By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2024-11-28 00:15:51 | Updated at 2024-11-28 02:54:45
2 hours ago
A Hell’s Kitchen pizza parlor is facing imminent eviction after 24 years — all because of sudden “vibrations” felt by an upstairs apartment that might just be from the subway, The Post has learned.
The Slice of New York pizza shop was given a 15-day notice from their landlord to fix the reported issue by Thanksgiving Day or be subject to eviction, court documents show.
But an architect hired by the pizza shop said probes are needed to find the cause of the shakes, and the eatery’s owner claims it could take months of structural repairs to address the issue — as she begged a Manhattan judge to grant them more time.
“Two weeks is just crazy,” owner Camilla Garlick, 40, told The Post on Wednesday. “This is not a two week procedure.”
The Clinton Housing Development Company owns and operates the affordable and supportive housing building on Eighth Avenue near West 46th Street that’s home to the slice spot and 70 SRO and one-bedroom apartments with onsite services.
A rep for the non-profit said that the pizza shop has long known about the vibration issue, and that the company only filed the 15-day notice to get the owner to act.
Last summer, a tenant upstairs first complained about the vibrations, and the city Department of Buildings issued a $625 fine to the landlord, according to a complaint filed in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Garlick said her uncle, who opened the slice shop in 2000 and sold it to her in 2019, went upstairs to figure out if the parlor’s exhaust system was to blame — but found no vibrations at all.
According to Garlick, she reached out to the building’s management but never heard back until the sudden notice two weeks ago.
“We don’t even know what it is yet, but they’re just assuming we’re the problem,” Garlick, who resides in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, said.
An architect hired by Garlick said in a letter submitted to court that the problem could take months to solve — if it the pizza shop is indeed to blame — and suggested the vibrations could be “caused by the MTA subway train during it’s [sic] passage under the building,” the filing states.
But a rep for the company said it is confident the pizza shop is the root of the quakes.
“It’s a serious noise issue,” said Joe Restuccia, executive director at the CHDC, adding that multiple tenants were “out of their minds” over the vibrations.
He also tossed back Garlick’s claim that the company was the unresponsive party, claiming she’s the one who hasn’t been communicative, leading them to issue the 15-day notice.
“They’ve known about this for months and months,” Restuccia said. “It’s just a matter of responding to it.”
Restuccia said he has no intention of actually evicting Garlick, calling her a “great, longtime tenant.”
“We want to keep them,” he said. “Our commercial tenants are the lifeline of this building.”
Another pizza shop at another building in their 75-property-portfolio had a similar issue, Restuccia said, and were able to abate the bad vibes fairly quickly.
Restuccia said the CHDC is committed to being a good steward of the property, and is currently undertaking a roughly $15 million renovation project of the building, and a new tenant — Freedman’s Restaurant — is already paying rent at the empty-looking corner retail spot.
“We have to live together, we all have to do our parts,” Restuccia told The Post.
Garlick, who said the CHDC granted them generous rent abatements during the COVID pandemic, which left them closed for a year, said she’s more than happy to fix the problem — if they confirm the cause.
“If we’re the problem, we’ll gladly fix it,” Garlick told The Post. “I have to do it — if we’re bothering someone, we want to fix the issue.”
