New York City has many small businesses, but a business expert says city government often hasn’t a clue about their problems.

According to Thomas Grech, executive director of the Queens County Chamber of Commerce, “The city doesn’t get the challenges of small businesses, such as paying a minimum $15-an-hour wage. It just thinks of small businesses as something to tax.”

The problem, Grech added, is that most city officials have never run a business and have no understanding of how it works.

“They don’t know what it’s like to meet a payroll and how to pay exorbitant medical costs.” He lamented that small businesses don’t have the lobbying power to organize.

Dr. Nabil Salib, a doctor who recently established the myDoc Urgent Care Center in Forest Hills, said that “lower taxes and rents” are needed. The city, he added, should also promote low-interest business loans.

The casualties keep coming. Metropolitan Pharmacy, a Queens stalwart, is closing its doors for good Monday after 40 years. Its owner, Ira Lisogorsky, blames regulatory and city policies, among other factors. Metropolitan’s demise comes about a year after the death of another popular Queens small business, Ben’s Best, a 73-year-old kosher deli in Rego Park.



Ben Best’s owner Jay Parker said the city’s new traffic plans hurt his business, reducing Queens Boulevard parking spots by 200 and creating more bike lanes but also making it difficult for elderly customers to get to Ben’s.

City officials defended the changes, saying the area had many buses and subways.

Asked about Metropolitan Pharmacy’s plight, a city official said the city does care about small businesses.

The NYC Department of Small Business Services (SBS) says the city has some 230,000 small businesses, defined as an establishment of 125 employees or less. An SBS spokeswoman said commercial rents and the growth of e-commerce are the biggest reasons small businesses fail.

“We want small businesses to survive,” she said, adding that SBS launched a web portal specifically to help small businesses.

Among the services SBS officials offer is a commercial lease program connecting small business owners with free legal services with a dedicated attorney. The free legal services include help negotiating a lease, resolving landlord issues, responding to an eviction notice and negotiating a lease renewal, SBS officials said.

These services are designed “to reduce the burden of bureaucracy and promote equity of access for the city’s over 230,000 small businesses,” said SBS Commissioner Gregg Bishop.

City officials said that among the various help services for small business that can be found through its SBS portal are a network of seven NYC Business Solutions centers across the five boroughs, which offer free business courses in multiple languages.

The centers feature instruction in marketing, social media strategies, e-commerce and website fundamentals to help small businesses better market themselves in today’s economy.