A longtime Harlem entrepreneur has a message for the city: Hands off my business!
Carmie Elmore, 67, and a partner took over the gas station at the corner of 110th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard in 1981, when shootings, robberies and drugs ruled the neighborhood.
Now that Harlem is blooming, the city has put developers on notice, asking for ideas to build on the property — even though the city hasn’t owned it for years.
The city’s power play would put more than 20 people out of work.
“They didn’t want it when it was in such terrible disarray over there, and now that things are good, they want to take it and do something different with it,” Elmore told The Post. “I understand what they want, but I know it’s not right, and I know it’s not fair, and that’s why we’re fighting it.”
The owners argue in a Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit filed last week that the city has no right to the property, and are asking a judge to declare them the sole owners.
Elmore, who now runs the business with the sons of his original partner after the latter died in a boating accident, bought the property under a community-renewal plan that gave the city the right to repurchase the plot.
But that right expired in 2008, Elmore said, a point the city has ignored.
The city’s Economic Development Corporation began seeking ideas for the property in June, looking for a mix of retail and residential development.
“They just pretended it was still in effect,” Elmore said of the repurchase agreement. “I’ll fight them to the end.”
A Law Department spokeswoman said the city “strongly disputes” Elmore’s claims, and that the city is reviewing the court papers.The gas station is one of the few left in Manhattan.The business includes a car repair shop, a convenience store, and employs 21 people.
Elmore and his co-owner operated on a month-to-month lease for 15 years before buying the property and spending more than $1 million on improvements.
When they started, “the amount of robberies and terrible things — shootings on the corner, and drugs galore on 111th Street — was just horrific, and today it’s just a normal atmosphere,” Elmore said. “There are no major problems, a lot of new neighbors have moved in, a lot of new buildings have sprung up.
“It’s night-and-day. It is absolutely night-and-day . . . We made the decision to come here when no one else wanted it, and we’ve been there for a little over 30 years, and we want to stay.”