Ofer Yardeni’s Stonehenge Partners has terminated the leases for six small businesses that operate in retail storefronts at the base of a Chelsea apartment building it acquired last year, according to DNAinfo. A Moneygram check cashier, New China restaurant and a bodega have all recently closed their businesses along Ninth Avenue between West 17th and West 18th streets, and New Barber Shop, Velazquez & Tamara Dry Cleaners and a deli have to vacate their stores by the end of the month.
For the last two years, the stores had each been running on month-to-month leases signed with former owner Morris Moinian. But he sold the 65-unit apartment building, addressed 364 West 18th Street, to Stonehenge in December for $65 million and the new owners are clearing the spaces. The stores had each been paying about $3,000 per month in rent and were not given the option to negotiate new deals, they said.
DNAinfo noted that the businesses served tenants of the affordable Fulton Houses complex across the street. The Fulton Houses Tenants Association is scrambling to land new spaces for the displaced businesses, but hasn’t been able to find affordable space as the neighborhood’s real estate prices rise with the recent arrivals of Google and the High Line.
Stonehenge is rumored to be combining the storefront to make way for a chain drug store in the building. [DNAinfo]