It feels like the pace of neighborhood change on the Lower East Side is always accelerating, with new businesses opening and closing every month. But this one hurts more than most. In recent days, loyal customers of Shan Fu Grocery (A&N Fruit Store) at 23 Canal St. have been saying their goodbyes. The grocery, better known to most of us as, “the snowman fruit stand,” will close at the beginning of October, following the sale earlier this year of the property for $7 million. Many of the businesses in the building are being displaced.
Dong Wang and Helen Chen opened the business in December of 2010, taking over a corner location at Canal and Essex streets, a decade before anyone had heard of “Dimes Square.” Dong’s broad smile and friendly demeanor, as well as the grocery’s freshly made watermelon juices and slushies built a devoted clientele. That first winter in business, after a big snow storm, they decided to build a huge snowman in front of the store. We all loved it (The Lo-Down covered the Essex Street Snowman like breaking news)! Year after year, the snowman reappeared, brightening those cold winter days, seemingly speaking a language everyone who passed by the store could understand. It reflected Dong and Helen’s generous spirit and earnest desire to welcome the entire Lower East Side and Chinatown community.
Behind every local business, there’s a personal history, and in 2012 Johnathan Zalman, writing in The Lo-Down, told part of Dong and Helen’s story, which stretches from the Fujian Province in China to the Lower East Side. Dong first arrived in New York in 1993, but returned to China in 2003, following a long distance courtship with Helen. They married, had two children, but Helen and the kids could not come to the U.S. right away. Finally, the family was reunited in 2008 and a couple of years later, Dong and Helen decided to open their own business, Shan Fu Grocery, in a spot that Dong’s brother had been operating a bubble tea shop. You can read the whole story here.
The building — owned by the Blumenthal family since the 1970s — changed hands in February. The new owner is identified in public records only as, “TTC Investments VII LLC,” with the mailing addressed listed at the offices of Building Equity Management, a property management firm with more than 125 addresses in its portfolio across the city. Shan Fu Grocery, Vida Signs and The Hunt, a jewelry and apparel store will all be vacating the commercial spaces in the property within the next month. On August 14, The Hunt posted on Instagram, “Our lease is up, and unfortunately new landlords have asked us (along with several of our neighbors) to leave by October 1st. It’s the end of an era, but not the end of The Hunt.”
As these businesses prepare to shut down on Canal Street, more changes are ahead in the immediate area. Back in 2024, DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners (the former owner of the Nine Orchard Hotel) sold 3-5 Essex St., right next door to 23 Canal, for $5.3 million to a corporate entity identified as, “Paint Store LLC.”
3 Essex St. is the former home of M. Schames & Son paint store, which was forced to relocate to Delancey Street back in 2010. The tenement, parts of which date to the early 1800s, was de-stabilized from the demolition of the neighboring property. The city’s Department of Buildings recently approved the demolition of 3 Essex St. The 5 Essex site has remained empty all of these years, although DLJ Real Estate allowed it to be used for an open air cactus store. Incidentally, Building Equity Management is also listed in city records as the point of contact for 3-5 Essex St.
The other day, Adlan Jackson at Hell Gate spoke with Dong Wang and Helen Chen. They said they’re planning to move from their apartment in Chinatown to a home they own on Staten Island. We’ve all seen how hard they worked over the years, and hope they are able to enjoy some rest and relaxation. Helen, noting that they’d always lived in Chinatown since moving to the U.S., said they would miss the neighborhood. We’ll miss Dong and Helen, too.
