He wants to shut off a part of Sunset Park’s past.
Fifth Avenue business owners should do away with roll-down security gates in order to beautify the shopping strip, a longtime avenue entrepreneur told the Sunset Park Business Improvement District on June 23. The ubiquitous, often graffiti-covered bulwarks are a relic of the neighborhood’s “bad old days” — when store owners did anything to protect their businesses from burglaries and looting — but times have changed and the avenue should too, the advocate said.
“You took your life in your hands just walking down the street in the late ’70s and ’80s — there were robberies all the time — but it’s a different era now,” said lawyer and Clarimar Realty Corporation owner Delvis Valdes, whose own father guarded his Fifth Avenue bodega with a shotgun during the 1977 blackout and died defending the storefront in 1986.
Valdes is encouraging shopkeepers to scrap the gates and leave their businesses’ lights on at night to brighten the street and make it more inviting for pedestrians.
“It tells the neighborhood ‘I’m not scared of you,’ ” the avenue landlord and member of the business group’s board of directors said.
Break-ins have dropped sharply in recent years — there were 1,645 in the 72nd Precinct in 1990 compared to 212 last year, city data shows.
Still, few store owners are removing security gates in Brooklyn, where they still perceive it as risky, according to the owner of a Williamsburg company that installs them.
“Sometimes they do it in Manhattan on Madison Avenue or Fifth Avenue, but not in Brooklyn — only in high-traffic areas where there’s more police,” said Bunny Avni of New York Gates.
Getting locals on board is a game of inches — Valdes plans to canvas the avenue and pitch the idea to the 385 businesses in the district, hopefully getting them to leave their gates open together for one night, then another, then perhaps a whole week.
He plans to negotiate for beefed up patrols with 72nd Precinct brass and suggested the business improvement district help pay to remove the gates and defray damages if there is a burglary.
He acknowledged it would not be simple to convince store owners but said it would be a boon for the neighborhood.
“It’s not an easy sell, it will take a couple of people with bravery to say ‘Okay, let’s give this a shot,’ for it to spread,” he said. “My dad always said, ‘Where much is given, much is expected’ — we’ve been blessed to have this neighborhood, and we’ve got to make it a better place,” he said.
