TaraPaige Group was sad to post a few months ago that the New Amsterdam Market at the old Fulton Fish Market would be closing due to the redevelopment of the area by Howard Hughes Corporation. Good news! Although not in the same location, the market will be returning next year. Robert LaValva is not yet ready to reveal the new home of the New Amsterdam Market, but is eager to reopen a space where butchers, cheesemongers, seafood dealers and other vendors are able to showcase their fare.

The real estate developers are planning to demolish the old New Market building to construct a high rise waterfront tower. This decision was of course met with a strong opposition. After a solid seven years of events being hosted at the South Street Seaport location, the official next event will take place in late February of 2015. April Bloomfield, chef of the Spotted Pig was on the market’s board of directors and will be appearing on a panel to discuss the future of the Seaport next Monday, November 10th. For more information on this panel discussion, click here.

To read more about the future of the New Amsterdam Market in the upcoming year, click here

As Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration is looking to eliminate letter grades for public schools, the NYC Hospitality Alliance  believed it is a good opportunity to urge City Hall to focus on the letter-grade system in restaurants. The reasoning behind removing the letter grades in public schools was that it affected reputations and could feel punitive, which is the same case for restaurants. Letter grades can be misleading for diners as they only reflect a restaurant’s sanitary condition in the period of time that they were inspected.

The point allocation is also something that the NYC Hospitality Alliance believes should be rethought so that the point values fairly reflect their impact on food safety. Another suggested reform is to eliminate points for non-food-safety-related violations as well as seeing the adjudication process  through to the end before scheduling a second inspection. Andrew Rigie, executive director of the NYC Hospitality Alliance, fully believes that the restaurant industry believes in high food-safety standards and would do a better job of upholding these standards if they were not being slapped with fines and punitive letters from a letter grade system that is in need of a reform.

To read more about how the restaurant grading system currently works and what could improve the current system, click here

New York City hasn’t seen this many restaurant openings since 2007, however, it also has had double the amount of restaurant closings compared to last year. There were 160 New York restaurant openings in 2014, and 82 closings compared to 42 last year. Tim Zagat, co-founder of the Zagat Survey explains his take on why some restaurants are failing and others are spreading, “The discrepancy between openings and closings is the largest since 2005…there are a lot of rent-caused closings that are maybe driving up the number. And that will affect in the industry in the coming years.”

Zagat goes on to explain that rents will always go up in New York City and if a restaurant has been open 10 years (it is common  there will be a large increase, which is what is happening all across the city and explains so many restaurants going out of business.  When restaurants have 10 year leases, which is fairly common, at the end of that lease landlords tend to increase the rent up to ‘market rates,’ which usually are just not feasible for the restaurant forcing them to close.

A few notable restaurants which are experiencing this phenomenon include Danny Meyer’s Union Square Cafe and WD-50 on the Lower East Side. Meyer comment in his New York Times Op-Ed, “It’s hard to come to grips with the notion that our success has, in part, contributed to our inability to remain in our neighborhood.” WD-50 will close end of this month to make way for a new building. To read more about the openings and closings of NYC restaurants, click here