Written by: Jesse Lin

Opening day for Honor Wines was in the middle of Superstorm Sandy in 2012, and Lorie Honor’s wine shop was one of the only places still with electricity. It was an omen of her envisioned future for the blighted area, that others would also open small businesses to revitalize Staten Island’s North Shore. 

When her business finally started hitting its stride after five years, she discovered new owners had bought the building and asked Honor to vacate her business. The previous owners, Honor says, never told her the building was going to be sold. 

“I didn’t think this was fair when our life savings were in it,” she says. 

Just a block away from the former site of Honor Wines, Andrew Paul Gonchar, who is barred from brokerage activities for defrauding customers, owns the former site of the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce at 130 Bay Street and transferred the property to himself last July. 

The grantors and grantees of the transfer are the same three LLCs sharing the same address associated with him, all falling under the umbrella “Phoenix Opportunities Unlimited LLC.” Property records show he transferred the property to himself again last September, correcting a typo in “Phoenix,” mistakenly spelled “Pheonix” in the July transfer.

An analysis using city property records and state business records finds that of the 20 vacant addresses along Bay Street that have available property records, all are under LLCs, of which nearly 70% are based outside of Staten Island and usually created just a few months before the property is transferred. In about 40% of transfers, the grantee pays over $1 million. Nearly 40% of transfers don’t involve money at all. These are often owners giving the property to themselves through an LLC or multiple LLCs sharing the same address. 

As of December 2023, if the 41 vacant storefronts along Bay Street were lined up, they would span nearly the length of the Brooklyn Bridge. Private owners still buy up and sit on properties for years under LLCs. The community’s blighted commercial heart doesn’t reflect the frenetic activity on paper behind-the-scenes. 

“The curse of Staten Island”

Bay Street used to be the place on the island to shop and play in the 60s. A half-dozen antique shops and several independent art galleries were clustered near the commercial artery. As stores closed for the day, bars and clubs opened for the night. 

“It was funky,” says Bill Murphy, a Staten Island native and retired artist who depicted Staten Island in much of his work. $150 in 1970–or $1,180 today–was enough for his Bay Street studio’s monthly rent, Murphy says. 

Then, in 1983, when the Navy announced it would build a port on the waterfront, speculators bought up and increased rent for many of the properties along Bay Street. The antique store owners were forced out and the art galleries moved away. 

Just as quickly as the port was dedicated in 1990, the Cold War ended, and the Navy left the North Shore after only three years. 

“What do you do with all these buildings?” Murphy asks. 

It’s a question that ordinary residents aren’t equipped to answer. Opening a business is a huge financial burden for North Shore residents whose median incomes are comparable to Harlem’s. The few retail spaces on the market can go for nearly $3,500 a month on top of renovation costs and utilities; many more spaces are not available for lease and remain empty. 

To remedy the consistent vacancies and inject new life into the North Shore, the city has given project after project to attract developers with more deeply-lined pockets. $400 million was spent on the New York Wheel, a ferris wheel along the waterfront proposed in 2012 that would have rivaled the London Eye. In 2019, the Bay Street Corridor Neighborhood Plan rezoned the street and invested $250 million to incentivize private development. 

Now, city agencies have begun requesting proposals from developers to fulfill the promise of the North Shore Action Plan: esplanades along each neighborhood’s waterfront, a recreation center, a school, over 2,000 new homes, and most importantly for Bay Street residents, 7,500 new jobs and nearly $4 billion in “economic impact.”

“What I would say to people who ask how this is different than before,” says Antoun Sawires who handles land use affairs for the councilmember, “is that it’s an all-encompassing action plan, not just a single site. That starts actual movement.” Improving the waterfront by 2027, he says, will show the neighborhood is up-and-coming, creating an attractive environment for investors and developers to then invest long-term in nearby Bay Street. 

“When we look across, we see the lights and glimmer and cameras,” says North Shore real estate broker and developer Peter Lisi. “We want that too.” 

He still insists that “Bay Street is booming” while avoiding oncoming traffic, pointing out the lots kept “purposely vacant” (“You can’t call this vacant if there’s a plan for it.”)

The Paramount Theatre, a historical landmark that Lisi had promised would reopen in 2010 and again in 2014, looks like a museum relic. Google street view images turn sepia as realtors’ numbers and “For Lease” signs go up and stay up for years. We pass Jerry’s 637 Diner that doesn’t open after three for fear of crime.

“Some people may have taken money and ran,” Lisi says about previous projects to reinvigorate the community. “But new people are in town and they’re going to do it right without the griminess.” 

The district’s councilmember, Kamillah Hanks, is confident that a $400 million investment through the North Shore Action Plan to transform the city’s largest undeveloped waterfront will incentivize owners and developers to put vacant space to use along Bay Street. 

But millions have been poured into the community before to no effect. 

Nearly all residents speak of “the curse of Staten Island” or say the borough is “where projects go to die.” The New York Wheel is but a few concrete feet jutting out of the ground and the butt of everyone’s jokes. And since the 2019 rezoning, only one apartment complex has been in progress. 

“I’m sure if you investigated why, someone would go to jail,” Lisi says. 

“The Worst Form of Carpetbagging”

Asked what owners are thinking when they keep a property vacant, Lisi replies, “‘Let me buy this for four million, invest ten million, and make billions off of it.’ They have a vision for the property.” 

St. George Civic Association president Eileen Harrington has tried to find out what sites are under development or under contract, what the plans are, and who the owners are for her constituents. What she has discovered is that owners and developers are a black box. 

“It’s really impossible to find these owners because they’re under these corporations and they don’t respond back,” Harrington says. She has tried asking the councilmember’s office for information, but “people don’t have this as a priority, so they say they’re looking into it.” 

In addition to the former Chamber of Commerce building, the LLCs Gonchar is linked to own the buildings next door: a former law firm and Kamillah Hanks’s former campaign office. Many other LLCs also own multiple properties clustered together, bought either in one large sale or gradually over several years. 

City records show that 32 Bay LLC, based on the other side of the city in Flushing, bought the building housing Honor Wines, a magazine store, and a barbershop from the Christos and Peggy Loukas Family Trust for $2.24 million on September 27, 2017. The building has remained vacant ever since Honor left in 2018. A sign posted over the former wine shop advertising a “New Development Site For Sale (With Approval Plan)” has been posted since at least April 2021.

“It’s the worst form of carpetbagging: someone not from this area and closing down businesses all to make a couple bucks,” Murphy says. “Nobody really knows what’s going on anymore.”