Future of Scobee Diner Remains in Limbo

Scobee Diner , leaving the once bustling restaurant dark, quiet and increasingly sad to behold. But beneath its cobweb-layered exterior, a complicated division of property ownership may be preventing a new tenant from moving in.

Bob Greenberg, a lawyer whose family owns the bulk of the diner's parking lot (which, yes, is owned separately from the building) said that though the property has generated a lot of interest, the prospect of purchasing the former Scobee building—in addition to paying rent on the parking lot—has thus far deterred fruitful negotiations. 

“My feeling is that they haven’t been able to make the numbers work right now,” he said of the property's prospective new tenants. “We’ve met with at least a dozen people who’ve claimed that they were serious, and I guess they crunched their numbers at some point in time, and we never heard from them again.”

Greenberg said that though he understands the desire of potential buyers to want to own the lot adjacent to the building, he and his family remain staunch in their unwillingness to part with it.

For one, he said, selling the lot would go against the "philosophy" of property ownership that the Greenberg's embrace. Add the loss of income stream and burden of high taxes, and you have the reason they are uninterested in selling.

Though Greenberg acknowledges that many people are indeed discouraged by his family's refusal to sell the parking lot,  he said the bigger issue may be the asking price for the Scobee building itself.

Greenberg said that last he heard, Scobee’s lawyers wanted $3.7 million for the building, a figure he recognized sounds unrealistic in the current economic climate.

"Personally, as a real estate expert, I don’t believe that that is viable," he said. "If someone were to buy it for that price, and then parking from us, they won’t be able to make enough—whatever their business is—to pay that kind of money.”

Michael Nicholson, the attorney representing the Scobee building's multiple owners, declined to comment on the current asking price. Unlike Greenberg, he said that negotiations were coming along nicely, and that there was nothing abnormal about the restaurant sitting vacant for the past six months.

"We're doing fine so far," Nicholson said. "There’s a lot of interest, and that makes us feel good. We have the opportunity to review all of them and deal with most promising."

Nicholson said that for now, the details of the negotiation were to remain between the "buyer and the seller," disclosing no information regarding the identity of the next business.

"I don’t want this thing to become a public football," he said.

Greenberg, however, knows nothing of any such negotiations, though he did note that he and his family would be willing to cut the rent on the parking lot significantly for the right tenant. 

"If the diner property people could lower their price, we could lower our rent, perhaps we can get someone who will rescue both parties from what is a disaster," he said.

Ideally, Greenberg said he'd have liked to see another diner take over the property, but realizes now that the likelihood of such a thing is slim. He has heard rumors that a bank may be moving in, but has seen no action to corroborate them.

Like many in the community, Greenberg wishes that Scobee hadn't vacated at all. He said that though he lowered the rent on the parking lot from $17000 per month to $13000, he would have been willing to do more to save the famous Little Neck institution.

"In retrospect, had I known that they were that serious about leaving, we would have probably worked even harder to bring the rent down even further," he said. "But it’s too late now.”