Franco Moccia can’t figure it out. His father, Tony Moccia, can’t either, says Franco. Why wouldn’t RIOC give Capri Pizza a lease?

The lack of a lease, says Franco, is why Tony stopped paying his rent. He says the story goes back some seven years, when a RIOC attorney promised a new lease on the pizzeria space, then promised again, and again, and again, over a period of years. Finally, in an attempt to force RIOC to provide the promised lease, Moccia stopped paying rent on the space – to the tune (he says) of an accumulated $130,000. So, a month ago, RIOC called in the marshal and padlocked the place.

Franco says the family is ready to pay the back rent. "But with no lease, it makes no sense," he says. Why, he asks, would anybody pay $130,000 back rent when, a month later, RIOC could terminate a month-to-month rental arrangement. "We would need that money to start fresh somewhere else," he says.

Mr. O, who runs Roosevelt Island Cleaners, can’t figure it out. He wants a lease. He needs to invest in some improvements in his space and his equipment, but investment makes no sense if he could be evicted on the spur of the moment. He’s current in his rent – a chronic two weeks late, he admits – but to invest in the future of his store and the future of Roosevelt Island, he needs to know he’ll be here next month, and the month after, and next year. With no lease, his situation is just too tenuous. "We don’t want to fight with these people, or bicker," he says. "We try to be nice. We just don’t want to be ignored. We want to be able to invest and improve." He points out that simply keeping ahead of regulatory requirements for a cleaning establishment is costly and, without a lease, investment beyond the basic necessities is just out of the question.

Mr. O says he has talked to RIOC attorney Paul Hart. Hart referred him to RIOC President Herbert E. Berman. Berman referred him to RIOC real-estate salesman-consultant Paul Mas. Mas, he says, is hard to reach. Indeed, merchant after merchant and many businesspeople who’ve tried to reach Mas in an effort to rent Roosevelt Island space get what they universally call "the runaround."

Don Perrino can’t figure it out. Nor can his nephew, Sal Laplaca. Perrino’s been trying, he says, to rent the bakery space since it was shuttered by RIOC – again for non-payment of rent – some three years ago. "I get a runaround," he says. Perrino also says that, in a conversation with Berman or Mas, he was asked if he would be willing to pay the accumulated unpaid back rent of the previous occupant of the space. He was incredulous. "I ain’t going to do that," he said.

Perrino has a track record on Roosevelt Island. He

 remembers better times. He ran La Piccola Mela in the pizzeria space for about five years starting in 1976, when the New York State Urban Development Corporation was the landlord. Residents remember lines to get into the place. "You had to have a reservation!" remembered one old-timer last week. "The food was great!"

Perrino says, "They don’t really want to rent it." He says it was obvious that he was shown the bakery space only because he was particularly insistent with Paul Mas. But he says he was told, "We can’t rent you the bakery. But we can rent you the pizza place after we evict him."

Cynthia Ahn, who runs Roosevelt Nails, can’t figure it out. Ahn, too, wants a lease for her space. She spoke in RIOC’s meeting about RFIPs (see separate story, this page) two weeks ago. Working in an English language with which she has more skill than many Island merchants, she told Berman, RIOC Board Chair Deborah Boatright, and Mas: "It makes very nervous for the merchants, and some of the stores who want to renovate to spend the money to improve the space or business, but without the lease, they don’t know how much they can invest or what the future. Roosevelt Island is a very small community, very unique, and very much [a part of] family life, We developed [our business over] the last 15-20 years. If, in the future, want to attract more business, they have to see we [existing merchants] are doing well, then they can invest. If we all fail, then they will hesitate to invest. So my suggestion is [that] RIOC should protect the merchants, so that we are not neglected and have a lease."

Berman interrupted Ahn at this point: "Please wrap up." He didn’t respond to Ahn’s concern, nor did Boatright or Mas.

Archie Seale, who runs The Grog Shop, can’t figure it out. His name appears at the top of a list of merchants on an ad running in this week’s WIRE (page 7). Seale, too, spoke at RIOC’s February 16 session: "Many of these merchants – most of them here – have no leases now." It seems that the RIOC Board is uninterested, he added. "We used to meet with [the Board] regularly. Now, we can’t seem to get meetings with RIOC to talk to them about our plight, to at least go over the facts – to at least talk about the leases – to have words. They completely ignore us. That’s what we’re talking about, and that’s not fair. What we need is a little bit of cooperation, and we would appreciate that." Turning to Paul Mas, he added, "And I would appreciate that from you, also."

The man who runs M&D Deli can’t figure it out. He’d like a lease, too, he said at the February 16 meeting, after apologizing for his poor English.

The shattered syntax and simple business methods of Roosevelt Island’s merchants are emblematic of a cultural gulf between their "mom and pop store" nature and RIOC, a State-of-New-York superGoliath to their platoon of miniDavids. The Moccias, for example, realize now that they probably should have put their back rent into escrow while trying to crowbar a lease out of RIOC. Instead, they put it aside in private accounts – but not all of it – and now, they’ve mortgaged a family property in order to have the ready cash to pay their back rent. That legal state of affairs gave RIOC pause: Would they ever pay the back rent? But the Moccias won’t, in fact, unless RIOC gives them a lease. They point out that, now that RIOC has evicted them, there’s no point – and they need the cash to start up elsewhere, since Roosevelt Island has, in their view, become mom-and-pop hostile. (Even so, they want a lease, and they want to pay up.)

What RIOC has done, in fact, is turn over its real-estate operations, pretty much lock, stock, and barrel, to Paul Mas of Jones Lang Lasalle. Mas, who is a "consultant," is also a commissioned salesman. He advises RIOC on how to handle its real-estate assets and then, if the advice is taken and he can implement it, he’ll get a commission. With the properties involved – for example, he’s empowered to renegotiate terms for Southtown buildings and will be commissioned on whatever "extra" payoff he can wrestle out of the developer – he stands to do very well as a result of the consulting advice he gives and implements.

With regard to retail space, Mas’s advice has RIOC searching – through a RFIP process (see separate story) – for a master tenant who will take over and manage all of Roosevelt Island’s retail spaces (except for those in the Southtown buildings). Mas told the February 16 meeting that such a tenant will have the expertise RIOC lacks. But an RFIP process run by a State agency under State rules is not an overnight affair – the "request for initial proposals" went out in October and the results, just in, have not yet been put into the hands of the members of the RIOC Board of Directors. (Well, briefly, they were, but the report was taken back with no opportunity yet for study or contemplation, according to one Board member.)

But Islanders familiar with the long history of RIOC’s relationship with its retail tenants think that RIOC is refusing leases to existing Island merchants because they want to clear the spaces out – or be able to on a moment’s notice – to give a clean slate – "an empty box," one has called it – to such a master tenant.

Whatever RIOC’s purpose, and whatever Paul Mas’s advice and intent, the Island’s merchants are uneasy. Trellis proprietor Kaie Razaghi – who actually has a lease and feels reasonably secure – says, "You have to wake up when you see businesses failing around you."

The failing businesses have left residents without valued services. The credit union left. The bakery closed. Julie’s Sports Bar gave up. The shoe repair shop went away. Bigelow Pharmacy shut down after RIOC allowed Gristede’s to start selling health and beauty aids, which had been Bigelow’s mainstay. You can no longer buy an ice-cream cone in a hot Island summer. Ali Khan gave up at the newstand (though it’s now operated by another owner). As much as residents complained about Island businesses in the past, they readily lament their passing.

And now, there’s a "pizza gap." That’s serious, says some residents. One explained: "A lot of Island parents work. Some can’t get home in time to cook for their kids. They give them money. They say, ‘Go get a slice if you get hungry.’ Now, they can’t get a slice."

At the February 16 real-estate meeting, Historical Society President Judy Berdy pleaded with RIOC. About the RFIP for a master tenant to manage the Island’s retail spaces, she said, "If you look at the commercial proposal you’ve received and you see that it’s really not so great, why don’t you give our merchants leases and let them get on with their lives? I can’t get pizza, I can’t go to a sports bar... I mean, there’s less and less and less services I can get on this Island. If the commercial proposal is not wonderful, please, give our merchants leases, let them run their businesses."

Merchants who have been reluctant to speak with The WIRE in the past, wanting to protect their relationship with RIOC, are now speaking out – still not necessarily with The WIRE. And they still seem unable to unify. They have a Chamber of Commerce, but its focus is currently on a long-term retail beautification project, and merchants don’t attend meetings, feeling that there’s little point in beautification if you can’t get a lease to know you’ll be present for the long term.

The lack of unity is also a cultural matter, in part. "RIOC divides and conquers," says one. He means that once a merchant gets a lease, he’s no longer interested in the lease problem that afflicts his fellow merchants. But there’s also the language barrier. Many of the merchants are immigrants from a variety of countries, and some appear to know little more than the English they need to do business day to day. With limited English the only common language, and a variety of mercantile backgrounds that don’t always match up with the American way of doing business, let alone the RIOC way of doing business, they have trouble working together.

Their advertisement on page 7, in fact, is one of their first overt efforts suggesting anything like a united front.

Mas is apparently going to meet with Island merchants to discuss their situations with them. At this writing, no date has been set. In the February meeting, asked if he would be available to meet with one particular merchant, he said, "Sure. Call me up." Told that he fails to respond to phone messages or return calls, he said, "I try to return calls." Repeatedly, anxious merchants and potential renters say he simply does not.

MiniDavid merchants vs. SuperGoliath New York State/RIOC. You don’t even need a ticket. The drama is playing out there on Main Street.