Caruso's Pizza at 204 Broadway, just south of Fulton Street, had to close for several weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. Business has slowly rebounded since then, but now the owners are preparing for another upheaval

		Sometime soon-they don't know exactly when-they will be forced to close the store, to make way for the new Fulton Street Transit Center. "It's devastating for us right now," Antonietta Caruso said. "You're down there, you're established, you don't really want to go anywhere." The $750 million transit center is projected to be a boon for Lower Manhattan, providing a bright, airy, easy-to-find portal to the underground maze that links nine subway lines at four stations, But the project will require about 140 small businesses-from therapists, dentists, employment agencies and law firms to nail salons, clothing and jewelry stores-to close up and move out.
All but one of the buildings on the east side of Broadway between Fulton and John Streets will be demolished. The 115-year-old Corbin Building, at the corner of Broadway and John, will be preserved and incorporated into the transit center, its offices probably taken over by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The MTA also plans to acquire 189 Broadway across the street, now the World of Golf store, to construct an entry pavilion to a new underground concourse connecting the transit hub to the World Trade Center site. Affected business owners say they are growing increasingly anxious about the looming displacement. Many of them, dependent on local customers, are worried about finding comparable space nearby, particularly if so many businesses are searching at the same time. They are also concerned about the costs and disruption of moving and the amount of relocation assistance they will get from the government. An MTA spokesman would not comment beyond saying that the project remained under environmental review. While the MTA has surveyed many of the stores and offices, neither they nor the city have provided the business owners with the project's timetable and other needed information. Cynthia Callsen and Marlene Burke, both psychotherapists who are slated for displacement from two of the buildings, are organizing business owners in an effort to get information and assistance from public officials and Downtown business groups. The two women distributed flyers to their neighbors and created an email network. Last month, they and a couple of other business owners met with the Alliance for Downtown New York, Lower Manhattan's business improvement district. The Alliance and Wall Street Rising, which also promotes Downtown, offered to help displaced companies. "Although we support a transit center, which will benefit the city," Burke said, "we want to know that we are safe and our businesses can continue to survive and thrive. Our livelihoods are the issue here." Last month a letter from Callsen and Burke to public advocate Betsy Gotbaum's office led to a lengthy conference call with representatives of the MTA and the city's Department of Small Business Services, who provided some of the information they were looking for. At an Aug. 17 meeting at Wall Street Rising's Downtown Information Center on Broad Street, Callsen and Burke told a gathering of some 40 business owners that the MTA pledged to provide a representative to help each business find new space, as well as money to cover relocation and re-establishment costs. But timing remains uncertain. The MTA is finalizing an Environmental Impact Statement for the project, which must be approved by the federal government. It plans to hold another public hearing in the fall. The project could be delayed if negotiations between the MTA and building owners drag on. "How can you plan if you don't know if you will have to move in six months or 12 months or 18 or 24?" said Stephen Katz, an architect who lives in Tribeca and has his office at 198 Broadway. Callsen and Burke said they were pleased with the promises of aid, but other business owners were less optimistic. Retailers in particular said that it would be hard, if not impossible, to find comparable locations. "There are few places in Manhattan as busy as our corner," said Isaac Zafarani, a manager of Renaissance Jewelers, at Broadway and John Street. "How will we be compensated for that?" Dolores D'Agostino, director of Inneraction Plus, a nonprofit group at 198 Broadway, said that tenants should be allowed to break leases if they find new office space before they are officially evicted by the MTA. "We should be able to move on our timeline, not theirs," she said. The transit center "is supposed to help the many," said Charles Muratore, who owns a personnel agency at 11 John St. "But us few will have to suffer."   Corbin Building Tenants Bemoan Move Posted January 2005 by Barry Owens When the Metropolitan Transit Authority announced in June their plans to incorporate the Corbin building, at the corner of Broadway and John Street, as a cornerstone of the new Fulton Street Transit Center, it was seen as a boon to preservationists-a welcome restoration of an endangered 115-year-old structure. The plans call for restoring the building's exterior, sinking an escalator from the ground floor into the subway station and converting the building's arches into grand entryways to the new glass and steel transit hub that will gleam on Broadway between Fulton and John Streets when it is completed in 2007. But for the more than 40 tenants of the Corbin building, the future was less clear. And up until Dec. 16, some even held out hope that the renovation would not mean an eviction notice. Others had long ago accepted the fact that they would have to move. Last month, the MTA released its final environmental impact statement on the project. The statement made it clear that the authority's "preferred option" is to purchase the building, at a cost of $50 million, and claim the upper floors. Another option, a so-called "option nine" would have preserved the building, but not integrated it into the transit center. The MTA's choice did not sit well with some of the business owners who attended a public hearing on the matter Dec. 16. More than one critic suggested that "option nine" would be the more prudent move for the agency. The hearing was held on the same day the authority announced a fare hike that it said was needed to close a $700 million budget gap. Representatives of the Christian Science Reading Room, a ground-floor tenant of the building, said the acquisition of the building served few transportation purposes other than the installation of an escalator. "For the expense of $50 million, a few subway riders will save a few seconds," said Thomas Greise, a federal judge who spoke on behalf of the Christian Science Reading Room. "I find it difficult to see how this is the most feasible and prudent alternative." Tenants of the upper floors of the Corbin building remain the most perplexed. In her office on the top floor, Vilma Barr could only shake her head. "They hadn't said diddle for the record until that meeting," said Barr, a design writer who runs a music-themed merchandise business on the side. "And they still haven't said why they need this building." William Wheeler, director of special project development and planning for the MTA, said the building's office spaces were needed for "operational" reasons but that their "use had not been programmed yet." Beginning this month, Wheeler said, a consultant group hired by the MTA will begin making the rounds in the building-and visiting all of the more than 140 businesses in the area that will be displaced-to discuss the details of federal relocation assistance and the availability of office space in Lower Manhattan. Already, said John Morcona, who runs a security guard training business in the building, "architects are making the rounds, measuring the rooms and windows." He and others, like Ricardo Barbosa, a language instructor in the building, were told when they signed their leases that their tenancies could be cut short by the MTA's plans. "We took the chance," said Barbosa. "It is not something that took me surprise, but I really thought the process would be clear, that it would be fully explained, but that is not what is happening. Everything we know here is like gossip. The information that we do have is very depressing." The building, as well as 194, 198, 200-202 and 204 Broadway, will be acquired by the MTA in September and tenants are to begin relocating in November. Dr. Gary Haber, a chiropractor and 13-year tenant in the building, said he was not certain until last month that he would be displaced. "Everything I had heard was 'maybe,'" said Haber. "Even on the day of the hearing, on the MTA's web site it only said that we 'may be' displaced." Now that his move is certain, Haber is downhearted over what the relocation will mean to the "goodwill" he has built up with local clients over the years. And he worries whether the MTA will fully compensate him for it. "For [the MTA] to stand there and basically portray a vision of a beautiful hub, and all the tenants here are going to do so well, is not realistic. There are going to be winners and losers."