Quantcast

The DNAinfo archives brought to you by WNYC.
Read the press release here.

Longtime Village Cookbook Shop Closing After Losing Lease

By Danielle Tcholakian | November 18, 2014 2:31pm
 Bonnie Slotnick has run Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks on West 10th Street in Greenwich Village for 15 years.
Bonnie Slotnick has run Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks on West 10th Street in Greenwich Village for 15 years.
View Full Caption
DNAinfo/Andrea Swalec

WEST VILLAGE — Bonnie Slotnick is shutting down her independent cookbook store after 15 years, because her landlord refused to renew her lease, she said.

Slotnick, who owns Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks at 163 W. 10th St., said she is being forced to close the store when her lease expires on Jan. 31, 2015. The closure was first reported by Jeremiah's Vanishing New York.

"I can't believe I'm turning into one of your sad stories, but I've just lost my lease," Slotnick wrote in an email to the blog. "I'm absolutely determined to find a place and move the shop."

Slotnick said she reached out to the blog in the hopes of drumming up support for her shop, but she doesn't think anything will convince her landlord to change his mind. 

"My landlord doesn't want me here, that's it," she said. "It doesn't matter if he hears from 10,000 people. He didn't even offer me a different rent, he just said, 'no.'"

Emails to the building's owner went unanswered and a phone message left with an employee at the landlord's company was not returned.

The store will remain open through Christmas and "maybe longer," Slotnick said, but after that she will be open by appointment only while she packs up all of her books.

 The store has a sign in the window saying Bonnie Slotnick lost her lease.
The store has a sign in the window saying Bonnie Slotnick lost her lease.
View Full Caption
DNAinfo/Danielle Tcholakian

Slotnick has operated her specialty shop, stocked with vintage cookbooks organized by cuisine and region and stacked to the ceiling of her little space on West 10th Street, for 15 years. Her current rent is $3,500 per month.

Slotnick previously spoke with DNAinfo New York about the West Village as a haven for independent bookstores, "the last neighborhood in Manhattan that presents itself as a place where the arts are of interest."

But she also expressed concerns at the time about her landlord, who also owned the property where Left Bank Books originally was before that store was forced to move as well.

"They almost lost their store," she said last spring. "West Fourth got very fancy — Gwyneth Paltrow lived there."