New York Post - 19.08.2019

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New York Post, Monday, August 19, 2019

nypost.com

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A 72-year-old man plummeted

to his death late Sunday from a

Manhattan apartment building,

where cops then discovered his

78-year-old wife dead from multi-

ple stab wounds, police said.

The man’s body was discovered

on the pavement in front of 210

Sherman Ave. in the Inwood sec-

tion at around 10:15 p.m., accord-

ing to police.

When cops entered the apart-

ment from which he jumped, they

found his wife’s body on a sofa.

A knife was recovered at the

scene. The couple’s identity was

not immediately released.

Chris Perez

Hub-wife slay,

death plunge

SHUTTER TO THINK: Storefronts are sealed on Canal Street in Soho. The block’s 25.9 percent vacancy rate is the highest recorded in a new report.

By RICH CALDER, JULIA MARSH

and AARON FEIS

They couldn’t be more differ-

ent, but there’s one thing that

Manhattan’s chic Soho and

Brooklyn’s hardscrabble

Brownsville neighborhoods have

in common — empty storefronts.

The two areas have nearly

identical vacancy rates of around

13.5 percent along key retail cor-

ridors, a new Department of City

Planning study into the problem

has found.

And while lawmakers have

pointed the finger at landlords

for keeping storefronts empty as

they hold out for higher rents,

the study found burdensome

regulations and shoddy planning

— such as poor transit access,

restrictive zoning and onerous

parking requirements — are also

to blame for the city-wide issue.

Brownsville’s subway-starved

Pitkin Avenue retail corridor,

roughly between Howard Ave-

nue and Mother Gaston Boule-

vard, has a 13.4 percent store-

front vacancy rate — compared

with a healthy city neighborhood

rate of 5 to 10 percent.

“There is an absence of major

anchor stores to draw in shop-

pers, and a lack of subway access

cuts the area off from potential

customers in other neighbor-

hoods,” the study said.

Those factors were coupled

with a “lack of access to capital”

and “negative perceptions of the

neighborhood,” the study found.

Meanwhile, lower Manhattan

is flush with deep-pocketed en-

trepreneurs and is consistently

ranked among the city’s safest

areas — but the area still suffers

from a 13.8 percent vacancy rate.

Retailers there want smaller

storefronts and are prevented

from getting them due to oner-

ous historic district rules, the re-

port found.

“While the area is character-

ized by many large-footprint loft

buildings, historic district regu-

lations complicate subdivisions

that could create smaller, easier

to lease spaces,” the study said.

Nowhere is that issue more ev-

ident than along nearby Canal

Street, where a whopping 25.

percent of storefronts are col-

lecting dust — the highest va-

cancy rate of the 24 commercial

strips studied.

The long-vacant First National

City Bank building on Canal

Street and Broadway, for exam-

ple, boasts 20,000 square feet of

untapped commercial space —

but only half may be used for re-

tail under zoning rules, and “his-

toric district regulations make it

difficult to subdivide space,” per

the study.

“All the stores have closed

down,” said Jay Chin, manager of

Canal Lighting, one of the few

area shops still doing a brisk

business on a recent Post visit to

the strip. “Business used to be

great in the ’80s, ’90s.”

Mayor de Blasio pushed for a

state “vacancy tax” earlier this

year to punish landlords who re-

ject reasonable offers and leave

their storefronts empty waiting

for higher-paying tenants.

But the study said the issue is

as varied as the city.

“Vacancy rates are volatile,

vary from neighborhood to

neighborhood and street to

street, and cannot be explained

by any single factor,” the depart-

ment wrote.

Additional reporting by Ruth

Weissmann

Empty-storefront

crisis in city study

Brigitte Stelzer

A West Virginia man who alleg-

edly sparked a bomb scare by

placing two rice cookers in the

Fulton Street subway station Fri-

day was ordered held in lieu of

$200,000 bond Sunday.

Larry Griffin II, 26, was

charged with the felonies of mak-

ing a false bomb and plac-

ing a false bomb.

The incident led cops to

temporarily shut down the

transit hub until they deter-

mined that the cookers

were not bombs.

Griffin (inset) also was ar-

rested as a fugitive from

justice, although the Man-

hattan District Attorney’s

Office did not answer

questions about those

charges.

The NYPD said it had no de-

tails about that case, and the FBI

did not respond to inquiries.

Griffin has a criminal case

pending in West Virginia for al-

legedly sending a bestiality video

to a minor, officials said.

His lawyer, Michael Croce, did

not respond to requests for com-

ment. C.J. Sullivan

Suspect held on bond in Fulton hub bomb scare

Political journalist Mark Hal-

perin, who was axed by MSNBC

amid allegations of sexual mis-

conduct, has come under fire

again after inking a deal for a book

about electoral strategy in the

Trump era.

Halperin (below), who was fired

in 2017 after some dozen women

made accusa-

tions against

him, was aided

on the book by

many promi-

nent Demo-

crats.

“This is ap-

palling and so

upsetting,”

journalist and author Emily Miller

told The Post.

“Men like him don’t change. He

spent decades using his position of

power in the media to sexually as-

sault women. He hasn’t even apol-

ogized to his victims.”

Miller says she was harassed by

Halperin when they worked at

ABC News and she was his junior.

Eleanor McManus — a former

CNN producer who says she en-

countered Halperin’s inappropriate

behavior when first trying to get a

media job — echoed the concerns.

“He leveraged his position as a

prominent journalist to prey on

women,” McManus told The Post.

“Giving him a book once again

puts him in a position of authority,

and that is a slap to all the women

that he has victimized.”

On Sunday, Politico reported that

Halperin has written a book titled

“How to Beat Trump: America’s

Top Political Strategists on What It

Will Take,” to be published by

Regan Arts in November.

Nikki Schwab

Anger at

#MeToo’d

Mark’s deal