USA: FULTON FISH MARKET FACES CLOSURE
Like 1 Dislike 0 Published on 23 Jul 2015
English/Nat
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New York City may be losing one of its most famous -- albeit smelly -- landmarks: The Fulton Fish Market.
Located at the southern tip of Manhattan since 1834, the fish market will move north to the Bronx next year.
The city claims it's time to make the market safer and more modern -- and that its time to develop the pricey real estate the fish currently occupy.
But the fish mongers, some of whose families have sold fish at Fulton for decades, say they have the historic right to stay right where they are.
SUGGESTED VOICE-OVER
As of now, this is the last fish market of a Western metropolis still on its original site.
But only for another year, if New York City planners get their way.
For years the city has been planning to develop the pricey real estate the market sits on -- between the skyscrapers of Wall Street and the Brooklyn Bridge -- a veritable gold mine.
It will mean certain changes for the city's countless seafood restaurants -- like this one on Park Avenue South.
Michael Siry, Executive Chef at City Crab, spends his entire day with fish.
He starts early in the morning -- around 4 am (EST) when the Fulton market opens -- where he buys fish for City Crab and ten affiliate restaurants.
Over the years he has come to know most of the fish mongers and their wares, which come from all over the world.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"We've been buying at this Fulton Fish Market for 20 years. I personally have been doing it for the last seven. So we have very friendly relationships. The guys that come into the market, the guys that work at the market, we -- occasionally they come in for dinner and we take care of them, and they in turn take care of us."
SUPER CAPTION: Michael Siry, Executive Chef, City Crab
Michael says he relies on the freshness and abundance of the fish at Fulton -- and that he trusts the companies he buys from.
Now he and other chefs in New York will have to shop elsewhere.
This summer, construction will begin on the undeveloped plot of land next to the Hunt's Point Market in the Bronx.
The new market will be done until sometime in 2002.
The city hopes to consolidate all the city's wholesale markets at Hunt's Point, which already sells produce and meats.
The city argues the market's current location has become arbitrary because the boats that once delivered the fresh seafood have been gone since the 1970s.
Instead, the boxes arrive by truck from the East Coast states, or from around the world through Kennedy International airport, in airline containers.
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who in the 1990's, as federal prosecutor, led a crusade to rid the Fulton market of its longtime Mafia links, announced the plans for the move in a speech in January.
This Thursday the mayor released his management report to the city, in which plans to move the market -- with an estimated cost to the city of 80 (m) million dollars ($US) -- were included.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"I think it will be a much better, a much more efficient, a much more modern market up at Hunt's Point and it will also create lots of economic development opportunities down at the South Street Seaport area because there's a lot of land there that could be put to better purpose."
SUPER CAPTION: Michael Carey, President of New York City Economic Development Corporation
But the fish mongers don't think so.
They feel that they are part of the unique history of New York, and that they should be allowed to stay -- paying rent of three million dollars a year.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"No doubt, I think it all has to do with generating more revenue for the city by way of, I don't know, hotels, casinos, I really don't know. But as far as my personal opinion, I would just rather stay right here on the waterfront where we belong."
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