2nd Avenue Restaurant And Retail Week Kicks Off Saturday
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - 2nd Avenue Restaurant and Retail Week starts Saturday to help businesses struggling from the subway construction.
Discounts and specials will be offered by 27 restaurants and 30 retailers of businesses and will run through June 8. They run from 66th Street to 97th Street.
"It has been our objective to help those businesses that are already here to survive," Nancy Ploeger, President of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, told WCBS 880's Monica Miller.
2nd Avenue Restaurant And Retail Week Kicks Off Saturday
"We're really trying to help these businesses drive customers to them, help them understand how to run their businesses more effectively. We've done a lot of marketing programs with them and, working in conjunction with the MTA cap. construction, really trying to bring the visibility to these stores that are challenged by some of the construction issues," Ploeger told 1010 WINS.
LINK: See The List Of Businesses
The excavation of the 2nd Avenue Subway has made restaurant and business owners on the Upper East Side dig deep into their pockets to survive.
"Next door to me is a stationery store and a kitchen store and all I hear them do is cry," said Bob Schwartz on Friday. He owns Eneslow Shoes between 78th Street and 79th Street.
He said the ongoing construction is stopping the foot traffic he needs.
"I love this 2nd Avenue Restaurant and Retail Week. It's strong in that it's focusing in on this corridor that's really hurting," he said. "We need this construction to be over."
The MTA's Dr. Michael Horodniceanu said the current stretch of the subway project won't be done until December 2016.
"We are trying to not just have helped the businesses survive, but prosper," he said.
Many business owners hope that, when completed, the subway will be good news for them.
350,000 people are expected to use the line, designated the T, on day one, according to a federal estimate.
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