Dear Lost City Bloggers,
I just read your post on your famous blog..I appreciated a lot ...so let me answer to you about our story (a kind of romantic story)...
One years ago we visited 259 Bleecker St with some brokers unknowing that was the famous Zito Bakery. We weren't interested in this location: expensive and totally to rebuild. Sometime later we read/eard the Zito's Story and we decided to take over that location. We felt in love with it, definitely!
We worked so hard to renovate Zito.. It has been a great challenge, so much work inside, because the venue was completely wrecked inside. We did it all only cause of the love for Zito, the story of the neighbors about it, the support and the motivation that we received from people of the Village and our friends that live/work on Bleecker (we received also the congrats from Zito's Family)
Now we are almost done...We hope to open as soon as possible because we spent such as one year with contractors, plumbers, building department, health department, landmark commission...delays and delays...scheduling and rescheduling..
Looking back over the archives, it seems that every year around this time I check in on the old Zito Bakery space on Bleecker Street in the Village. And every year I find it in a more advanced state of degradation than the year before.
This is absolutely the worst state in which I've seen the former neighborhood landmark. The door and windows are completely covered with graffiti, stickers and tape. And the transom window above the door is completely gone, allowing any vandal to climb inside should they wish. Whoever's in charge of the maintenance of this storefront (anyone?) should be ashamed of themselves.
The legendary Bleecker Street bakery A. Zito & Sons, which has had a sad, sad, sad afterlife since it closed its doors for good, continues to suffer the indignities of being a battered, empty shell of its former self. There's been a slight improvement, though. The nasty plywood in the front window has been replaced with a large "I Heart New York" poster. (At least I think that's what it is. The heart looks like it's erupting.)
But I ask you: is treating the former home of Zito in this manner the right way to say you love New York?
I don't know when this happened or why, but it's certainly no way to treat what was once sacred ground in Greenwich Village.
The legendary Bleecker Street bakery A. Zito & Sons, which closed in 2004, has stood sadly vacant for the past three years. A sign in the window enticing new tenants had no effect. But now that sign is gone. And so is the window. Somebody or something rendered the pane of glass into a pile of shards, and the window has been covered with plywood, while the remaining surfaces of the narrow storefront have been defaced with graffiti.
The last time I checked on Zito, I was told that the lease to Zito had been sold to a small company which was shortly thereafter gobbled up by a bigger company. The bigger company has since proved "difficult" and sits on its hands and matters have come to a standstill.
Can no one save this address from these indignities.
It was hard enough when the glorious Bleeker Street bakery A. Zito & Sons closed in 2004. But somehow it's a little harder to walk by it every time I'm in the Village and see it still standing vacant, its fine little storefront put to no good use. It just sits there, a painful reminder of what was and what's lost.
Tired of looking at the "For Lease" sign in the window, I called the number listed to ask what was going on. The quite nice and cooperative man on the other end of the phone said the lease to Zito had been sold to a small company which was shortly thereafter gobbled up by a bigger company. The bigger company has since proved "difficult" and sits on its hands and matters have come to a standstill. The real estate company listed on the sign has no control over the situation now, the man said. He knows the empty space bothers locals and he fields calls about it fairly often.
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