Tony’s Di Napoli, a popular family-style Italian restaurant on Second Ave., closed earlier this week to make way for the Second Ave. Subway. As The Real Deal reported, the restaurant at 83rd St. and Second Ave. is the future home of the southern exit for the Second Ave. Subway’s 86th St. stop, and as work continues underground, the MTA had to take possession of the restaurant’s long-time home. “This place has been slated as a stop for the station for many years,” Bruce Dimpflmaier, the restuarant’s GM, said. “We tried to fight and keep it from happening, but we knew it was an inevitable situation.”
The restaurant’s owners say they will seek out another Upper East Side location, and the Times Square outpost remains open and perennially crowded. Reaction to the loss of this restaurant seems decidedly mixed. Billed as a typical family-style red sauce joint good for crowds, Zagat gives the remaining location a 20 in the food department. Yelpers were less kind to the Upper East Side location as it earned just three stars.
Still, there are critics in every crowd. As one Yelper said, “Yup, another victim of the 2nd Avenue Subway bullsh$t.” A man on the street decried the closure to DNAinfo and called the Second Ave. Subway construction a “boondoggle.” For some, a reliable if replaceable Italian restaurant is more important than transit progress, and we see once again that when it comes to forward albeit slow progress, you can’t please all of New Yorkers all of the time.
11 comments
So what happens in these cases? Do the business owners get some sort of compensation from the city? Or what? Just “shut the doors and get out”?
And what about the employees? Restaurant work is often non-steady work, but I’m sure some of those working there had mouths to feed at home etc…
What happens with them?
Just curious if anyone knows how the MTA deals with these “eminent domain” situations…
The MTA pays some amount for the space and fixtures. I think the restaurant owners also get lease money back from the authority and certain funds for relocation expenses. It doesn’t cover potential lost revenue though. The employees’ futures are up to the discretion of the owners. In this case, it sounds as though the owners’ other restaurants will absorb the payroll.
As someone who’s eaten there numerous times, it’s sad, but the Second Avenue Line is more important. Considering how much money they have (ever seen business there, it’s chaotic), I’m sure there’s another location that’ll pop up soon enough.
The Second Avenue Subway can barely be called “transit progress”. Progress shouldn’t mean adding on another line, it should mean finding more innovating, less devastating ways to make transit better and easier in New York City.
As a current Upper East Sider and former resident of Second Avenue, I can assure you that the Second Avenue Subway has done more than inconvenienced a few people and shut down one “crappy” restaurant, as you stated on Twitter. It has systematically destroyed a neighborhood. And it isn’t just Second Avenue, but half of almost every block off of Second Avenue. It is loud, noisy, and has ruined the Second Avenue that so many of the residents of this area enjoyed and relied on. Most restaurants on Second in the 70s and 80s had outside seating in the warmer months, but this past summer they were lucky to have 6 inches of sidewalk in front of their establishment. They were even more lucky to stay open.
And what is the pay off? Another subway line in…5 years? If we’re lucky? Forgive us for not wanting to put up with this.
And this is why New York’s public transit is in the deplorable state that it’s in.
+1. You have to be up here to know how lousy and careless the construction is. The UES will be so much more attractive, though, and it’s doubtless that new high-rise luxury buildings with huge retail space for “flagship” stores will continue to rise as the subway is slowly and painfully completed. What progress.
Yeah, the construction is lousy and careless and should have been nearly done by now. But the UES off of Second is still thriving. First Avenue is doing very well. At 72nd, even businesses located at Second are fine, as long as their main entrance is on the street and not the avenue.
I live on the Upper East Side. During rush hour, I hate having to let have a 6 train or to pass by me (because its so crowded that I can’t enter the train). So I’m quite happy the MTA is doing what it must to continue to Second Avenue subway construction. Are some people inconvenienced? No doubt, but such is life. There will always be inconveniences. Learn to deal with them.
Phase 1 of SAS is projected to carry 202,000 riders per weekday. The full project (phases 1-4), if completed, will carry 560,000 riders per weekday. I challenge you to “innovate” a way to carry that many people without building a new subway line.
I lived down in Washington when the Red Line was being run through the Woodley Park, Cleveland Park and Brandywine-UDC areas of Connecticut Avenue, using the same type of deep-tunnel construction as on the SAS. It was a nightmare where the station stops were located, since those areas were where open street cuts had to be done, and the problem was made doubly so by the fact that most of the commercial businesses along the avenue were concentrated at the station stop locations.
But most businesses survived both there and on Wisconsin Avenue, and 30 years down the line, the construction scars are long gone and a distant memory. That’s what will happen with the SAS once construction is finished, and until someone comes up with a way to build a line with no street-level disruptions, this is the way that minimizes NIMBY complaints to the greatest extent.
“less devastating ways to make transit better”
Given what’s under construction, this may be among the least devastating projects in the history of mankind.
Obviously it’s lousy to have the disruption going on, but the alternative is utter stagnation. I’ll take a relocated restaurant in exchange for a new train line any day (or eon in this case).