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A stable environment

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

The move came after the horse drivers said they were dissatisfied with arrangements at their current stables on West 45th Street.
Building owners had told them that they may be forced to move because the area is to be developed.
Leitrim native Conor McHugh said the new purchase has permanently solved their problem of accommodating the horses.
“We just got together, went out and bought a building,” McHugh said. “We’d been looking around for a while. We were told last Christmas that we had to move. They say they want to develop this area.”
McHugh paid tribute to his colleagues who had decided that the only solution to the stable problem was to “act collectively.”
The new building is perfect, McHugh said: it is itself a former stable once owned by the city’s department of sanitation.
“The city gave us help,” continued McHugh, who refused to divulge the price of the building. “There were tax incentives, for example.”
Most important, McHugh said, was the vital ingredient for any real estate deal in New York City — a good lawyer. In this case, the group found an Irish-American lawyer from the firm Siller Wilk.
“We had Hugh Finnegan, a good lawyer, a good guy,” McHugh said. “He did the spadework for us. It’s very important to have a good lawyer.”
The three-story building at 618 West 52nd St. is only a block from the Hudson and there’s still old-style paving on the street — so locals will soon hear the evocative sound of hooves striking cobbles.
McHugh said that the building also meant more to him and his colleagues than just a solution to the accommodation problem.
Because it had been a stable before, they hoped to bring it back to its former glory, while making it a “state-of-the-art” facility for horses.
“It’ll be lovely one day,” McHugh said. “We’ll hopefully bring it back to what it was.”
Inspecting the building on Monday, McHugh pointed out a steel beam protruding from near the top of the building with a metal ring on it.
“That would have been used for hauling up hay bales to the third floor, where it was stored,” he said. “We hope to do the same thing.”
“We’re going to do some renovation and build a new ramp to take horses to the second floor. It should be ready to open in November.
“We hope to build box stables. It will be well-ventilated with a sprinkler system so the horses are well kept and safe.”
Initially, the stable will have capacity for 50 horses and later there will be room for 70. McHugh said that the premises will be open to other horse-and-carriage owners who weren’t in on the initial plan to buy the building.
“We don’t want people to be out of business because they can’t find stable space at night,” McHugh said.
The horses and carriages are a familiar sight on Central Park South, where the drivers hustle for business from a steady stream of tourists.
But business isn’t always certain. It pretty much collapsed after Sept. 11 along with the tourist industry in New York. This summer has been fair, McHugh said. There was more rain than usual but also it wasn’t too hot.
However, the new stable has given McHugh and his colleagues a new project to concentrate on.
From the building could be heard the sound of an electric cutter.
“There’s two guys in there already,” McHugh said, grinning. “They’re putting up Sheetrock to fire-proof the building.
“It was built in 1920,” he continued. “Quite late for a stable.” He added that later, during the Depression, horses had a slight revival. “I think because people might not have been able to afford vehicles as much,” he said.
Once finished, the 30,000-square-foot stable will be inspected by the city’s departments of health and buildings.
McHugh said the new stable owners would plan a formal opening in the new year.

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