Business & Tech

Weiner Calls For Small Business Help

Shops on Austin Street and beyond looking for help from local, federal government.

Questions about the economic health of Forest Hills loomed large at an impromptu call for an increase in small business loans earlier this month.

U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner came together with local landlord Joel Mandel, of Forest Hills Property Group, to discuss the importance of injecting much-needed cash into the Forest Hills business community. He said that directing liquid assets to local banks, rather than the larger institutions that were the beneficiaries of 2008's Troubled Asset Relief Program funds, would help spur the creation of new businesses in communities like Forest Hills.

"Within a stone's throw of here you can find a lot of vacant stores," Weiner said.  "You can go down to Austin street and see there are vacant stores there and what we're trying to do is provide enough tax relief — enough lending — to try to start up some new businesses."

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Weiner was there to urge his colleagues in the Senate to pass the Small Business Jobs and Credit Act, which the House passed in June. The bill, passed by the Senate on Sept. 16, created a $30 billion fund directed specifically at small community banks like the Ridgewood Savings Bank where Weiner and Mandel were standing.

Mandel differed slightly with the Congressman on the presence of the vacant stores, saying that all had potential tenants, but he agreed that an infusion of cash to locally owned banks could only help the community weather the economic storm.

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"You look around in the fringes and you can walk about 10 blocks and find [empty stores,] which you never could in the past," Mandel said. "The tenants I have, when they want to renovate their stores or change their kitchens around … they have to scrape and scrounge to get $25,000 from the bank. It's not that they don't have good credit but [banks] don't want to lend the money."

He felt that Forest Hills' biggest shopping thoroughfare — Austin Street — has enough of a reputation to remain profitable regardless of the economic climate, and blamed bad business practices for many of the shops which have gone under in the last two years. 

"Everyone that comes to me already knows Austin Street, it's not like someone's wandering through Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and has to get a demographic and find out there are 3,000 people within 15 miles," Mandel said. "People that are on Austin Street, know Austin Street, it has a big reputation, it has a big history, and all they're interested in is being in the right location."

Mandel said that as a landlord with more than 20 properties and 50 individual businesses paying rent, he's not suffering now, but he acknowledged that some sections of the community and other neighborhoods in Queens have fallen on hard times.

"Any targeted spending, especially at small businesses which are the ones that hire the vast majority of people in this country, creates more jobs," Mandel said. "And when you have jobs, you have hope. We're all small businesses here."


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