Hi, my name is Andrew Welchek. I’m a partner with the law firm of Cohen, Hochman, and Allen. I represent commercial property owners in New York City. That is individuals and businesses who own land and buildings in New York City and have problems. They need to close a deal, resolve a dispute, otherwise deal with prospering with their property. If you’re a property owner in New York City you’re going to have problems; you can come to me and I can help.
In my last video, I talked about what we think might happen in the real estate market in New York next year. And one of the things we talked about was the possible regrowth and boom in the restaurant business. And then, sure enough, the governor, in his hopefully well-advised scientific and medical judgment, shut down restaurants this week and you can no longer go inside and eat.
Unfortunately, that means more restaurants are going to fail. So now the question becomes, what is going to happen next year with regard to restaurants? What do you think? I can tell you what I think. I think, as I said, the hard winter and the shutdown order is going to continue to decimate the industry.
But there may be some good luck. The federal government may, in fact, pump money into the economy. There certainly will be a lot of pent up demand and the vaccine, now being distributed, hopefully, will get to enough people to control this disease and allow us to resume our lives outside of house arrest, including going out to eat and socialize, an essential function of the economy and our lives, which will create an opportunity for restaurants.
And as I said in last week’s video, New York City is one of the cheapest places in the world to open up a restaurant. You only have to go across the Hudson River to New Jersey to pay 10 times as much to get a liquor license as you would in New York City.
And there are always mostly young, but not necessarily, but certainly eager people ready and excited to open restaurants. It’s always an attractive business. It’s a difficult business, but it’s one that people are eager to get into.
And if, in fact, there are more failures, there will be more empty available spaces and landlords eager, we hope, to be reasonable about their rents. So if we have some good luck, good vaccinations, control of the disease, and sufficient economic stimulus, we could be looking in the spring and summer to have a rejuvenation of the restaurant business in New York City. I certainly hope so and I think you probably do, too.
My name is Andrew Welchek. I’m a partner with the law firm of Cohen, Hochman, and Allen. You can reach me on my cell phone at 973 223 4567. Thank you.
From the desk of Andrew Weltchek 