Merchants along a once-bustling Brooklyn business strip say they’re getting hammered by a city streetscape project that’s made it all but impossible for customers to find parking.
“I don’t know how much longer I can take it. If things don’t improve soon, I’ll have to sell,” said Leon Boyer, owner of an Associated supermarket on Cortelyou Road in Ditmas Park for 30 years.
Boyer and other local storeowners say that for years, they lobbied City Hall to refurbish the Cortelyou Road shopping strip. So they were ecstatic when construction began on the $1.5 million project in November along a nearly half-mile stretch from Coney Island Avenue to East 17th Street.
But the merchants learned to be careful what they wish for.
The first thing construction crews did was rip out parking meters along the strip, making it nearly impossible to enforce a one-hour parking-limit regulation.
Little else was done on the project for five months, until the weather warmed up in March.
Eight months later, the meters are still missing, and many of the 78 merchants affected claim the parking spots get hogged up daily by nonshoppers who drive to the Cortelyou Road subway station and hop on the Q train to Manhattan.
Boyer, a Polish immigrant from New Jersey, said his business is down 30 percent since the meters were ripped out.
Gabriel Carino, who has run a camera shop on the strip for 51 years, said his profits have dropped by 40 percent.
“Many of my customers drive from Staten Island and other parts of Brooklyn and they complain they can’t find parking,” said Carino, owner of Gabe’s Camera City and Video.
Merchants say they can’t get a straight answer about the delays.
A spokeswoman for the city Economic Development Corp., which is overseeing construction, said the Department of Transportation is waiting until the project is completed in the fall to return the meters.
And the DOT said it can’t move quicker because this is an EDC project.
“To me, all of their words mean nothing,” Boyer said.