Harry Poulakakos is a legend of the Financial District in Manhattan. His first restaurant, Harry’s of Hanover Square was featured in the Academy Award winning film “Wall Street”. Harry and his son, Peter, helped developed Stone Street into a popular café district and have opened up several successful pubs and restaurants in the area.
Harry took us one an extensive tour of his flagship restaurant and its extensive wine cellar.
Unemployment and job creation via small business assistance is now the Obama administration’s top priority in the public arena and has been a concern for more than a year. Realizing this last November, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blankfein, chose small business support as the topic for a public relations move to counter the populace outrage over bankers being focused mostly on Goldman Sachs and AIG. He issued a statement that some in the press called a mea culpa, and paired it with a $500 Million gesture to the community called the “10,000 Small Business Initiative”. The plan was to give $300 Million in aid to small business as loans or grants, and $200 Million was to go to educational centers to help teach about “Business and Management Education”.
Whatever became of the “10,000 small business initiative”? Being located near both the old and new Goldman Sachs headquarters, BatteryPark.TV (BPTV) decided to investigate. Were the funds distributed properly, or at all? Have any small businesses received loans to date? BPTV spoke to Fox Business about this story.
When it rains it pours. In addition to the horrendous bad publicity that Goldman Sachs has endured on the national scene leading to an apology by the CEO, their new several-billion-dollar skyscraper headquarters being completed in Battery Park City is angering the community.
The Community Board 1 meeting tonight was heavily attended and the two main topics were related to Goldman Sachs problems. First, the early-morning New York Waterway ferries added to help with the new Goldman employees coming from New Jersey are rattling the windows of the Gateway Plaza residents. Executives from the ferry company explained the situation for an hour (see video).
Secondly, the new Goldman building yet again created a major safety hazard from falling debris. This time, a cracked window fell several hundred feet causing a rerouting of the West Side highway. Previously, a heavy steel plate speared the grass of the ball fields as it fell from the construction tower and a falling object broke the glass of the awning adjacent to the movie theater entrance. A hammer also fell this year.
It is being reported that Wall Street is expected to pay out the largest total in salaries ever: more than $140 Billion. This will, of course, directly impact the struggling NYC economy.
The other shoe to drop for New York City will be the massive rate of defaults on commercial real estate loans. Up to a trillion dollars in loans could go unpaid within the next year or two. Will lenders renegotiate or will they evict all of the businesses in those buildings causing an even great unemployment problem and tax revenue shortage?
Restaurants, Reviews, Steak, Wall Street | admin | 
March 10, 2010 1:04 am | 
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