As New York City welcomes migrants with open arms, putting them up in posh hotels, they’re driving away the business. Shopkeepers can’t keep their heads above water when their well heeled clientele was pushed aside by needy asylum seekers. Without customers, they don’t need staff, so layoffs are rampant. Closing the doors is next.
Migrants bad for business
According to the New York Post, migrants are killing city merchants. Not physically but economically. Shopkeepers are losing their shirts. They sent some guys around “Manhattan shops and restaurants” to talk with staff and owners.
What they heard all over the place is “sales have plummeted.” Jobs are hard to find “since City Hall began forking over millions” to provide sanctuary in posh hotels.
Ana Ivkosic, owner of Cafe Wattle, relates they’re forced “to cut shifts, and some people will lose their jobs over the next four weeks.” Her eatery is right down the block from “a 492-room Holiday Inn in the Financial District that began housing migrants earlier this month.”
Migrant hotels in NYC killing business, causing layoffs: merchants https://t.co/MMhXmQcymc pic.twitter.com/8YYxEYHWA5
— New York Post (@nypost) February 18, 2023
That was the kiss of death for the whole block as “well-heeled tourists” were “replaced by penniless refugees from Venezuela, Peru, and Ecuador.” Ana charges $2.50 for a cup of coffee and her acai bowls get $10 a pop. Sales are down 75 percent. She can barely make the rent.
Over on Rector Street, restaurant business plunged when the Holiday Inn got fully booked by migrants. “It has not been a decline, it’s been a cliff.” Shopkeepers are frustrated that “once-bustling Rector Street has descended into a ghost town, which also keeps customers away.”
Fotis Liberatos, who runs Siena Pizza and Cannoli as well as Siena Bakehouse on the strip isn’t getting any dough for his dough. “If you stop by, I’m dead most of the day.”
World’s tallest Holiday Inn booked solid by Eric Adams for NYC migrants https://t.co/ykHImQGQtk pic.twitter.com/5EcAn5bbVz
— New York Post (@nypost) February 7, 2023
Ritzy Times Square
Inch by inch, the real estate around Manhattan’s iconic Times Square is some of the priciest anywhere. “Businesses near the ritzy Row NYC hotel in Times Square similarly have found themselves hurting as of late last year, when the city began putting up hundreds of migrant families in the building’s $400-a-night rooms.”
Migrants were having sex in the hallways, partying day and night and generally tearing the place apart like rock stars. The difference being they don’t have accountants to pay for it all.
Gustavo Rosario manages the Iron Bar & Grill right across the street from Row NYC. He doesn’t like the trend. International guests of the hotel “made up more than 25 percent of his customers. Their sudden disappearance has forced him to lay off 12 of his 60 staffers and cut the hours of the rest.”
Migrants staying at $500-a-night Times Square hotel on the NYC taxpayers' dime are 'trashing rooms' https://t.co/DceUhdmvcm
— Frantic Missy (@FranticMissy) February 20, 2023
These migrants may be international but they aren’t jet setters. “We’re working with minimum staff right now because there’s not much business. Everybody in the area is paying the price — the gift shop, the smoke shop.”
Asif Sarker, manager of the gift shop next store to the hotel, agrees wholeheartedly. Sales “for his store’s mementos such as $55 Fire Department sweatshirts and landmark snow globes have plunged 75 percent since migrants moved in.”
That seems to be a common number. It’s easy to see why. “Pedestrians and potential customers these days are avoiding his side of the block because hotel residents congregate in the middle of the sidewalk.” They don’t have great taste in music either. The mariachi tunes are ticking off the rap loving locals who suggest someone’s gonna get capped over it.
