Junior’s Bucks a Trend to Maintain a Tradition
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Liza Schoenfein September 10, 2014
This summer wasn’t kind to New York restaurant lovers.
In June, Wylie Dufresne announced that he’d be closing the doors of his pioneering modernist restaurant WD50. Soon after, Danny Meyer said that Union Square Café would be leaving its original location when its lease expired at the end of the year.
Finally, some good news. At a moment when real estate always seems to trump tradition, Junior’s Cheesecake owner Alan Rosen has broken from the pack. Yesterday he announced that after much deliberation and a visit to his therapist, he would be turning his back on a $45 million offer to sell the building that houses the Flatbush flagship, which opened in 1950, because it did not include a crucial provision for the restaurant to reopen within the same footprint after construction.
“I’m not just running a restaurant,” Rosen explains. “I’m running something that has such a heritage and such a tradition for so many people here in Brooklyn, that it just can’t be replaced.”
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
