As of 6 p.m. on Tuesday, the door to Floridita, the popular Cuban restaurant on Broadway and 125th Street, was locked, and it was unclear when it would reopen.
According to owner Ramon Diaz, in the morning, University officials showed up at Floridita—which is a Columbia tenant—to tell him he needed to close by the end of the day. The immediate reason was a damaged kitchen floor that Columbia spokespeople said posed a danger to occupants. But that was just one small piece of the puzzle in this latest development over the course of two years of often-contentious negotiations between Diaz and University officials.
Diaz has a lease—good until 2014—on two Columbia-owned storefronts that the University needs for its planned campus in the Manhattanville neighborhood of West Harlem. Recently, the two parties agreed on a new, unspecified location for Floridita, and all that remains is for both to sign the lease, which would be a major breakthrough in drawn-out negotiations that have often seemed to lead nowhere. But, so close to sealing the deal, both parties blame the other for the delayed finish. University officials claim they have already signed and are just waiting on Diaz, while Diaz says he has signed and is waiting on Columbia.
In a statement released Tuesday, the University emphasized that the closing was temporary and due solely to maintenance issues—specifically the kitchen floor—and not to the larger question of Floridita’s relocation.
The problem, the statement said, is urgent: “An architect [Marin Nanca Architects] and consulting engineer [Ysrael A. Seinuk, P.C.] inspected the condition of the kitchen floor on October 14, 2009 and found it to be ‘in a state of disrepair and in danger of collapse.’”
“While we regret the inconvenience caused by Mr. Diaz’s internal management, the University must first and foremost take actions that will maintain a safe environment for both employees and patrons,” the statement continued. “To that end, we will make the repairs as quickly as possible so that Mr. Diaz can resume his operations.” Columbia expects the repairs to take about six weeks.
Diaz acknowledged the condition of the kitchen floor—it was he who first informed Columbia of the problem last October. At that point, he requested a temporary fix to allow him to continue operations during the busy holiday season, and the University agreed to a “provisional repair,” which the city Department of Buildings said would be acceptable for no more than six months.
In a Feb. 3 email that University officials shared with Spectator, Diaz had written to Columbia Executive Vice President of Facilities Joe Ienuso that instead of Columbia paying to repair the kitchen, he would prefer those funds be directed toward the opening of his new location. “I have made it clear that repairing the kitchen floor at the current location is not an option I am considering,” he wrote. He added, though, that if a relocation agreement were not finalized by April 26, “We will close the current location for the appropriate repairs.”
Accordingly, the closing was ordered on April 27, despite the seemingly imminent relocation.
Diaz said this email was only one in a more complex series. While he declined to provide details about the other emails, citing a confidentiality agreement in the negotiation process with the University, he said, “There have been a number of emails that went back and forth, and that email is not necessarily the story.”
He said he had agreed to close for the repairs only as a last resort and emphasized that, in his view, there were still preferable alternatives available. For instance, he said he had offered to pay for an outside engineer to inspect the kitchen, which could have led to a 120-day extension on the original six-month grace period. With that extra time, he said, he could have finalized the lease on the new space, moved, and avoided having to lay off—temporarily or otherwise—his 36 employees. “It’s not so much me, but the 30-plus families that are living off this work. This has real impact on real lives,” Diaz said.
And on Tuesday, some employees echoed Diaz, saying they couldn’t afford to be unemployed even for six weeks.
“Everybody have a child, everybody pay rent,” said Connie Villavicencio, who has worked at Floridita for 27 years. “I work long time here—it’s like my house, my family.”
“I’ve never worked in another place,” Antonio Ceballo, another 27-year employee, said. “What can I do now? The bills are coming and my kids are waiting for something to eat.”
Naylet Mata, who has worked at Floridita for close to a year-and-a-half, said it was the only place she had found that would employ her part-time and allow her to attend school as well. “How can I go to university, how can I pay my rent? It’s not fair for us,” she said.
Some customers, too, were surprised by the news.
“I eat here all the time, and it’s the shit,” said Michael Davis, a senior at the Manhattan School of Music. “This is one of the big hangs—it’s cheap, it’s good, it’s open late.”
His friend Mike Ruby, a first-year master’s student at MSM, said he has been eating at Floridita for four years. “My first encounter with New York was Floridita. It has a lot of memories,” he said.
“This is truly saddening to me,” Ben Totushek, GS and a member of Columbia’s Student Coalition on Expansion and Gentrification, wrote in an email. SCEG has been particularly active in supporting Floridita and has organized multiple protests and rallies in the past two years on Diaz’s behalf. “It seems that they don’t want Floridita to keep serving its loyal clientele, for whatever reasons.”
Columbia has adamantly disputed such claims, saying it wants Floridita to succeed and still hopes to reach a mutually acceptable agreement. Diaz, the statement said, has been offered “a long-term lease for appealing alternative space in a prominent location on West 125th Street and we await his signature on final, mutually agreed-to lease documents”—and Diaz himself said he was happy with the offer and wanted to finalize the lease.
His lease on his current property is good until 2014, and according to the statement, he has two options: to close for six weeks for the kitchen repairs, reopen in the same location, and stay there until his lease expires, or to move to a new location now.
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