Business

A Year After Deadly 2nd Avenue Explosion, Merchants Still Feel Effects

By Alexa-Jada Nelson
Spectrum staff

Photo Credit – Alexa Nelson

Business co-owner Suzanne Levinson considers herself lucky.

While several businesses were forced to shut down after a deadly gas explosion on the Lower East Side a year ago, Levinson and her business partner, Omer Shorshi, managed to relocate Pommes Frites to MacDougal Street in one of the busiest parts of Greenwich Village.

Pommes Frites’s New Location

To move their almost 20-year-old Belgian fries company from its former location on Second Avenue, where a natural gas explosion killed two people in March 2015, Levinson and Shorshi raised $25,000 through Indiegogo. They got a check from their property insurance company and a low-interest loan from the U.S. Small Business Administration.

They also tried to remember what was most important.

“A business is a business,” Levinson told this reporter. “All I have to say is ‘thank God’” no one connected to Pommes Frites was hurt in that explosion.

It happened after landlords of 121 Second Ave. illegally installed unsafe natural gas lines without the approval of ConEdison utility company or City of New York utility inspectors. The explosion caused by those unsafe gas lines destroyed the building at121 Second Ave. and two other buildings.

In February 2016, the four landlords of 121 Second Ave. were charged with two counts of involuntary manslaughter. They were awaiting trial when this article posted.

“As a small business owner, you’re always waiting for a call …You don’t know what it will be,” Levinson said.

While Pommes Frites was able to reopen, The Stage restaurant—which was evicted after the explosion because it also had illegal gas lines—and other businesses were not.

And for some businesses still operating near the site of that explosion, things have changed.

Moishe Perl

The explosion did not physically damage Moishe’s Bake Shop, said Moishe Perl, owner of that Jewish bakery. But it did have an effect, he added.

“A couple of weeks, there was almost no business,” said Perl, about what happened immediately after the explosion. “And then it took a lot of time—about seven, eight months—till the street got back open. Slowly but surely.”

Part of the reason for the slow return is that demolition of the three damaged buildings and barricades of those buildings prevented people from going to shops adjacent to and near the explosion site. When a customer is re-routed, and it takes more time to get to a business, that customer may choose another store.

But Perl said his customers did express their concern about the bakery’s future.

“The people cared so much,” said Perl, who initially thought he would have to close his 44-year-old establishment. “The neighborhood was concerned and ready to be helpful.”