![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Let me tell you all the things that are wrong with the smoke shop.
No, wait, that would take forever. So let's just talk about the physical building.
A couple months back, the owners of the building (a local real estate company) announced that, in partnership with Cornell and the City of Ithaca, they were opening a business incubator on the second floor. (Presumably that is why they refused to renew the lease of the Advocacy Center, which only does non-profit things like helping victims of domestic and sexual and childhood abuse, rather than building shiny new internet apps -- why yes, I'm slightly bitter about that, how ever could you tell???) Of course, in order to do that, they needed to renovate the second floor. They also plan to add a third floor -- maybe even a fourth floor -- on top of the building in 2015.
So far, no problem.
Then we hear that A) they will need to install an elevator, and B) oh shit, during the demolition phase of the renovation process, they found asbestos.
Yeah.
And this was after they'd spent several days chucking debris out the open second floor windows into a dumpster in the back alley... which happens to be where we keep our recycling and trash until the designated days for curbside pickup, and also where we get our newspaper deliveries every morning.
They ran some tests and determined that the alley debris was not, in fact, contaminated, but even so. Fun times! They have been removing the asbestos from the second floor -- and also from the basement, where whoops, they found some more! -- over the past few days. This involves a bunch of plastic sheeting and air pressure regulators and masks and stuff... but the smoke shop (and the outdoor gear shop and the yarn shop) have not had any precautionary measures installed, so we're all a little suspicious of that.
And today, a pair of architects came by to measure the store in preparation for the elevator... which, when I asked them, is apparently supposed to sit right beside the basement stairwell, in the middle of the smoke shop's back room, with a little access foyer to the back alley that runs right through our bathroom. I asked them what we were going to do for a bathroom during and after the construction. I got nothing but blank looks and "Um, well, I don't know" in response. And that's not even getting into the loss of space, which will probably not come with any corresponding reduction of rent.
Furthermore, I am pretty sure that if the second floor had asbestos, and the basement had asbestos, they will also find asbestos on the ground floor -- i.e., in the smoke shop -- once they start cutting apart walls for the elevator shaft, and then we'll get outright shut down for at least a week, and where the hell are we supposed to move all our stock? Mr. Speakerphone has already told Boss Lady to basically quit ordering new stock until we get straight answers from the owners and the architects, since he strongly suspects we'll have to abandon ship at some point, possibly forever. And if we get kicked out, I'm pretty sure he's not going to reopen the smoke shop elsewhere. He'll just close it altogether.
And then what am I going to do for a job?
So yeah, that's some stuff I've been worrying about for the past few weeks. :-(
No, wait, that would take forever. So let's just talk about the physical building.
A couple months back, the owners of the building (a local real estate company) announced that, in partnership with Cornell and the City of Ithaca, they were opening a business incubator on the second floor. (Presumably that is why they refused to renew the lease of the Advocacy Center, which only does non-profit things like helping victims of domestic and sexual and childhood abuse, rather than building shiny new internet apps -- why yes, I'm slightly bitter about that, how ever could you tell???) Of course, in order to do that, they needed to renovate the second floor. They also plan to add a third floor -- maybe even a fourth floor -- on top of the building in 2015.
So far, no problem.
Then we hear that A) they will need to install an elevator, and B) oh shit, during the demolition phase of the renovation process, they found asbestos.
Yeah.
And this was after they'd spent several days chucking debris out the open second floor windows into a dumpster in the back alley... which happens to be where we keep our recycling and trash until the designated days for curbside pickup, and also where we get our newspaper deliveries every morning.
They ran some tests and determined that the alley debris was not, in fact, contaminated, but even so. Fun times! They have been removing the asbestos from the second floor -- and also from the basement, where whoops, they found some more! -- over the past few days. This involves a bunch of plastic sheeting and air pressure regulators and masks and stuff... but the smoke shop (and the outdoor gear shop and the yarn shop) have not had any precautionary measures installed, so we're all a little suspicious of that.
And today, a pair of architects came by to measure the store in preparation for the elevator... which, when I asked them, is apparently supposed to sit right beside the basement stairwell, in the middle of the smoke shop's back room, with a little access foyer to the back alley that runs right through our bathroom. I asked them what we were going to do for a bathroom during and after the construction. I got nothing but blank looks and "Um, well, I don't know" in response. And that's not even getting into the loss of space, which will probably not come with any corresponding reduction of rent.
Furthermore, I am pretty sure that if the second floor had asbestos, and the basement had asbestos, they will also find asbestos on the ground floor -- i.e., in the smoke shop -- once they start cutting apart walls for the elevator shaft, and then we'll get outright shut down for at least a week, and where the hell are we supposed to move all our stock? Mr. Speakerphone has already told Boss Lady to basically quit ordering new stock until we get straight answers from the owners and the architects, since he strongly suspects we'll have to abandon ship at some point, possibly forever. And if we get kicked out, I'm pretty sure he's not going to reopen the smoke shop elsewhere. He'll just close it altogether.
And then what am I going to do for a job?
So yeah, that's some stuff I've been worrying about for the past few weeks. :-(
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
