ROOSEVELT RETAILERS FLEE
Hotel storefront biz down amid migrant wave
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 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 Pakistangovernment-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 area, their beleaguered owners said.
Pop-up stores
Three others appear to be “popups” — 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, on Madison Avenue — and disembark in front of Carmina, a luxury shoe boutique on East 45th where hand-crafted footwear selections from Spain cost $300 and up.
Carmina has seven locations, including another Manhattan outpost, 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 months 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.”
Area is ‘compromised’
Her lawyer said hotel representatives finally reached out and offered to move the store to the Madison Avenue side of the property, an option the business rejected.
“The whole block has been compromised so what would relocating to Madison Avenue accomplish?”
Carmina said.
Albaladejo Ocho’s attorney, who did not want to be identified because 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 firstclass 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.
Among retailers that have left are jewelry store Lauren B, which relocated to Fifth Avenue in August, and Grand Central Optical, which about three months ago moved two blocks away.
Lauren B occupied a small store at East 46th Street, where management had resorted to posting signs on its window this past 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.