They threw out 120 pounds of bluefin tuna fresh from Spanish waters. Into the garbage went 15 trays of Japanese sea urchin that sell for $25 a morsel. The 13 pounds of black throat sea perch all the way from Tsushima Island? Also in the dumpster.
While New Yorkers were captivated by a buckling Midtown building on 42nd Street on July 7, another high-stakes story played out in its shadow. For nearly three weeks, businesses between Second and Third Avenues on 43rd Street struggled to stay afloat as the city kept that sliver of Midtown closed.
Inside the so-called Frozen Zone, set up after 235 East 42nd Street, the location of the former headquarters of the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, became dangerously unstable, were hotels, a trade school and a brace of Japanese restaurants. As each week passed, the city shrunk the Frozen Zone, allowing more businesses to reopen and pedestrians and cars to return.
With the former Pfizer building, which is being converted to apartments, finally stable, the city gave the businesses that remained shut the all-clear to reopen on July 24.
But the bills have piled up, workers have been furloughed, and businesses, especially the restaurants, are playing catch up.
“We had to throw it away, all the good stuff,” said Porche Prasertchoang, the manager of Izakaya Futago, a restaurant on the stretch of East 43rd Street between Second and Third Avenues.
The closure cost an estimated $60,000 and counting, he said. He was forced to furlough all 23 of his employees, and encouraged them to apply for unemployment. He spent his days slipping into the restaurant through the delivery entrance on 44th Street to man the phones, canceling reservations and food orders.
“I don’t know how long it will take for us to recover,” Mr. Prasertchoang said on Monday.
At Sushi Yasuda, where the black throat sea perch is served, Scott Rosenberg, the owner, estimates he lost over $300,000 in revenue and spoiled food. His insurer denied his claim for the damage, he said. Equally galling, in some ways, he said, is that the plight of his and fellow businesses has gotten little attention.
“A buckling building, it is shocking and terrifying,” Mr. Rosenberg said in an interview. “It’s not the most compelling or exciting story that a handful of adjacent businesses are kind of left to fend for themselves — but this involves people’s livelihoods.”
Though he was able to negotiate with the city to allow customers with reservations to slip through the barricades at 3rd Avenue, he said, the Frozen Zone hit Sushi Yasuda’s finances hard. Mr. Rosenberg said he is now exploring a lawsuit against the building’s developer, MetroLoft. A spokesman for MetroLoft declined to comment.
“What small business has the wherewithal to try to take on big real estate folks?” he said. “But we are looking at it, because it has been devastating.”
Down the street, Yakiniku Toraji, a Japanese barbecue restaurant, just reopened as well.
“It’s hard, still,” said Ayano Shindo, as she tended the coals for the table-side grills. A part-time employee, Ms. Shindo estimated she had lost $600 each week. A native Japanese-speaker, she said she had struggled to apply for unemployment benefits and was still not successful.
On this underappreciated block of Midtown East, Ms. Shindo is one of scores of workers whose lives were upended on July 7. The ramifications have been felt from the waiters serving sushi, to the concierge at the hotel, to the students at the trade school next door.
The problem at the former Pfizer building is under investigation, and the Manhattan district attorney has begun the initial stages of a criminal inquiry into what went wrong.
But some workers said the situation tested their resilience. Standing outside a parking garage, a few days after the street’s reopening, Tete Kpoti, a security guard, said he was evacuated from his post on July 7, but he hadn’t missed a beat. He quickly found another security gig at a different location, until he could return.
“This is New York City,” Mr. Kpoti said. “You’ve got to come with Plan A and a Plan B.”
On the day of the evacuation, Aaron Cox was getting some air during a break between classes in electrical engineering at Apex Technical School, at 210 East 43rd Street, when people started yelling that the building was sagging. Firefighters quickly arrived, he said, and evacuated his fellow students from their classrooms next door.
A few days later, Mr. Cox was back for classes and able to return before 43rd Street was reopened, he said, through a back door on 42nd Street. But the curriculum had been slightly changed: Instructors drilled everyone on things like federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards, Mr. Cox said, and how to address any building site problems.
“We went over who is going to be accountable, and how we report it, because of this,” Mr. Cox said. “They warned us of the dangers of negligence.”
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