Petition Underway to Bring Kosher Restaurant to Former Noah’s Ark Space on Grand Street
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Noah’s Ark Deli closed after the 2013 high holidays
While the telltale tombstone continues to sit pretty inside the window of the former Noah’s Ark Deli on Grand Street, the religious locals most affected by the closure of the Kosher (meat) restaurant are getting restless. If not downright hungry.
So a group of Seward Park residents have created an online petition to ameliorate the dietary quandary. And they’ve already amassed close to nine hundred endorsements (the goal is a thousand). It reads:
As residents of Seward Park and the Lower East Side, we urge the Board of Directors to bring in a Kosher restaurant as a commercial tenant of the Seward Park Co-op. A Kosher meat restaurant is vitally important to observant Jewish communities such as this one since it serves as a place for community to gather and socialize around food, and also acts as a cultural center that needs our support to continue to thrive in a growing neighborhood. A Kosher restaurant will dramatically improve the quality of life for Kosher observing residents, but will also draw patrons from the many diverse populations of the Lower East Side.
Further, there are many elderly Seward Park residents who are unable to walk a long distance, having a kosher restaurant will enable them to have a fresh meal every day.
Diversity is an important part of why we love the Lower East Side and we encourage the board of Seward Park to help maintain culinary diversity in the neighborhood by bringing a new Kosher restaurant to Seward Park Co-op.
Thank you.
The Seward Park Co-op – situated on the Lower East Side for 54 years – owns this strip of one-story retail on Grand. Its board will reportedly make a decision on what to bring here next Tuesday. Apparently they’ve been fielding applicants from the realms of both Kosher and traif.
Noah’s Ark had been a fixture on Grand Street since 2003, and was considered the last full service kosher deli on the Lower Easy Side. It closed for the Jewish high holidays last fall, never to reopen. There were promises from employees that it would return, but that was just lip service. Ultimately a deadly cocktail of waning business, poor service, and unpaid rent did them in.
Do you think a Kosher meat restaurant in this spot is warranted?
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