A pair of longtime small businesses on Staten Island say they’re being forced out to make way for a cannabis dispensary, to the anger of the local community.
S&T Bagels & Deli and the Card & Gift Shop have been neighbors on a Forest Ave. strip mall in West Brighton for over 20 years, both without a lease for roughly five years.
But their owners were shocked in January when a landlord informed them they had to be out by March 31.
“We did not see this coming,” said Shamin Frammosa, 54, the “S” in S&T Bagels at 463 Forest Ave. (her husband, Tom, is the “T”). She said the landlord told her over the phone last month they planned to open a dispensary on the site.
Frammosa described working at the store seven days a week since 2001, watching customers’ children going off to college. She said regulars have come by in tears after hearing about the store’s imminent closure on social media.
“It’s hard,” a heartbroken Frammosa told the Daily News. “It’s not just losing a store, but it’s losing your neighborhood.”
Dimesh “Danny” Patel, 47, runs the card shop at 465 Forest Ave. with his brother and said the business will likely lose tens of thousands of dollars worth of inventory. Like Frammosa, he said they’d never been late paying rent and are now struggling to figure out if they can relocate on such short notice.
“I mean, if we look up and down the street, there’s nothing else available now, so we’re really being forced out,” he said. “End of the day, we [probably] just close our doors.”
The strip mall lot is owned by 467 Forest Property Inc. Tenants identified the landlords as members of the Ha family, who communicated about the lease with the businesses via emails reviewed by The News.
According to multiple published reports, Paul and John T. Ha are the licensees for “Green Empire Wellness LLC,” which was among one of 99 provisional dispensary licenses announced by the state’s Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) in April. Paul Ha did not have a comment on the situation.
OCM confirmed to The News that a provisional adult-use marijuana dispensary license was approved for the Forest Ave. location and is currently under review, though they declined to name the company.
Rumors about a dispensary have proliferated on local social media pages in recent days and were met with an outcry from the community. Many customers expressed outrage as they ordered rainbow bagels at S&T or browsed Valentine’s Day teddy bears in Card & Gift.
“This is the worst thing that could happen,” said Barbara Barracato as she shopped at the stationary store. “We have our own little village here, the whole neighborhood. We don’t need [a dispensary] … Everybody’s in an uproar.”
There are currently 59 legal adult-use cannabis dispensaries across New York state, about 20 of which are within the five boroughs. Staten Island’s first such shop, The Flowery, opened in the Charleston neighborhood just weeks ago.
Dispensary licensing is a state matter, but local Councilmember Kamillah Hanks echoed area residents’ concerns about the prospect of a weed shop at the Forest Ave. site. In a letter to OCM she cited the proximity of several schools and houses of worship as a major issue.
“Please know that my office is opposed to the locations of these dispensaries,” she said. “The sole dispensary opened so far on Staten Island is in a commercial zone; far removed from schools. That should be the standard for all Staten Island dispensaries and in my opinion, all New York.”
The issue is expected to be discussed at the March 7 meeting of the Forest Regional Residents’ Civic Association, a local organization.
In the meantime Frammosa and Patel are trying to figure out next steps.
“They took from us. They took from two families, that’s how I look at it. Which is wrong,” Frammosa said. “You just don’t, within two and a half months, say that you have to go after being here for 22 years.”
