Retailers at migrant-filled Roosevelt Hotel dwindle, demand lower rent as sales plunge
Retailers at the iconic Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown have fled in droves since the property was converted into a landing spot for migrants — and the few that are left are demanding rent reductions, The Post has learned.
Of the roughly 16 retail spaces that ring the hotel’s ground floor, nine sit vacant since the Pakistan government-owned property inked a three-year deal with the city in May to shelter the wave of migrants flooding into the Big Apple.
Two of the remaining seven retailers still in business are upscale stores that have seen their sales plummet as shoppers avoid the migrant-filled area, their beleaguered owners told The Post.
Three others appear to be pop-ups – including PS 45 a sample sale clothing store and Portabella, a discount menswear shop, which moved into a former Clarks footwear store. Both retailers lack formal signage above their stores.
Another, Eddie’s Shoeshine & Repair, moved from Grand Central Terminal but the owner said he has a short-term lease.
Buses bringing migrants to the city from other parts of the country arrive at the Roosevelt — which takes up the entire block between East 45th and East 46th Streets, and Madison Avenue — and disembark in front of Carmina, a luxury shoe boutique on East 45th where hand-crafted footwear from Spain costs $300 and up.
Carmina has seven locations including another outpost in Manhattan and counts affluent commuters from Westchester and Connecticut among its loyal clientele.
The store’s owner Carmina Albaladejo Ocho, who has run the family business since it opened at the Roosevelt in 2017, has seen sales nosedive 28% in June and 40% in July compared with the same month’s last year, she told The Post.
Her lawyers have demanded a reduction in rent but have had trouble getting in touch with the hotel’s landlord and property manager, she said.
“We want fair treatment,” Albaladejo Ocho told The Post. “We tried to contact [the landlord] and to have conversations with them, but it’s as if we didn’t exist.”
Her lawyer said the hotel’s representatives finally reached out and offered to move the shoe store to Madison Avenue, an option Carmina rejected.
“The whole block has been compromised so what would relocating to Madison Avenue accomplish,” Albaladejo Ocho said.
Her attorney, who did not want to be identified since his practice mostly represents landlords, told The Post, “It’s our position that the hotel has breached the lease, which contemplates that the store is in a first-class hotel.”
“We were hoping for more engagement from the landlord, rent concessions or a renegotiation of the lease terms that would adjust for the present circumstances,” the lawyer added. “You look around the building and you see all the retail up and left.”
The landlord’s attorney, Robert Cyruli, did not return calls and emails from The Post for comment.
Edward Netzhammer, who works for the hotel’s property manager, Aimbridge Hospitality, declined to comment.
Among the retailers that have cut and run were jewelry store LaurenB, which relocated to Fifth Ave. in August, and Grand Central Optical, which moved two blocks away about three months ago.
LaurenB occupied a small store at E. 46th St., where management had resorted to posting signs on its window this summer warning people not to park bikes on the sidewalk or to block its entrance, The Post observed previously.
It is not clear whether the retailers broke their leases. Neither business commented.
The retailers at the hotel had already been hurting because the property never reopened to the public after the pandemic.
One business that has been forced to weather the storm is the Turkish men’s clothing boutique Sayki on the corner of Madison Ave. and E. 46th St. The owners signed a lease extension just weeks before the 1,025-room hotel reopened as a shelter.
“Even if we got free rent we might not have any customers left if this goes on for two more years,” said Tunch Hepguler, vice president of Sayki, which opened in 2017.
Sayki’s general manager George Boahene said he leaves the store multiple times a day to ask the migrants not to stand in front of the entrance and lean their feet against the windows.
“They don’t know that it’s a window display to attract customers,” he told The Post.
The retail owners are sympathetic to the migrants’ plight, they say, directing most of their frustration towards the landlord.
Tronch said he would have lobbied for a bigger discount on the rent had he known what the hotel’s plans were before the company re-upped.
“We should have an even lower rent now,” Tronch said.
