck-Medco or other mail-order apothecaries for three months’ supplies of medications at a shot that Supplemental Medicare Benefit providers require. Both major political parties are scheduling some forms of medication benefits under Medicare, which will further increase the volume at the supermarket drugstores. Most of the chains provide, with the medicine, an abbreviated printout from PDR, the mammoth Physicians’ Desk Reference, listing the precautions and side effects , an information service your friendly oldtime neighborhood druggist would casually proffer while dispensing the medication - "No drinkin’ (or aspirin, or Advil).while you’re usin’ this medicine, hear? After you finish this bottle, you can go back to your evil ways. And let me give you a little bottle of laxative, in case the stuff gives you some constipation." Hard to beat that kind of personalized service, in the superstore or mail-order environment

By M.C. Dobelis
The Stuyvesant Square Park, once more, is targeted for the installation of a permanent food concession. On September 19 the Department of Parks and Recreation presented to Community Board Six a Request For Proposal (RFP) for an outdoors cafe, the operation to be based in an abandoned comfort station in the East Park that is to be converted into a kiosk, surrounded by tables and chairs. An answer in 30 days was requested.
Because of time pressure, the normal committee hearings process was shortcut, and the Board reviewed the request in its regular full October meeting. It rejected the RFP, reiterating its resolution of May 2000, which recommended the return of the comfort station to its original use, and expressed its reservations about the continuing "privatization" of public parks.
Board Six found numerous errors in the RFP, which alleges that the city bought the park in 1836 (it was given to the city by a deed of the Stuyvesant family), infers that the 1846 historic iron fence was restored in 1988 (the East Park fence was not touched, and keeps deteriorating), and ignores the legal requirement that any changes to a landmarked park (SSP is part of the Stuyvesant Square Historic District) must be approved by the Art Commission and the Landmarks Preservation Commission. It draws attention to a hot-dog vendor franchise, operating from a cart, in a manner appropriate and authorized in historic parks, which has been awarded in the park for the past six yearsIt also notes that while tobacco products are excluded in the RFP, alcohol is not.
The Board Six resolution was nearly unanimous, prompted by protests of neighborhood residents and members of the Stuyvesant Park Neighborhood Association. Jack Taylor, board member of the latter, has alerted the two commissions of the RFP, and Bernard and Pauline Goodman have taken their protest directly to Parks and Recreation Comissioner Henry Stern, who, as reported, intends to proceed with the RFP, and has declined to meet with the protesters in person..
The activists see the food kiosk concession as an encroachment on public space, inhibiting the public use of the park. Members of Board Six also see it as an attempt to exclude the affected public from decisions about the use of parks.
The dispute started in March 23, when Eric Petterson, a Stuyvesant Park resident and owner of three local restaurants (including Luna Park, which is operated inside the Union Square Park), invited Parks officials and a few neighborhood activists, including some SPNA and Beth Israel representatives, to discuss a concession, based on the pattern of the Bryant Park kiosk and tables.
Board Six, which had been ignored, in May issued a resolution opposing any such concession. Subsequently, Commissioner Stern promised that "the entire civilized world will have its say before anything is done... and that includes the Landmarks Commission and the Arts Commission.. and, definitely, Board Six will have its bite of the apple," as reported in the New York Times. Mr. Pettersen has repeatedly stated that he has no financial interest in the proposed concession, and is solely concerned with improving the park.

The question has been asked - why not have a cheerful kiosk that will dress up a dark park, and add to its use? The SPNA, whose members labor and raise funds every year since the 1968, to maintain the plantings and pay for extra help (two years ago it gave Parks Department a lump sum grant of $10,000 for bushes, most of which died, unattended, in a drought) has experiences in this matter. For years the parks attracted a huge destructive methadone clinic and drug crowd who used it as a club, causing residents to shy away from their only green space. Then St. George’s Episcopal Church curtailed its well-intentioned daily free lunch distribution, to concentrate on rehabilitation, the police started to pay more attention to the illegal activities, and the park was rehabilitated. An attractive food kiosk with outdoors tables may just re-initiate the deterioration, to the loss of the neighborhood and residents. Further, the demographics and economy of the area do not provide for a volume of operations that will support a well policed and cleaned food court. Our hospital visitors do not compare with the flow of the fast-food office crowd of Bryant Park. The bagel and coffee carts just outside the hospitals, and the hospital cafeterias take care of their immediate needs. As for the benign attention of the underfunded Parks Department, it took them four years to replace a section of the park’s fence destroyed by a taxi cab, and the rehabilitation of the East Park’s historic fence has been stalled since 1988. Why doesn’t the currently rich economy of this city provide for the preservation of its treasures?
Carol Schachter, president of the SPNA, reminds us that November 3 is the fifth anniversary of the death of Rex Wassermann, the landscape architect who led the restoration of the West Park fence, at a time when the city had less money than it does now. To the people who scoff at such efforts when the US education system is deteriorating and people in the 3rd World are starving, note that the falling apart of the physical plant underlies the destruction of everything else. I was not the only person who had doubts about the continued revival of 14th Street when Con Ed stopped maintaining its clocks and Zeckendorf Towers let the subway escalators sit idle (both of the above are now coming back in operation).
The Goodmans, with the aid of other community leaders, including Sylvia Friedman of Board Six, the sponsor of the May resolution, are organizing a public meeting with Commissioner Stern, in which members of the public will have an opportunity to express their feelings about the food kiosk, date and place to be announced. Meanwhile, local City Councilperson Margarita Lopez ( 2nd CD) has written to the Parks Department, opposing the issuance of the RFP without an input from the residents, and Andrew Berman, chief of staff for State Senator Thomas K. Duane ( 27TH SD), is reviewing the paperwork. The green original wooden doors of the kiosk have been recently replaced by inappropriate metal ones, and a Violation Report is in the process of being filed with the Landmatrks Preservation Commission.