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March 22, 2012

Prohibition-Era Liquor Store Near Yankee Stadium Closes Doors

DNAinfo
by Patrick Wall

Not only did the new Yankee Stadium kill the neighborhood's trees — it's killing the Bronx's mom-and-pop businesses, too.

It sold its first bottle of liquor in 1934, one year after the end of Prohibition, in the depths of the Great Depression, in the shadow of Yankee Stadium.

It continued to sell spirits from its narrow perch in the Bronx when the neighborhood bustled, then went down in flames during the arson-filled 1970s, and was later rebuilt.

But at the end of this month, after more than 75 years in business, Stadium Wines and Liquor will shut its doors, a victim of raised rents and sluggish sales that the owner, like other nearby merchants, said were at least partly caused by the construction of the new Yankee Stadium.

"The store had been here for 70 years," Manuel Mercedes, the store’s fourth and current owner, recently recalled thinking in 2006 when construction on the new stadium began. "I couldn’t think why it wouldn’t stay here."
...

But six years later, the shop’s yearly revenues have plummeted back to about $800,000, while rent has jumped to about $11,100 per month, according to Mercedes.

He, along with several other merchants on East 161st Street, acknowledge that the recession took a big bite out of business. But they say the deepest dent in their bottom lines came in 2009, when the new Yankee Stadium opened.

"It killed business here," said Joe Bastone, owner of the Yankee Tavern, which opened in 1923 and has served the likes of Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio.

"The first day the stadium opened my food business was down 75 percent," Bastone said, adding that sales have since inched up, but not to their pre-move levels, and only after he lowered prices.

The merchants cite several problems with the new stadium.

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Posted by eric at March 22, 2012 11:33 PM