It’s the last stop for this East Harlem business.
A construction supply firm will be forced to shutter after more than three decades as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority moves to seize its property to make way for the long-awaited Second Avenue Subway expansion.
Lu Nicaj, owner of Tile Stone, told The Post he’ll have to close up shop because the MTA is commandeering the business’ lot at 2244 Second Avenue under eminent domain.
“I’m getting a raw deal,” Nicaj, 59, said. “They are pretty much running me into the ground. I’m closing the door. That’s the end of my business.”
MTA board members this week approved a $1.9 billion contract for the Second Avenue subway’s phase two — which involves a blitz of legal seizures to clear the way for planned new subway stations at 116th and 125th streets.
The properties are largely along Second Avenue and 125th Street, and include 33 apartments, officials said.
Tile Stone’s storefront at 2250 Second Avenue — which had a “Liquidation Sale” sign up Tuesday — is too small to hold his contracting inventory, so Nicaj had been renting a nearby vacant lot from the same landlord to keep the building supplies.
While the storefront is not on the eminent domain list Nicaj said he’ll nonetheless be seriously affected because that lot at 2244 Second Avenue is up to be seized by the MTA.
“I can’t stay in business. I’ve been here for 32 years,” said Nicaj, adding that he has already shifted 75% of his inventory to a warehouse upstate.
“That puts me out of business pretty much,” he said. “When contractors come to buy instead of saying, ‘Come back in a few days,’ I have the stock right here. My store is small, that’s why I lease the lot. It’s like a warehouse.”
The dozens of New Yorkers who’ll be displaced by the project will receive help from the MTA, which spent $10 million on relocations for similar eminent domain actions during the subway extension’s first phase, officials have said.
Nicaj said he met with the MTA and told officials that relocating his makeshift warehouse elsewhere won’t work.
“We are going to have another meeting to see what’s the next thing they can do. I’m looking for some kind of compensation,” he said. “I’ve told my lawyer to be prepared to go to battle with MTA.”
Nicaj is also not hopeful that he can find affordable rent anywhere else, especially below East 106th Street.
“I can’t have my store here and my warehouse 10 blocks away,” he said.
MTA officials didn’t return a request for comment.
— Additional reporting by Haley Brown
