An NYC based landlord and property owner is sacrificing profits in an effort to support New York City’s economic recovery and help save local, independently owned businesses.
“We all love New York, and we all want New York to come back and be the great city that we like, and we wanted to support that in one way or another,” said Eran Polack, CEO of HAP Investments.
Residents living in HAP Investments properties will receive rent credits for shopping locally, HAP Investments, a New York-based international real estate investment and development company, announced Thursday.
“It’s a win win because it’s a good promotion for the local shops in our community and it’s a good promotion for our tenants,” Polack said. Polack said he was tired of hearing people complain about seeing local stores close and wanted to do something to help fix it instead.
HAP will offer up to $1,000 in rent credits to more than 200 building residents for shopping and dining locally.
Polack notified HAP building residents of the rent discount program after seeing a leaflet from an independently owned business in East Harlem calling on community members to shop local.
“We need to help the smaller businesses in the city that are struggling, that didn’t have so much clients during COVID and still now, they’re having hard times,” Polack said.
Of New York City’s 200,000 businesses, 98 percent are considered small and 89 percent very small. These businesses provide work opportunities for more than half of the city’s private sector workforce, according to the NYC Small Business First Report.
With online shopping already hurting small businesses before the pandemic, the pandemic only exacerbated the issue.
Polack said the promotion will push tenants to go find local stores that meet their needs and even after the promotion is over, he said he hopes people will continue to shop at those local stores.
“If people have incentives to go out and shop in stores in their communities, then maybe they will fall in love with one of those stores and keep buying from them,” Polack said. “I think it will benefit the city, that our retail will be successful again and we will see more stores open.”
He also hopes other real estate developers will join the promotion to make a bigger impact, he said.
“It will benefit the city, the community and it will also benefit the real estate industry because retail is part of our industry; it’s part of our business model,” Polack said.
