Neeta took over Capricorn Florist from a previous owner and kept her shop alive on the quiet side of Jamaica Avenue and 214th Place for 6 years before closing the storefront this January, seemingly for good. The market for quality arranged floral arrangements has significantly gone down with the advent of cheaper floral services online and over the phone.

However what consumers don’t understand is that Neeta is a woman who owns a business and needs to make money off of it. She has to pay a rent, pay herself and anyone who helps. Because business has been so slow she has single-handedly been running the business for the last few years, only hiring help around the big flower holidays. She closed the front of the shop after years trying to keep it open.

The spot in Queens Village is on a street where the number of cars passing on a regular day, do not match the number that may zoom by on the loud side of Jamaica Avenue. For this reason, she closed the storefront. That day I got an interview with a small business owner who owned a dress shop also on the Avenue just a couple blocks down and heard a similar story to what Neeta would say.

For Neeta her business gets taken away here and there from all the new ways to order flowers and the old fashion ways too, the fruit cart merchants and the bodega vendors that sell them on the corner or along the side of their store. People see prices, not value. Neeta would sell a dozen roses for $40 in the winter when that was what one would expect and still not get anyone in her area to bite.

Maybe some of her struggling has to do with the business but Neeta is adamant on not deserting it. She’s liked floral arranging since she was a young girl. This is something she wanted to do. When the business was drowning, Neeta says that some, even her husband, told her to sell, get out now and then figure out what else to do. She may have closed the shop but her business still runs.

Her online business never stopped and her loyal customers from the area still call her to get their pieces done. It is not over. Capricorn Florist is conducted in Neeta’s home now that the storefront closed.

It’s not just a flower shop but a place to get balloons along with rental items for big parties like chairs and benches; Capricorn does cakes too! Neeta’s had to dip her feet in just about every special event medium of party planning to stay alive. She tells me that one of her most recent floral pieces was a custom-made piano made for a pianist’s  funeral. The woman does it ALL and ALL by herself.

Neeta tells me that the big flower holiday Valentine’s Day she opened the shop to handle with the influx of customers and hired some helping hands, but what should be a chance for moneymaking and possibly making a profit went to paying the bills and “breaking even”. Getting help means paying for it and how can you pay for help when you can just barely pay yourself? That’s why she’s gone without help, working from her home.

It could be that no one desperately needs a florist anymore, but it could also be the area. Neeta explains that her clientele when she was open was usually Caribbean. West Indian, Haitian, and some South American. They were good customers, but they were not about spending a lot of money on flowers. That’s why other shops like hers in the general area have also gone out of business. She knows who they are and has kept in touch. A friend she has who’s a florist in Cambria Heights seems to be running just fine and she sells a dozen roses for $75. Something doesn’t add up unless you blame the area.

Neeta is quite sure that she’ll reopen a storefront again someplace else when she finds a place inexpensive enough. She doesn’t plan to leave Queens Village which is the place she calls home and raises her son. The prices right now aren’t looking too good. Small store rentals sound ridiculous even to me, a realty novice, but even if she doesn’t reopen a physical store for a bit, she still has a business and is working from home.

Since 2002, the country of origin for immigrants arriving into this area of Queens Village has been Guyana. Less than ten years before that, in 1994, Guyana was still the country the most newly arrived immigrants came from followed closely by other Caribbean countries such as the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Trinidad. The Caribbean countries are well-represented in the population.

So what happened to all the white population in the span of 50 years? Of course, Queens is one of the most diverse places in the world so groups will move in and others will be displaced, but how does the majority slink into the background? The number of white Queens Village residents in the 2010 Census has gone down by something like 12%. Most have moved farther east into Long Island where there the majority of white population is still greater. Seeing Queens Village’s placement on a map, it is not too hard to believe that they would have naturally moved into the adjacent areas of Bellerose, Floral Park and Nassau County in general. An overwhelming majority 50.3% of the population identified as black/African American in the 2010 census.

The number of people in the area between 2000 and 2010 have actually decreased showing that either people have stopped moving in or that people have been moving out. The number of Asians have gone up as groups from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka move in. Of Latin American groups the rate of Hondurans, Paraguayans and Venezuelans have increased in the same ten-year span.

The 2010 Census claims that there were 19,218 people living within the Queens Village zip code 11428 and the greatest number of people at the time fell into the 50-52 age range with 20-24 and 45-49 year olds coming in at a tie in second. This as well does not come as a surprise to me as walking around the area you see that it is not thriving on new businesses but are actually run by people who have owned businesses for many years or have long-term plan with their store.

If they are lucky enough to stay open, they will pass the business on. The majority of the people I saw on the visit I made into the area were older. Also interesting for the area is that in comparison to New York City numbers, the number owner-occupied housing units is much greater. Over 65% own while the other 33% rent, which is actually the reverse of the NYC status quo. This may show the extent to which owning is more practical in the area and also that people who live in the area plan on staying in the area. The demographics change as the rate of people owning homes is higher for those over the age of 65.

Since the middle of the 20th century the area has changed dramatically. The story of Queens Village is the story of a busy city like New York. Nothing is stagnant. As quiet as the street may seem, under the surface it is bubbling with activity. Things are slowly changing from the ages of the people to the socio-economic status of the people to the races of people. There will likely be another shift as the area slowly will become more Asian in the next coming years. Businesses are hard to stay afloat because the population shift has been tossed in every direction and soon the only thing Queens Village and Jamaica Avenue can be sure of will be food! The florist site was built in 1936 and changed every twenty years since then. Who can tell where exactly it’s headed but it shows no intention of slowing down.

References:

“Total Population of White Persons, 1980.” Map. Social Explorer. Social Explorer, n.d. Web. May 27 05:18:33 EST 2010.

“Persons: White, 1990.” Map. Social Explorer. Social Explorer, n.d. Web. May 27 06:17:00 EST 2010.

“Whites, 1970.” Map. Social Explorer. Social Explorer, n.d. Web. May 27 05:37:50 EST 2010.

Tirado, Joelle. “Capricorn Florist Is Still OPEN.” Wednesday Afternoon Seminar II. WordPress, 2 Apr. 2016. Web. 20 May 2016.

Tirado, Joelle. “Looking Forward, Looking Back: Queens Village.” Wednesday Afternoon Seminar II. WordPress, 4 May 2016. Web. 27 May 2016.

http://nycma.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet : dof_4_10605_0027 , dof_4_10605_0024

“Queens Village 1940s Map” Copyright 1943 Maps © City of N. Y.