VILLAGE OF LEWISTON: Business not sweet for chocolate house

Communities

July 21, 2008

Owners want side business moved elsewhere

By Dan Miner<br><a href="mailto:minerd@gnnewspaper.com">E-mail Dan</a> The Niagara Gazette Mon Jul 21, 2008, 09:21 PM EDT

Business isn’t booming for all the establishments along Center Street.

The two owners of the Little Yellow Chocolate House showed up to the Village of Lewiston Board of Trustees meeting Monday with a couple requests they say will make it easier for them to do business.

Business partners Jonathon Boas and Cathy Yolevsky opened the business in January, selling chocolate, ice cream and other treats to eat on the go.

The village reduced the monthly rent at the site — which the village owns — about a week ago, from $850 to $750, after Boas and Yolevsky discovered they were paying a higher rate than other comparable local businesses.

In return, the village sent the couple a letter with a number of requests, including removing a picnic table in front of the business and to stop the practice of playing music on a stereo out front, Boas said.

Those requests especially have hurt business, he said.

“There’s no visibility out front and business has really dropped off,” he said.

Boas and Yolevsky complied but in return asked that the village remove the Visitors Center, currently located at the site, somewhere else. The couple has been maintaining the center but have run into difficulty running it, especially because, as out-of-towners, they lack the necessary local knowledge, Boas said.

They also asked for a formal lease of the property, since the current agreement has never been set out in writing.

Village Mayor Richard Soluri said he thought the Visitors Center would have helped business but acknowledged the two sides did not agree on that. The village had been waiting until they could complete transferring the Little Blue House across Center Street and into Academy Park to put the center there. Now, they will find somewhere else in the interim, Soluri said.

He also said they would get together and formalize the lease soon.

The Little Yellow House had been host to the Lower Niagara River Region Chamber of Commerce, which moved to a converted house on N. Third Street because of the need for more space.

In other village news:

n Trustee Terry Collesano voiced concerns over the 42-acre plot of land the village acquired recently from the New York Power Authority.

Before the land was acquired in the late 1950s by the power authority to dump excavated rock during the construction of the Niagara Power Project, Collesano said he personally witnessed trucks from Stouffer Chemical pour a yellowish substance that smelled like sulfur onto the dumping grounds at the site that were later covered by the excavated rock.

Collesano expressed concern about wording in the deed, which absolves the state and power authority from any responsibility at the site and that if the material is hazardous, the only place for it to go under thousands of tons of rock is toward the Niagara River.

Soluri said the village will check with the power authority for any tests that might have been done at the site.

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