BY: Keith S. Shikowitz, Editor in Chief/Investigative Reporter
With the loss of business in the 9W corridor, businesses are trying everything they can to attract business in an attempt to make up for those losses. Mike Tracey is sending out coupons for free car washes through January 2026.
Last month Senator Bill Weber held a Roundtable discussion about the ongoing situation with the CHPE where more than 20 small business owners attended to air their grievances to Weber, Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt and Rockland County Executive Ed Day. Many ideas were discussed, and Senators Weber and Ortt filed a joint letter to Governor Hochul telling her what they feel she should do for these businesses.
Three business owners (from left to right in the videos are) Mike Tracey of Congers Auto Spa, Vinny Curran of Vinny’s Automotive and Frank Zaccaro of FZ Perfection Autobody Collision had more to say about the situation.
Tracey began this interview explaining what has been happening to his business because of the CHPE work?
“Well, for, for the last year, I would say, the car count coming into the car wash and the express salute has gone down dramatically. Our business is 80% return customers, 20% impulse which are new customers that drive by. We’ve effectively lost that 20% because we just don’t have people using this corridor to drive down. The other 80%, my customers call me and tell me I can’t get through because it takes me too long.”
He added that the business model for him is built on quality, convenience, price and value. But more than anything else, it’s about convenience, a 5-minute car wash, a 10 – minute oil change, so people do it before they go to work. “They do it at lunchtime, they do it on the way home. If they’re not using this corridor and they know it’s going to take 30 more minutes to get to me, guess what? They don’t come. They don’t have the time. As an example, I mean, my car count in the wash last October was 4200 cars. This October it was 1900. So that’s off more than 50%. 2300 lost cars.”
“In the express lube, we’re finding, depending on the month, 10 or 15% fewer cars coming through. That’s had a dramatic impact on the business. The other problem that I would note is one of the things is, people look on Google Maps to see what the best way to get to somewhere is. Google Maps has shown this corridor red or closed for basically the last 6 months, 6 days a week. That’s a problem because when it rains, they’re not even out here working, but it’s still closed on google maps. That’s, that’s presented a real problem for us.”
He said that his challenge will be how do they get customers who are in the habit of using this corridor coming to them on a regular basis. How do they get them to do that again? One way he is trying to do this is, next month, he’s actually sending out 30,000 free car wash coupons to the surrounding area just to get people excited to come in. He’s hoping the construction will start to ramp down and people will once again come back, and they’ll get a free car wash and maybe they’ll upgrade, maybe they’ll say, gee, this is the place to come for an oil change. He has to find a way to attract them to come back to this area.
Curran was in attendance at the roundtable. The question for him and Zaccaro, beginning with Curran is Since the round table, have things improved at all? His response was, No.
The next logical question is, Have they gotten worse? “Well, I would say that this bottomed out a while ago and it’s still on the bottom. See, what I find it affecting me is in three different areas. Number one is the routine loss of business, which is upwards of 30%. But also, when my guys go out on a road test, 10-minute road test, now it’s taken them 25 minutes to make that road test. That’s 10 road tests a day. That’s 150 non-productive minutes that I’m paying my guys for and I could be doing something more productive. The other thing I’m completely not happy with is that they came onto my property to put the new gas line in. The damage they did and their answer to it, they, sure, they dug the hole, they put the pipe in, they filled the hole, they blacked out the hole. But what they did is they damaged all the blacktop around it with their machines. I’ve got pictures to show you all the cleat marks in the blacktop around the trench. When I brought it to their attention, their answer to me was, ‘it’s all blacktop.’”
Curran’s response was, “But it’s all blacktop. That was in good shape until you guys came in.” He agreed that age of the blacktop has nothing to do with it. It’s not as if it already had cracks and pieces falling off.
From what, what he was saying is that he maintains his property, doing regular maintenance, on his blacktop and everything else to keep it so his customers don’t have a problem coming in and out. “Sure, especially come to, snowy and icy weather. He’s got to keep those areas as close to dry pothole free as possible.
“Listen, you know, we’ve been doing this for so long my normal maintenance schedule on our blacktop, parking and driving area like I said, in the wintertime, it’s snow plowing and it’s salt and sanding to keep the ice down. If a customer were to pull in with a vehicle that’s got a massive leak antifreeze or oil, we immediately go out there and put Speedy Dry down and the oil pads to absorb the oil just to keep it off the ground. The normal maintenance on the driveway it’s mostly black topping and stuff.”
He said this would cost him 10 – 15% of his revenue. This is on top of almost 30% each time, each month, month over month he is losing now.
Another thing he complained about was when this started with the gas main, they got no warning at all. “I attended the public hearing a year ago up in Stony Point that talked about the whole cable thing. They never mentioned them coming back a second time during the day. They said that they were going to do the cable at night, and they did do the cable at night. It really didn’t affect us because they were working when we were closed and they were gone when we were open. Then all of a sudden, 3rd week of June, on a Monday morning with this whole new crew showed up and just started tearing up the road.” Curran noted.
He added, “I wasn’t approached by anybody until it was time for them to come onto my property.”
Tracey continued, “Yeah, there’s been little or no communication. None whatsoever. I mean, it would be so simple for them to have somebody walk up and down the street if they don’t know who they need to talk to.”
They all agreed that even putting a letter in the mailbox. It’s simple. Send an e-mail, someone called the businesses, nothing and the whole idea of this, moving the gas main because they put the new power line too close to the old gas main, that’s a mistake and that somebody should be responsible for that. It shouldn’t be taken out on the businesses. The people that were responsible just completely ignored them.
I pointed out to them that I’ve spoken with other people, and they say it seems like these people just don’t care about the small businesses. Okay, we’re going to do what we’ve got to do and damn the torpedoes full steam ahead. If you go out of business, oh, well, not our problem. That’s what people have been saying to me.
“Absolutely”, Zaccaro agreed. These communities, our community, all these communities are built on small businesses. We have families that work for us. Employees that count on us. If we let them go or give them a week off they’ll find work someplace else and then we can’t get them back. We all pay sizable taxes.
What I’ve been told is that, once this is all finished, those, those lines they put in there will be massive amount of rateables for all the communities along the line. Which means there’ll be taxes coming in from them, major amounts of taxes to each municipality and the school district.
Frank, you were one of the most vocal people at the roundtable, outside of Rocky and Tom. You had actual pictures. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but you said about 8000 words in pictures you had that day. Tell me, what was business like prior to the beginning of all this?
“Listen, let’s be honest, it’s like we were just discussing before, we all have business plans, business models, and we try to grow every year and, and, and change with the times and do better. That’s the way of life and that’s the way of business. You have to have a business plan, and we all try to grow at least 10, maybe 15% every year in sales and just being the best in our trades. We were struck down during COVID, and it killed us. We didn’t work for probably 6 to 8 weeks, right? We were closed. We got PPE money; it took a year or two. It took a while. We didn’t get it right away. So, it really crippled us and hurt us.”
Frank continued, “So, you know, in my business, if I’m going to weld on your vehicle, I’ve got to disconnect the battery, wrap everything in fireproof blankets. They’re made of fiberglass, so we don’t burn anything else, and we do everything we could do so we don’t do any collateral damage. These guys could put down plywood in your parking lot to drive over. I’ve had work done on my house and they lay big sheets of plywood down in your yards and when they come in with the backhoe, they don’t leave ruts in your yard. It would just make sense, so they don’t have to cause another $5000 of landscape work. These guys could have laid plywood down in Vinnie’s parking lot, drove the excavator on that.”
He said they could have dropped it, cut it with a, a wet saw. Pointing out that they are handy people. They work with cars and their hands. They know how to do the job right.
“They didn’t do it right. They damaged my side. They damaged the corner of my building with the machinery. They could have put plywood up against the building. They could have put plywood around the side. It takes a couple of screws and a couple of sheets of plywood to take simple precautions. You know, that is very frustrating to see them damage stuff, then you call the police, they come. They take your information; they write a report and say they need to know the excavator or the foreman’s name on the job. You give them the name; you text all these guys. I’ve gotten their phone numbers. I’ve texted them telling them I need the excavator’s first and last name for the report. They refused saying I can’t give that to you. You have to contact Grace.” Zaccaro said.
They have to contact CHPE. Everyone’s always doing this, pointing the finger, passing the buck, yeah, they’re passing the buck, exactly. That’s frustrating. Another thing Frank wants to let people know is that they want to repair 12 cars a week which is not a big number. He has a 3000 square foot building and they’re doing maybe 2 cars a week. People would come in with a rattle, a noise and they need to go on a test drive. He explained that this is the same thing as Vinny that a normal 25-minute test drive, going around Rockland Lake, feel the bumps and shakes and stuff. it takes us 40 minutes sometimes to get back. It’s ridiculous.
“I had a customer bring me for a ride and we were sitting down by the Conger’s Auto Spa passed it, for probably about 20 minutes waiting to go by. I said, don’t worry, just do a U-turn. I’ll walk back. So, I walked, you know, two football fields back. Not a big deal. I didn’t want to inconvenience them anymore. So, yeah it’s frustrating.”
He had heard what he’s not sure is reliable information that they are going to be doing the water main next, so they’re telling me this project’s going to last another year, According to him there’s no end in sight for them. He thinks they might stop for the winter, fix the blacktop a little bit, just a Band-Aid over the blacktop, not make it perfect, just so the water runs off it and. Yeah, not a final fix. They’re just going to be coming back; they’re not going to do a full fix.
“They’re supposed to be digging it all back up again and that’s what’s frustrating too. How many spots have they dug, done something, then come back the next day, it’s sealed open, they got to cut it again and blacktop. I don’t know if they just keep making mistakes. I don’t know what they’re doing, but the process is not very big. It’s usually 10 or 12 guys in one little area working, and no one’s doing anything except maybe two guys. When I called Channel 12, everyone picked up a shovel, and everybody was working because they saw the camera on them. I said, maybe if you had this camera on them all day long, they’d get it done. I understand it has to be done. Let’s do it. Let’s get it done.” Frank added.
What is the percentage of his revenue has he lost? Zaccaro put his losses at 30%, which for any business regardless of their cash income is a big percentage of loss.
“First off, you got to, we’re doing car accidents. When they’re crashed if you have a $6000 bill, $3000 of its parts. Airbags are very expensive. Sonar sensors and great distance control radars. computer stuff and all this electronic stuff, all that stuff. If you have a $12,000 car accident, it could be $6000 to $7000 in parts.
There are infrastructure projects going on all over the county. Curran said, “Those projects might be there for 1 week, 2 weeks at most. This has been going on now since June.”
Frank stepped in, “I never anticipated it lasting this long.” Looking at Vinny, “Did you?”
“No. And like I said before, it was a complete surprise to us.”
The three of them focused on the act that they seemed to be spending a lot of time now in front of Congers Collision. They don’t know whether there’s a lot of problems. Noting that he (Jimmy owner of Congers Collision) is out there with a camera taking pictures. He’s personally overseeing what they’re doing. They’ve destroyed his property. They destroyed his drainage. He had video surveillance of them because he gave them a hard time about what they were going to do. They weren’t letting his tow trucks in and out of his yard and that’s another thing. God forbid what a car falls on one of my guys, God forbid, and his arm gets caught on the car and I called 911, they’re not going to be able to get into my parking lot and save this guy’s life. Think about it. There hasn’t been an incident like that. Thank God. But anyway, he has video surveillance. He has tons of cameras and then crushing pipes on purpose and burying them and stuff like that.
How long do you think that would take you to make up what you lost over those three years?
They all conceded that they don’t think they can make it up they’ll never make the money back. They’ll never make it up. You just survive.
Vinny said, “We’re, we’re behind the eight-ball compared to last year. But along with everything else, everything’s more expensive this year. Where does that play that, you know, it’s costing us more money this year to do business for less revenue?”
Frank pointed out another major problem he’s personally seen. And is sure Vinny’s probably seen too, is parts.
“A lot of our parts come from the northern part of the county, and they can’t get to us. and usually, we were able to call for small things, if you needed rotors, pads, something that they stock, they usually get it to you within 15 to 20 minutes. Now you’re getting it maybe once a day and they’ll say we’ll come at the end of the day or they wait till Vinny has an order, I have an order, and Congers has an order. They put it together and they’ll send it once a day because they don’t want their drivers sitting in traffic for a whole day. That means that our customers are waiting. They’re in rental cars longer. It’s killing our cycle time.”
Getting back to you Mike, outside of the obvious, what’s the biggest complaint you’ve been hearing from your customers?
“The biggest complaint is I don’t want to drive on this road in this condition. So, a lot of customers have complained in some areas they’ve picked up nails in their tires. They didn’t like driving over the steel plates.
That bothered a lot of customers and frankly, even if they only come in and get a $8 car wash, they don’t want to drive out on that dirty road and get the car dirty again. They’re not going to make that that simple $8 investment.
It’s not worth it for them. They just want to go back to the way it used to be, so convenient to, to come in no appointment, just show up and come in and, and leave, but they can’t do that anymore.”
What about his ability to get the supplies he needs? He has the same challenges that the others have. “If he’s ordering a lot of filters or other things from Auto Pro as an example, they used to come like in an hour, because it’s normally a big order. Now they’re getting back to 2 to 3 hours for a regular order. They (Frank and Vinny) couldn’t live with that though, because they’re typically ordering something while the car is waiting and they want to get it fixed and get it out.”
“My other suppliers, it’s sometimes it’s a hassle for them. On two occasions, I had a driver tell me I have to come back the next day to deliver some wash supplies or some other things. That’s okay. I can deal with that.”
Say this goes on another two years, he says he has the capability to store a lot of supplies, so he doesn’t have to worry about getting them. He says it is an option, but the drawback is that, even though the stuff doesn’t go bad,
it goes back to, if you triple, your order just to have the inventory. You’ve got to be able to pay for that. He keeps 30 days of inventory on hand which is at least $10,000 to $12,000 of inventory on a daily basis.
“That’s the nature of our business because when somebody shows up, it’s I need an air filter. I need a cabin filter. I need an oil filter. I need wipers. I can’t say to them, I’m going to order them. They came for a 15-minute oil change, and you have to have a variety of them there. You have to have supplies for a variety of different cars. You don’t know what kind of cars are coming in. We can tell by history. You still have to have variety of Honda, Ford, GM, Chrysler.
Curran explained, “He can carry a bigger inventory than we do, because we don’t know what we need until the car’s there. Sure, I’ve got some more filters and stuff like that also, but if I need a starter. The other day I needed 3 different starters for 3 different vehicles. Pushing the car in, checking it out, finding out who needs a starter, making the phone call, waiting for the starter to show up. The car’s stuck up in the air. You don’t want to push down, push it out and in again. That’s more time, nonproductive time. Now you’ve got a car sitting there that could be sitting in the lot while you’re working on another car.”
“But you don’t, know you need a starter until you can test start it underneath the vehicle. Normally you get one in 35 – 40 minutes tops, even quicker.
Zaccaro added that sometimes it’s faster, but now, you might, once a day get it, so now the car’s stuck there on the lift. There’s two main suppliers right on 9W. They’re not happy about their deliveries either.
How much, how much of your current return customer business do you think you’re going to lose because of this?
Well, mine is off probably about 15 or 20% already. Mike stated. Does he think he will lose that much even if this project’s done? “No, I think that many of the returning customers will eventually rediscover us again. But the problem is, you know, if it’s 80/20, so the 20% of impulse customers who are driving down to get a car wash, if I’m not able to convert enough of those to get to the 80, 85%, put them in that new bucket, that’ll be a problem for me long term. I think I need to somehow. Restore the traffic pattern on this roadway.
Vinny informed us that there’s no projected date as to when this is going to be over. 3 weeks ago, they told him 2 weeks. Mike said that there was actually something listed on Google, that he thought said November 30th and then that was changed and then it was changed to December. It’s a moving target.
There’s another thing to discuss also, Zaccaro interjected, not that I’m looking to retire and I don’t think anybody else is here is looking to retire, but say our businesses were for sale, and usually the value of your business is the last 3 years of profit that you made. Our business are, are being devalued right now.
Going on those numbers they are looking at, if they were to sell their business right now, getting only about two thirds of its value and they don’t even know since they say that’s all done on a formula.
According to Vinny, Frank’s point is that, if, for instance, I’m looking at, let’s say retire maybe over.
Let’s say retire maybe over the next 3 years. The prospective buyer would want to see my last 3 years’ records, which is gonna show a huge drop this year. And sure, you can blame it on the road, but you know, a, a buyer doesn’t want to hear that.
Frank compared selling a business to getting Social Security. “If you want to draw, Social Security, for the last 5 years you up your salary as much as you possibly could afford and you’re not paying into it as much. So you’re going to get less of a check when you retire. lots of unbearables here.”
Mike added that it’s a long-term economic impact.
Vinnie, what do you think your return customer loss will be if anything?
“So, it’s a projection. That’s all it is. One thing about my business and Frank’s business is it becomes a, a majority of it, not all of it, it’s a necessity. Your car ain’t running right, you’ll get it here, whether it be by tow truck or driving in, where Mike’s business is a whole different format. So, Frank’s still getting the crash cars. I’m still getting the cars that don’t run properly, but we’re not seeing the newer customers coming our way. One of the things I try to track is new customers on a monthly basis. This way I see how my marketing is doing and when you’re used to seeing 3 or 4 a week, which is 20 a month, and now you’re down to seeing 3 or 4 a month. You know, it makes a big difference, especially for the projection for the future. I’ve got to project on 3 or 4 a month now. Instead of a year.”
“One more thing,” Frank stated, “I’ve had two jobs, this happened to me over the, it’s only two jobs, but, I’ve had two jobs that were towed in from a subletted tow company. They’ve had to wait 20 minutes. When they wait for the police, sometimes they charge you a stall fee. They charged me a stall fee twice to get the cars to me for having to wait in traffic wait in traffic for 25 minutes. They charged me like 40 bucks each. Traffic did that.”
Now, going back to CHPE, Somewhere before the project started, they made projections on progress and stuff like that. Did they ever make any projections on what the inconvenience was going to be? Vinny queried.
From what I’ve been told, probably no. Everybody you know all the politicians, everybody’s saying that nobody said, that they didn’t really look at what the effect on the small businesses. Which is what I’ve been getting all up and down the corridor.
My next question is, why did CHPE make offers and gave the towns, and the school districts a bunch of money and leave the small businesses that are affected by this out of that. I can understand that if there was something to do with permits, but I understand they got large amounts of money to come through the town, and it ain’t affecting the municipalities at all.
Honestly, I don’t know. There’s probably a myriad of reasons, but what it seems to be is that, like I found out, I said, I heard from you guys and all the way up the corridor, that they just don’t seem to care about the small businesses. It’s damn the torpedoes full steam ahead. We have this job to do, and somebody gets hurt along the way, then it’s, oh, well. That’s what I’ve been getting from other people.
Vinny and Frank agreed with this assessment from the other businesses.
Mike Lawler came in. We had Bill Webber here and Senator Ortt here. Pat Carroll, I think, was in on a letter to Hochul, Senator Harckham’s office on the other end. I’ve been tried to get a hold of Harckham twice. I haven’t gotten a call back from them. I’m trying everybody, with the politicians. But what do you guys want to see the politicians, the local politicians, Ed Day, George Hoehmann, Bill Weber, Pat Carroll, Harckham up in, Stony Point and the village and town councils. How do, how, how do you want them to intervene here? What do you want to see them do to help you guys get what you, you know, get some relief?
Frank continued, “That’s what needs to be done. This needs to have a stop order put in place until they figure out how they’re going to, well, really, stop more damage from happening. We’re the backbones of these small businesses, of these small towns, so for the town to survive, yeah, I think it’s definitely right to have a stop order at this point would you say?”
“Well, That, if they’re as close to finishing as they say they are, stop work order ain’t going to stop them.
Let’s say you’re going to get a stop work order. You’ve still got the road damaged and messed up. Can a stop work order get people coming in.
We know half the road is messed up and have, they’ll drive slow over it, but when they can’t get through and it takes them half an hour to go a mile, that’s the problem. They’re going 10 MPH, they’ll go through it, and they’ll continue to go through it. It’s their best route to get to work or home or whatever. But when it’s not passable because they’re only letting three cars at a time or vice versa, you know, that’s the problem.” Frank explained.
Is there anything else you want to say to the politicians?
“We need help. All of it’s all the way up the road.
This project goes all the way from Stony Point down the 9W corridor to just north of Rockland Lake State Park.
I got to do some investigating, but the information I had that I, that I’ve heard, that this project was originally supposed to run right along the river and that some environmental group got some fish that needed to be protected. Then they said we’ll move it by the railroad tracks. Then CSX said, no, can do, because we’re putting more, another rail in. That’s how it ended up here.
What do you have to say to the people that allowed that to happen?
“Listen sturgeon, fish. It’s a breeding ground over there in the Stony Point Harbor; I guess we’ll call it running in the Hudson a prehistoric fish they were around from the dinosaurs. They survived. Since before the dinosaurs.
If you would have put the power line down the Hudson River, a couple of low tides, high tides, it would have been buried in the muck, and I think it would have been fine, but we’re not there anymore. We’re here. So we’ve got to figure out what, it’s too late.” Zaccaro said.
Curran stated, “So the environmentalists, if they had any idea, this is what it was going to do to all of us. When, when they made. The request or whatever, demand not to go through the Sturgeon property.”
My question is, do you think they really cared about you guys over?
Frank concluded this by stating, “No, I think it was a money-making thing. I think they were, it was, they were going to be able to charge more money, more overtime for these guys who have been, they’re from everywhere.
They’re from Tennessee, Georgia. They’re these guys working here, some of them are from here. Some of the foremen that work for Grace Industries are from Long Island and stuff like that, but the majority of the laborers are from out of state.”
This is a continuing story. The businesses are suffering from the loss of business and they have said they don’t see a way out of it without help from the state.