To Whom It May Concern:
I am the manager of Mitchell’s Soul Food Restaurant, a restaurant that has been serving customers for 40 years, located at 617A Vanderbilt Avenue.
The Vanderbilt Avenue Open Streets has caused a significant decrease in sales on Sundays, previously our busiest day of the week. In fact, if we needed to pay rent, we would have been forced to close as a result of losing our Sunday business.
We are located close to the Emmanuel Baptist Church on Lafayette Avenue so many of our regular Sunday customers prior to the street closure would come here directly after attending church services. On a typical Sunday, we would have customers lined up outside the door waiting to be seated, as well as a large number of pickup orders. The Sunday street closure has put a stop to this. Customers are no longer able to drive here on Sundays. Also, many of our customers are senior citizens, so they can longer come to the restaurant, either because Access-A-Ride vehicles cannot drop them off in front of the store or because they can no longer come here using the B-69 bus. No one consulted us before instituting the current Open Streets plan. If they had, we would have requested that Vanderbilt Avenue be closed only on Fridays and Saturdays and for three months instead of most of the year.
We urge you to make changes to the current plan that will serve the needs of long-standing community businesses like ours.
Sincerely,
Manager
Mitchell’s Soul Food
617 A Vanderbilt Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11238