Pauget sits with some of his regular customers on a recent afternoon.

In bidding adieu, bakery becomes cause célèbre

By Sheila McClear

It’s 2:30 p.m., and everyone’s here. Marguerite, Barbara, Jimmy, Betty, Henry, John—Les Desirs Patisserie’s afternoon crowd.

The modest mom-and-pop bakery, in business on Ninth Ave. between 24th and 25th Sts. for nearly 11 years, is more than just a coffee-and-pastry place—it’s become a de-facto community center for neighborhood residents. 

“There’s always been a bakery here,” said long-time Chelsea resident John Morrison. Indeed, a bakery of some sort has been in this space since 1962. Before Les Desirs, it was Dino’s, and Cake Masters before that. 

Les Desirs is frequented by many residents of the nearby Penn South co-op, the large, limited-equity apartment complex and naturally occurring retirement community, as well as the London Terrace complex just a few blocks away. They love it because it’s affordable and, with its communal seating style, welcoming to regulars who want to linger over a cup and catch up with friends and acquaintances.  

“For many older people, this place may be the only reason they leave the house,” said Stacy Torres, 29, a lifelong Penn South tenant who’s been a bakery regular for the past five years. She’s helped round up community support since Jean Pauget, the bakery’s owner, was denied a new lease and given until the end of October—February if he’s lucky—to leave.  

The Penn South complex owns the property housing the bakery and also acts as the landlord for the half-dozen or so adjoining retail spaces on the stretch. In a notice distributed to all of the co-op’s residents Oct. 1, management wrote, in part: 

“Because Mr. Pauget had indicated to the General Manager that he was planning to retire in the next couple of years, he was allowed to remain in the space on a month-to-month basis until a suitable tenant could be found to take over the location. We found such a potential tenant recently in the Sullivan Street Bakery.”

The notice stressed that it was important to find retail tenants that would pay market-rate rents, “as that income is a vital factor in subsidizing the maintenance charges paid by our shareholders, and in offsetting the need for maintenance increases.” 

However, Pauget claimed that the notice was largely inaccurate. He had already refused to sign an agreement to surrender his store because he had never been given an answer regarding board approval for his request for a new lease. 

“In February we had a meeting, one month before my lease expired,” he said. “[Management] said, we’re not going to do anything bad to you, and what would you like?” He asked for a five-year lease with another five-year option, as well as one year without a rent increase. (He said he has paid 7-percent rent increases every two years.) 

“This they did not have any problem with,” Pauget explained, so it went before the board for approval. But Pauget never heard anything back, and he was placed on a month-to-month lease while waiting for a response. 

“One day one of my clients brings me a memo of the meeting minutes—it says [there will be] some other bakery for my place,” said Pauget, who speaks with a thick French accent. “And I never got any answer!”

In late September, a letter was given to the bakery’s cashier—Pauget was out making deliveries—with the date he had to leave highlighted in yellow. So he photocopied it and placed it under the glass of each table for all to see. “If they want public, let’s make public!” he said, noting that the letter had not been put in an envelope. “If they had put the letter in the envelope, maybe I would have given it to my lawyer.” 

As for the flood of community support, “the rest, [the customers] did for me,” Pauget added. “The only thing I did was put the letter on the table.” 

Regarding the retirement talk, which led Penn South management to begin pursuing another tenant, Pauget maintained it had only been speculative.

“I’m 62 years old, of course I will talk about retiring every once in a while,” he said.

Still, Pauget said he had been pursuing a new, five-year lease when he learned by accident that his new lease had not been approved—and the space had been signed over to a new bakery, the more upscale Sullivan Street Bakery. 

“The community aspect of this is, I think, is being overstated,” said Brendan Keany, Penn South’s general manager, of the customer cries that have ensued since the issue became public. “I frequent the location myself. I see somewhere between two or four—never more than six—people drinking coffee there in the afternoon. I think that there’s a lot of misinformation floating around about how viable this place is both financially and otherwise.” 

The regulars, however, beg to differ. Marguerite lives in London Terrace and comes in every day. “There aren’t many places left like this,” she said, looking out the window and stroking her coffee cup. “I imagine they must have a lot of places like this in Europe.” Recently retired, “I was a young woman when I moved in here,” Marguerite noted.

Betty Carroll, 81, went to high school at P.S. 33 across the street from the bakery, and Henry comes in all the way from Brooklyn to visit Les Desirs. “This is a warm place. I come here to see the people I care about,” Henry said, affectionately patting Barbara Steele’s leg. (They’re engaged.) He has adopted the bakery as his own: “If they take it away, they have nothing left for the community.” 

“We share our grief, too, like when somebody dies,” added Steele, 60. A widow, she was born in the neighborhood and came back to New York about three years ago after two decades in North Carolina. To her surprise, many of the people she grew up with were frequenting Les Desirs. “One day I decided to come in here, and my whole world changed. It’s the fellowship. I don’t even want to think about it closing.” 

But the bottom line, according to Keany, is that Pauget didn’t have a sound business plan, wasn’t clear about his retirement, and failed to produce a suitable replacement tenant to buy him out.

“The person had no track record, didn’t have a bakery before and didn’t have the financial wherewithal to run a functioning business,” Keany said of Pauget’s proposed buyer. “[Pauget] also expressed to me several times that he intended to retire. That’s what he had led us to believe before now.”

On the issue of his financial viability, Pauget explained that wholesale orders from hotels and places like the Yale Club comprise 35 percent of his business, enabling him to pay his employees and keep them busy.

Keany disagrees, claiming that after much of that wholesale business had been lost, “his income had significantly diminished.”

Although the move to bring in Sullivan Street Bakery came as a surprise to Pauget, it was not entirely unexpected. Around 2002, he explained, Sullivan Street Bakery approached him and asked him if he was selling the business, “and I said, ‘Non.’”

Sullivan Street Bakery, which has another location in Hell’s Kitchen, is owned by outspoken restaurateur/chef Jim Lahey—who also owns the buzzed-about pizza joint Co. next door to Les Desirs. Now, with his bakery moving in, Lahey will have two of his eateries on the same block.

The Les Desirs gang said they won’t patronize the new bakery, but not simply out of loyalty to the patisserie. The decision is partly financial, as many are living on fixed incomes, paying stabilized or controlled rents, or are not part of the more recent—and affluent—generation of Chelsea residents. 

Keany countered that the new bakery’s “price point is very reasonable,” and that the new outpost will be as much for customers from Penn South as it will for foodies citywide.

Yet it’s not just Les Desirs that’s been denied a new lease. The Lotto Center bodega two doors down from the bakery also lost its lease and was not given the option of a new one, said owner Arvin Patel. Open for 20 years, he had to sign an agreement to surrender the space by the end of December. “They’re pushing everybody out,” Patel said.  

While rumors have circulated that the bodega’s rent increased by $3,000 per month, Keany would not elaborate on the matter, but he did acknowledge that Penn South preferred not to have the retailer remain.

The tapas restaurant in between the bodega and bakery, Txikito—its $7 soups a contrast to Les Desirs’ $1.95 iced coffees—will expand into the Lotto Center’s space. 

“We’re negotiating in a depressed real estate market,” Keany said, defending Penn South’s decisions. “We want to pick business models that will enhance the neighborhood but also pay the rent and be successful.” 

As for the Sullivan Street Bakery, “Why would we not rent to them if he was willing to pay the market rent?” Keany continued. “It helps subsidize what it is that they [the Penn South residents] pay.”
For now, the best Pauget and his regulars can hope for is to keep the bakery going until February, barring some sort of miracle.

Jimmy, who has lived across the street for over 40 years and visits Les Desirs every day—“sometimes two times a day,” he said—stood out on the sidewalk between the two stores slated to close, chatting with two friends.  

His appraisal? “Money talks.”