bsg newsletter q2 2012 letter final

7/31/2019 BSG Newsletter Q2 2012 Letter Final

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April - June 2012

INSIDE THIS ISSUENew Trees on Fulton

Native New Yorker Puts Down

Bicycle Roots

Local Cobbler is Good for the Sole

Faces of Bed-Stuy: Numi Deodee

An Aging Improvement District

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BedStuyGateway.Wordpress.com 718-636-6962 [email protected]



Welcome to our 2nd quarterly issueof the year. Over the past few months,we’ve been obsessively soliciting alltypes of businesses to come opentheir doors on our 1.5 mile stretch of

Fulton Street here in Central Brook-lyn. As the streetscape improvementproject forges ahead, bringing a dy-namic new retail environment thatwill include trees, benches, and a

brand new outdoor 8,000 square-foot public plaza, we’re excitedthat entrepreneurs are taking up the charge to add to the district’sexisting retail product and service offerings: My Arena, a newbar/lounge concept located on the eastern edge of the district at557 Classon Avenue hosted the BID’s very successful March“Nothing But Networking.” Participants at that event were eventreated to a sneak peek at Alice’s Arbor, the new locavore res-

taurant coming to 549 Classon Avenue. We’re thrilled that BusyBee Bagel will be a new place to get your nosh on when it opensits doors at the corner of Fulton Street and Classon Avenue. Andfor all you bikers, check out our prole inside on Nechama Levy,owner of Bicycle Roots, which will open soon on Fulton Streetand Claver Place.

Our interview with longtime Bed-Stuy resident Numi Deodeeoffers an insider’s perspective on the neighborhood’s evolutionover these past few decades. Insightful, informative, and heart-

felt. Truly educational. As New Yorkers, I know all of us appreci-ate the value of navigating the neighborhood in comfort and style – Gavriel Leviev’s Fulton Street Cobbler will help you do justthat. And in this hyper- communicative world of Facebook andTwitter and YouTube and RSS feeds, who can truly contemplate

conducting business – indeed conducting life! – without beingone click away from an update? Stay tuned for the BID’s upcom-ing social media workshops.

I can say at the eight month mark that while we’re gratied thatsuccesses are coming to fruition, there is so much more workthat needs to be done. The success of Fulton Street in CentralBrooklyn – I’ll venture to say of any local commercial corridoranywhere – is only a reection of the neighborhood in which itis located and how local residents, local entrepreneurs, and lo-cal property owners take responsibility in fostering a successfulenvironment. Join us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, attend

our Nothing But Networking events or business workshops, oremail us with your thoughts and ideas. The point here is for all of us to establish a productive dialogue about the kind of economicenvironment we want to take shape here in Bed Stuy. Here’s ateaser: stay tuned for our resident/property owner/broker focus group meetings and surveys – we’re looking for-ward to hearing, rst-hand, what you have to say on this topic.Our success is your success.

We look forward to our conversation.

On March 23, 2012, staff from theNew York City Business SolutionsCenter (BSC) gave a seminar for

small business owners on accessing cityresources. Some of the services that theycan assist with are securing nancing, em-ployee recruitment, and legal assistance.

For entrepreneurs looking for nanc-ing, BSC offers courses to get new busi-ness started: “You need a business plan be-

fore you come to us looking for nancing,”said Yan Li Jiang, a nancing specialist atBSC. “We have courses to help you devel-op a business plan. The expertise that BSCoffers is tailored to suit individual entrepre-neurs. “We go down deep and try to get theproper documents together,” says Jiang.“and I’ve helped nurture relationships withlenders.” Jiang stressed that explainingwhy a loan is necessary is a crucial partof the process. Lenders are often reluctantto give a loan to cover general overhead

costs; a more successful strategy, for ex-ample, would be a restaurant owner tryingto secure a short-term loan for a cappuc-

cino machine, if she can make the case thatit will improve the restaurant’s business.

Michele McClymont spoke to thegroup about training and recruiting. “Find-ing the right employeed for a small busi-ness is like trying to t someone into yourfamily,” she said. Furthermore, most smalbusinesses don’t have full-time HR, mak-ing it even harder to recruit new staff“Small businesses need all hands on deck

all the time,” McClymont pointed out. Thatmakes it crucial to nd the right employ-ees, but it can be hard to nd the time andresources to devote to the search for theright person to hire. BSC can help smallbusinesses recruit: at no cost to the busi-ness, they can conduct targeted recruitmentand initial resume review. They refer onlythose candidates who are a potential t fora business’s needs, and will even provide

All my best,

Doug Jones

Letter from The Executive DirectorPage 1

Sunshine Home Healthcare Agency owner

Joyce Bain and her partners are in the pro-

cess of starting their business.

Dear Neighbors,



Progress is continuing on the streetscapeimprovement project. Pavers have beenlaid in the amenity band (the band be-

tween the curb and the sidewalk, where trees,benches, trash cans, etc. are placed) from Troy to

Nostrand on the north side of Fulton Street. Thatwill continue until the pavers have been laid allthe way to Bedford Avenue, at which point workwill begin on the south side of the street.

Planting season is also ofcially underway as

of March 15, and landscapers have been plantingnew street trees on both sides of Fulton Street.The new trees are “skyline” honey locusts and“halka” Japanese zelkovas. Benches, trash cans,bike racks and muni (parking) meters will comelater in the spring or over the summer.

Marcy Plaza is also progressing, with one of two planters (the one closer to Fulton Street)already poured. The plaza, and the project as awhole, are scheduled to be completed by the endof August 2012. o

New Trees on Fulton St.

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Getting her feet run over by agarbage truck while biking

one night got Nechama Levy

thinking about opening a bike shopof her own. That initial thought iscoming to fruition as Bicycle Roots,which will be New York City’s largestwoman-owned bicycle store when itopens at 1078 Fulton Street in May orearly June. “It’s not like it was a con-scious decision that it was sign,” said

Levy of the accident. “But I felt moreempowered to take the risk. I gured

things couldn’t get much worse thanthat night.” Soon afterward, she quither position as a medical researchassistant at Albert Einstein Collegeof Medicine. When she could walkagain, she started looking for a job asa bicycle mechanic, her true passion.

Levy quickly found that she

would need to get some credentials inorder to break into the eld. She en-rolled in a three-week course in bikerepair at the United Bicycle Institutein Ashland, OR, and was willing to

spend the rst night of the program

sleeping in a tent in a snowy campsiteto achieve her dream (upon learningwhat she was doing, the owner of alocal hostel was able to nd room for

her for the duration of the course).

Upon returning to New York

City, Levy found her rst mechanic

job at Gotham Bikes. Her experiencein that shop and and at several sub-sequent jobs helped shape her ideas

for Bicycle Roots. She toldus a little about her visionfor the store’s customerexperience. “I want thisto be a place wherepeople can come andask questions aboutcycling,” Levy said.

She wants the storeto be a nexus of cy-cling information.Another customer-focused touch willbe a while-you-waitmechanic’s station justinside the store’s frontwindow. Customers willbe able to watch and waitfor small repairs, which canbe reassuring when a treasuredbike is being worked on (there

will also be a large, full-service

workshop in the store’s lower level).

Levy lives in Bed-Stuy just a few

blocks from the new store. She is alifelong New Yorker, and her ties to

central Brooklyn go back several gen-erations. She is excited to be openingher store on Fulton Street. “It’s sucha great thoroughfare,” she says. Hergoal is to offer value and accessibilityto her customers - her neighbors. Oneway she will do this is by being trans-portation-focused, as cycling is oneof the lowest-cost transportation op-tions available. Another way will bethrough outreach to local kids, throughgroups like Kids Ride Club (see side-

bar). Levy will donate free completebike setups (bike, helmet and lock)to interested schools and communitygroups that want to give them awayas prizes to reward student achieve-ment. She looks forward to reachingout to the community through BicycleRoots. “This is my neighborhood, and

I want to make it better,” Levy says.o

This is myneighborhood,and I want tomake it better.

“ “-Nechama Levy

Bicycle Roots owner Nechama Levy and co-founder Mauricio Alvarez stand in

their cavernous unfnished space.

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Gavriel Leviev of Fulton Cob-bler (1519 Fulton Street) hasbeen on Fulton Street in Bed-

Stuy for seventeen years. He has beenin his current location near the Kings-ton-Throop C train stop for the lastseven years; before that, he spent tenyears across from Restoration Plaza.

The shop offers a full line of re-pairs to soles, heels, uppers and zip-

pers. He can do modications, suchas adjusting the calf t of women’sboots. He will even create shoes fromscratch if a customer wants them.They can be ready in as little as 2-3days. He showed us a pair of loafersthat he is currently working on as a petproject; the design is a blend of LouisVuitton and Versace inuences.

The shoe repair business haschanged drastically in the last few de-

cades. Footwear manufacturing qual-ity has generally gone down as morecompanies shift their operations toChina. This leads to shoes that are of poorer quality, and thus more likelyto need repair. However, stores willoften offer incentives on the cheapershoes, such as a free third pair withthe purchase of two pairs at regularprice. This is especially true of high-volume shoe stores in shopping malls.

More shoes at a customer’s disposal

means fewer trips to the cobbler. Gen-erational changes also affect the shoerepair business. Young people oftenwear ip-ops for much of the year,and switch to sneakers only when theweather turns cold. However, as hesays, “The shoe repair business is theoriginal green business. That’s onething the young people like.” In addi-

tion to the environmental virtues of re-pairing shoes, there are also economicbenets. Repairs cost just a fraction ofthe price of quality new shoes: Levievsays that a pair of shoes that will last

will cost in the range of $125-175.

Leviev has been surrounded byshoes since he can remember. His fa-ther had a shoe business in the Tash-kent province of Uzbekistan, whereLeviev was born. The family movedto Israel after Uzbekistan declaredits independence, and then to UnitedStates when Leviev was 12 years oldLeviev started out in a pizza shopbut his father persuaded him to open

a cobbler business after several yearsHis oldest son is looking to continuethe business for another generationinterested in footwear design, hespends a lot of time in the shop learn-ing the craft and the business.

Customers often remain loyal toFulton Cobbler even after they leavethe neighborhood. “One customermoved to Queens,” he told us, “yetshe collects her shoes all year long

and then comes down to my shop witha garbage bag lled with shoes.” o

“Shoe repairis the originalgreen business.“

“-Gavriel Leviev

Gavriel Leviev of Fulton Cobbler has repaired footwear in Bed-Stuy for

seventeen years. His family has been cobbling for three generation.

One of Gavriel Leviev’s highest-priced items, these authentic crocodile-

and ostrich-skin shoes sell for $1200 plus tax.

Local Cobbler is Good for the SolePage 4



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Life-long Brooklynite Numi Deodee describes herself as “passionate about Bed-

Stuy.” Born in East New York, she has lived in Bed-Stuy almost continuously

since the age of 13, with interruptions only to attend school. She has worked ingovernment relations and community affairs for various non-prot organizations,

and is currently launching her own marketing and communications business. Wecaught up with her to ask her to share her thoughts about the neighborhood.

Faces of Bed-Stuy: Numi Deodee



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It is probably not an exaggeration

to say that most people under the

age of 30 start with social media

to find goods and services. Whether

it is reading yelp.com reviews of a

medical practice or checking into

a favorite cafe on their foursquare

smartphone app, young people are

reliant on social media, and often

oblivious to traditional forms of

marketing. When they are in an un-

familiar area, or are just looking for

a new place to eat, they will pull out

their smartphones to look for nearby

restaurants. If a restaurant is not on

yelp.com, young people just might

not find it.

The BID strongly encourages all

district businesses, and restaurants

in particular, to become familiar with

the power of yelp, foursquare, and

other social media. While customers

can review a business without the

owner’s permission or knowledge,

becoming an active user of yelp al-

lows an owner to en-

gage with reviewers,

keep the business’s

information up to

date, and view aggre-

gate data about yelp

users who are reading

reviews (much of this

also applies to four-

square).

We will be holding

a workshop in July to

cover the basics of so-

cial media, but in the

meantime, business

owners are welcome to call us a

718.636.6910 or email us at bedstuy

[email protected] with any question

about these tools. We will be happy

to set up a one-on-one meeting. o



Doug Jones

Lisa Thompson

Anthony Saunders

Meg Dahlgren

James Ryals

Bernadette Mitchell

Executive Director

Deputy Director

Director, Public Safety and

Environmental Control

Public Safety and

Environmental Control Ofcer

Operations InternCommercial Revitalization

Assistant

April May

June

19th 6-8pm

Nothing by Networking

Flowerworks (547 Nostrand Ave.)

17th 6:30-8:30pm


Carver Bank (1392 Fulton Street.)

Tentative: 21st 6-8pm


Applebee’s (1392 Fulton Street)

The Date is TBD (Check Our Blog)

Small Business Workshop

Accessing State Resources

Bed-Stuy Restoration (1368 Fulton St.)

The Date is TBD (Check Our Blog)

Town Hall Meeting

NYPD Safty Seminar


2nd 9:00 am - 3:00 pm

Rolling Up The GatesLocation TBD (Check Our Blog)

RSVP Required - Email [email protected]

20th 1:00-3:30 pm

Small Business Workshop

Financing Workshop


28th 1:00-3:00 pm

Free Tree Giveaway

Restoration Plaza (1368 Fulton St.)

Bring ID for Registration. Come Early!

24th 6:30-8:00 pm

Wealth Building Tuesdays

Restoration Plaza (1368 Fulton St.)

STAFF

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