A Hell's Kitchen outdoor dining shack that has been scheduled for removal for months has been left abandoned and is becoming a terrifying nightmare for local residents.
On Tuesday, chef Adam Schopf, co-owner of Local 42 Bar, took it upon himself to remove mountains of trash from inside the shed at West 42nd Street and Ninth Avenue.
The shacks on the same block as his bar have been unused for at least the past year, and residents have filed numerous complaints with 311 about the abandoned buildings since April 2022. In recent weeks, one of the shacks has been piled high with trash, infested with flies, infested with maggots and emitting a pungent odor.
Schopf told W42ST that Istanbul Bey, the restaurant where the shed was installed, “hasn't had its trash collected for two weeks.”
“We have hundreds of pounds of rotting organic matter that has endured a week-long heat wave,” Schopf said, “and now we have a foul odor and flies at two of our operations, which is really unpleasant and a major health and safety concern.”
That evening, Schopf contacted his company's private waste hauler, Century Waste Services, to remove the decaying debris. Lorenzo, Century's sales manager, was on the scene with a collection truck and a clean-up crew in just over an hour, and removed 2,500 pounds of debris from Istanbul Bay.
“I've been in this business for years and I've never seen anything like this. I'm just here to do the right thing rather than let all the other businesses suffer,” Lorenzo said after the last bags were removed from the shed. “It was the worst smell I've ever experienced,” said local reporter Katie Savage.
In March, W42ST featured the Istanbul Bay shack and the nearby restaurant Huacheng, as well as other nearby shacks that local residents were calling for to be removed. At the time, local Councilman Eric Bottcher promised residents that his office would escalate the issue.
Just two weeks ago, we photographed Bottcher and members of the Hudson Yards Hell's Kitchen Alliance team looking at the shacks, at which point one appeared to be being used as a trash dump and the other was clearly a hotbed of drug use. Bottcher and his office assured us, and local business owners, that the issue was being addressed.
Residents' trash is picked up by the sanitation department, but all New York City businesses must contract with a private waste company. Istanbul Bay's manager said Wednesday that the company has had problems with its current private hauler and plans to switch to Century Waste Services, and that the shed will be removed over the weekend.
Dan Scouse, director of operations for the Hudson Yards Hell's Kitchen Alliance, confirmed that “given the public nuisance, HYHK decided to remove the shack at their own expense and only recently received permission from the business owner.”
As of today, the shed is still standing, but according to HYHK, it is scheduled to be removed by Sunday, July 28th.
Earlier this month, the city created a multi-agency task force to address similar situations in this part of Hell's Kitchen.
“In recent discussions, the Department of Transportation has confirmed that these roadside food and beverage outlets must be removed by August 3,” said Brian Weber, co-chair of the task force, adding that similar outlets had recently been removed from nearby streets.
Bottcher told W42ST, “This is emblematic of a failed system that allows bad actors to exploit a great program. An entire neighborhood is suffering because of the restaurateurs' negligence and the Adams Administration's failure to take decisive action. After months of calls, emails and meetings, the shack will be removed this Sunday, but it should not have taken this long. The Mayor's office maintains that the new program, which goes into effect on August 3, will not allow this kind of abuse, but that is little comfort to nearby businesses and communities that have suffered for so long.”
Many of the curbside eateries you'll find around the neighborhood are holdovers from the pandemic-era Open Restaurants program, which allowed curbside dining for the first time. Business owners have until August 3 to apply for the new, permanent Dining Out NYC program.
We reached out to NYC Transit for comment but had not received a response at the time of publication.
