B’klyn business owners to gov: Color us angry

They were pushed to the edge. Owners of Brooklyn businesses located near the boundaries between two of Gov. Cuomo’s color-coded coronavirus restriction zones are fed up with losing customers to competitors in more permissive zones mere feet away.

“It was getting better two weeks ago, and now we’re back to square one,” said Vito Conigliaro, manager of J&V Pizza in Bensonhurst. “We’ve just been destroyed.”

His eatery sits about a block inside the borough’s red zone, where earlier this month, Cuomo re-restricted restaurants to takeout and delivery service in one of several precautions with the virus mounting a comeback.

But just a two-minute walk down 18th Avenue from J&V, people can still dine outdoors in the orange zone — and nine minutes away, in the least-restrictive yellow zone, they can eat inside a pizza purveyor’s parlor.

When Mayor de Blasio pushed for renewed restrictions in ZIP codes where the virus was surging, Cuomo instead opted for an approach based on COVID-19 diagnosis data rather than geography, establishing three colorcoded zones with differing levels of rules in Brooklyn, Queens and some upstate pockets.

But that method sowed confusion along the borders between zones.

“We thought we were on the yellow side of the street, and they insisted we were in the orange zone, and said we have 10 minutes to vacate the facility and lock our doors,” recalled Christopher Ganim, co-owner of gym chain Harbor Fitness, of the day city Department of Buildings workers came to shutter the Mill Basin location.

“We had 75 people that we had to kick out,” Ganim said. “They were standing in the middle of Strickland Avenue.”

The establishment is, in fact, barely inside the orange zone, where Cuomo closed what he called “high-risk,” nonessential businesses, including gyms.

“We have a competitor that’s a few blocks away who is allowed to stay open,” Ganim said.