It has survived depressions, recessions, blackouts and rampaging Rangers fans — but now, after 82 years, a fight over Snapple bottles may force Lewis Cuomo’s little newsstand outside of Penn Station to close down.
“I’ve seen every part of New York from this little stand,” said Cuomo, 60, who took over the kiosk outside the Seventh Avenue entrance from his father, who took it over from his brother.
“Even though I love my family, if this place closed, I would die.”
Over the years, the Vietnam vet and father of six — who has worked at the stand since he was a child — has helped stop rapes and muggings near the two-part kiosk, which has a stand on each side of the station entrance.
He has sold papers to President Clinton, Willie Mays, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle and Roy Campanella. Mayor John Lindsay, he said, once watched the stand for him while he ran across the street to use the bathroom.
But Cuomo’s landlord, Two Penn Plaza owner Vornado Realty, has gone to Housing Court to have him evicted — even though he still has eight years left on his lease — because it says he has violated four “substantial obligations” in his lease.
One of the “violations,” Vornado charges in court papers, is that Cuomo has been selling bottles of water and Snapple iced tea at the newsstand .
The company said the lease allows him to sell only “cans of soda.”
Another violation, the company said, was an advertisement “in the premises, without the landlord’s consent.”
Cuomo’s lawyer, Jay Dankberg, said there was only one ad — a Lotto sign. And, the lawyer said, the lease allows Cuomo to sell Lotto tickets.
The third violation was a broom and hand truck in the back of the stand that were “visible … from the public sidewalk,” which the company said isn’t in keeping with “the high level of appearance” outside Penn Station.
The fourth violation, the company complained, is that Cuomo has failed “to open for business at 6:30 a.m. and remain open until 7 p.m. on business days” — even though one part of the stand is open 24 hours a day.
Cuomo said he rarely closes down completely. The last time he can remember doing so was in 1994, after the Rangers won the Stanley Cup.
“It was total chaos in the street. The crowd was louder and rowdier than any I’ve ever seen,” he recalled.
Dankberg said Vornado is apparently trying to clear stores from the area, and is “nit-picking” in order to get Cuomo to move. He said the company never even asked Cuomo to fix the “violations” — they just told him to leave.
“This is a classic case of a Goliath picking on a David,” he said.
Vornado, which pulled in $561 million last year, didn’t return calls. The company’s lawyer, Robert Syruli, refused to comment, other than to say, “We don’t litigate cases in the media.”
The Brooklyn-bred Cuomo says he’ll fight for his business because “it’s everything me and my family know. It’s all we’ve ever done.”
He estimated that between newspaper sales and directions to tourists, his two stands deal with 6,000 people a day.
Cuomo still goes to the kiosk at 2 or 3 in the morning, six days a week — even though wear and tear has forced him to have both his knees surgically repaired.
“I don’t want to give it up,” he said. “God willing, I’ll stay here as long as I can.”