
Moving day (eventually) for Morgan Manhattan
Well, change, anyway, which is inevitable. Morgan Manhattan Movers wants to convert its warehouse across from the bottom of Greenwich Avenue next to the RR tracks to residential and retail use. With the disclosure that I know the owner, Jeff Morgan, and represented him as a lawyer a couple of decades ago when he bought his home on Gilliam Lane (Cobra, Jeff and his family bought the Fuller’s – Ryan’s house), I think the project makes sense.
At the foot of Greenwich Avenue near the intersection with Steamboat Road, the space, Morgan said, can be put to better use than stowing moving vans.
The decision to move the moving company’s operations and develop the property for more commercial purposes had been in the works for nearly a decade, and its roots extended well beyond Morgan’s own lifetime. One of his family’s company’s original warehouses was on West 47th Street in what is now midtown Manhattan. When it was first built, sheep grazed on the other side of the street.
“That warehouse became, ultimately, not the highest and best use for the property,” said Morgan. “Eventually, my great-grandfather sold it in the ’20s to a developer who was building a hotel. That hotel is still there today.
“Our business is a 163 years old, this has happened to us many times over the years.”
Like the Manhattan warehouse, the proposed Bruce Park Avenue project is a product of a changing neighborhood and the new economic opportunities that came with it.
“For quite some time, I’ve been getting phone calls saying that building shouldn’t be a warehouse anymore,” said Morgan. “Over the last 10 years some have (suggested the property’s use as) an office, some have even said car dealership. There have been any number of different suggestions, including, of course, retail.”
The proposed building would house up to four retailers, said Morgan, with three taking up the second floor, where the majority of the floor space is located. A smaller retail space of about 1,000 square feet would be on the first floor.
Storing sofas and refrigerators and parking moving vans in prime retail/residential space really doesn’t make sense, for the property owner or even the town. And the additional 104 parking spaces proposed would help ease the shortage of that amenity down there. I’m sure this will take three years of squawking to get through our zoning process; everything does, these days, but eventually, the warehouse will, or should, go.