Crains New York - August 27, 2012 - (Page 12)

SMALL BUSINESS What maternity leave? For entrepreneurial women, long breaks from work aren’t always an option BY MAGGIE OVERFELT hen Divya Gugnani, founder of accessories ecommerce site Send the Trend, gave birth to her son in May, she took two weeks of maternity leave— far less than the 12 weeks of leave that many corporate women get. Ms. Gugnani had just sold Send the Trend,whose revenues are “in the millions,” to home-shopping channel QVC in February. “I wanted to send the message that I believe in what I was doing and have not checked out,” said the entrepreneur, who now runs the 25-employee venture as an independent arm of QVC. For local entrepreneurs in fastpaced industries, extended breaks after childbirth aren’t always a realistic option. “They don’t know what 44% IN THE BOROUGHS STATEN ISLAND Sparks fly at park Continued from Page 3 buck ennis W maternity leave is,” said Amy Millman, president of Springboard Enterprises, a nonprofit that coaches women-owned firms and helps them raise venture capital. They’re not alone in going back to work early. According to the U.S. Bureau of WORKING Labor Statistics, WOMEN 55.8% of mothers take unpaid with infants unmaternity leave der a year old after their first work or are lookbirth ing for work, a percentage that has skyrocketed WORKING since the 1970s. WOMEN But like Yareceive paid hoo’s new CEO, maternity leave Marissa Mayer, who—hired while pregnant— recently anMOTHERS nounced she’d return to work after three take a shortened months maternity leave as Source: U.S. Bureau of she transitioned Labor Statistics into her new job, they often live with harsh scrutiny. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center, a Washington, D.C., think 36% 41% tank, found that only 21% of Americans think the trend toward more mothers of young kids working outside the home is a good thing. “Not only is there an increasing demand to spend more time at work, we also have rising standards for child-rearing,” said Kathleen Gerson, a sociology professor at New York University. Ask Ms. Gugnani, who employs a live-in nanny but leaves work early twice a week and brings her son to work on Fridays. “A lot of people judge me:‘Oh, you’re not taking care of your child. Are you really a good mom?’ ” she said. While Ms. Gugnani says she’s driven by passion for her work, many of her entrepreneurial counterparts also face a challenging reality:There’s no one to fill in for them. As the owner and sole employee of Brooklyn floral design studio Blossom and Branch, Sarah Brysk Cohen responded to emails the first week after having a baby in December. Returning to work has required resilience. Working at a client’s wedding recently, her breast pump broke, and she spilled two bags of milk all over herself. season, in 2006. She packed orders and phoned clients while he napped. Unable to afford to bring in a manager, she hired an intern and a part-time nanny when her son was a month old. “When you have your own business without any employees, you can’t leave it,” Ms. Harrington said. Many entrepreneurial women live with blurry boundaries between work and family as a result. “I was answering emails in the hospital,” said Jessie Randall, president of 11-employee shoe and handbag firm Loeffler Randall, who hired a baby sitter and went back to work a few weeks after having twin boys in 2007. She JUGGLER: Entrepreneur Sarah Brysk Cohen took a short brought her newborn third maternity leave when her daughter Isadora was born. son, now 2, into her Manhattan office one or two days “I had to emerge from the bath- a week and otherwise designed prodroom in this condition and finish ucts at night and during his naps. two more hours of work,” said Ms. “There was a lot of demand for Cohen, who hired a part-time me to keep producing,” Ms. Rannanny four weeks after her daughter dall said. “The fashion calendar was born. never stops.” Anna Harrington, a product design consultant and co-founder of To sign up for Crain’s Brooklyn textile-design firm DeadSMALL BUSINESS newsletter, go to ly Squire, had her first son during www.crainsnewyork.com/smallbiz. the home-based company’s busiest elected officials increasingly find themselves battling agencies, urban planners and politicians in Manhattan—where some islanders feel that all too many of the important decisions are being made. “When city planners see a 2,200acre park, they start to salivate about what they can do and how they can use their social engineering,” said City Councilman Vincent Ignizio, whose district includes most of the park. “Often we have to check our colleagues in Manhattan and say, ‘This is our borough.’ ” Many Parks Department people in Manhattan continue to prefer keeping much of the site as a “passive” park,which means limiting commercial activities.They also favor making everything built in the park environmentally sustainable.“By turning this park into something really beautiful, we’re going to help people be more thoughtful about what they throw out,” said Ms. Hirsh. “There’s a connection between this place and the fact that it used to be trash.” Most locals actually support a number of the Parks Department’s proposals to keep some areas pristine and to cultivate the mission of conservation, but there is lingering resentment about non-Staten Islanders calling the shots, especially when locals have expressed interest in ball fields, barbecue pits, roads LISTEN to a discussion at CrainsNewYork.com/podcasts free park was never on the table. At least an agreement was reached on windmills,however.In March,the city issued an RFP for a solar- and and other recreational stuff. wind-power project. Meanwhile, all “They stalled me for many years, that buried trash generates enough [basically] saying, ‘We’re methane to heat 22,000 willing to take your money homes per year. What rebut not your ideas,’ ” said mains to be seen is what the Staten Island Borough city will make of islanders’ President James Molinaro, demands that the energy explaining that he’s allocatgenerated will benefit the ed the Parks Department park and/or Staten Island. more than $70 million over Meanwhile, despite all the years—more than any the wrangling, two projects other borough president,by are expected to open in the his estimates—to spruce up next few months: Schmul other parks on the island. Park, in the northern sec“And now somebody in tion of Freshkills, will be a Manhattan, who did playground, and Owl Holnothing for years about NO. OF CITY low, in the southern part, the dump, has the audaci- COUNCIL will boast four soccer fields ty to come to our commu- members, and a state-of-the-art, nity and tell us what’s good out of 51 LEED-certified bathfor us,” he said. “It just room. Still to come is the ticked me off.” vast bulk of the park-to-be, For his part, the bor- NUMBER which remains off-limits to ough president would like of shopping malls the public, although tours to see dirt-bike trails, are given on Wednesdays baseball fields and even a and Saturdays, and birdski slope where kids could watching tours are given take lessons.“It’s called the PORTION once a month. Department of Parks and OCCUPIED Staten Islanders are by Freshkills Recreation,” Mr. Moli- Source: Staten Island also hopeful that the park naro added. “And to have borough president’s office will have a new name by recreation,there have to be the time it opens: The activities.” switch from Fresh Kills to Freshkills And then there was fear that the just isn’t cutting it. city intended to make Freshkills “I’ve been a strong advocate of car-free. “That discussion was a rebranding the site and getting rid nonstarter for us,” Mr. Ignizio said. of the Freshkills name,” said Mr. IgHe notes that the sheer size of the nizio. “It’s a reminder of the site’s park, and its remotenesss from mass past that Staten Islanders would like transit, makes roads a must. For her to leave in the rearview mirror.” part, Ms. Hirsh insists that a carStaten Highlands, anyone? FROM AROUND THE CITY BRONX Getting back on the rails in Melrose A federally funded planning committee is hoping to breathe some new life into a moribund MetroNorth train station in the South Bronx. After more than a year of work, the Bronx committee will hold a series of early planning meetings and then formally present its recommendations to community members in the fall. The key issue is access, and with good reason. At the Melrose stop on East 162nd Street and Melrose Avenue, commuters must traverse an unlit sidewalk and climb steep steps over a vacant lot to get to the platform, where Harlem and New Haven line trains arrive infrequently at best. The goal is to make the approach safer and the commute to economic opportunities in Manhattan, Westchester and Connecticut easier. “Making the Metro-North a viable option makes it a more livable community,” said Carol Samol, director of city planning for the Bronx. The station sits in the 16th Congressional District, the poorest in the nation according to the 2000 Census. Just to the west, Metro- North’s Fordham station ranks as the third-busiest reverse-commute station in the boroughs, with 3,000 riders heading north each day. To the east, proposed service using Amtrak’s rails would bring commuter train service to Parkchester and Co-op City. —cara eisenpress QUEENS ISLE ODDS AND ENDS Grave development in Fresh Meadows The Landmarks Preservation Commission has finally laid to rest decades of wrangling about an overgrown plot on a quiet residential street in Fresh Meadows, Queens. The site, known to developers as simply empty and to preservationists as an 18th-century Dutch burial ground, is now a landmark. The roughly 10,000-squarefoot cemetery has stood on the brink of development since the city sold it in the 1950s. Local landowners argued that all traces of the New-Amsterdam crowd had been removed years ago,evidenced by the cemetery’s complete absence of grave markers. Advocates for what is officially known as Brinckerhoff Cemetery maintained that the headstones are buried beneath a layer of the earth and brush. According to a 1919 city survey, the burial ground is the final resting place of prominent families including the Brinckerhoffs, Hooglands and Snedekers, whose names graced 77 headstones then visible. —ken m. christensen 3 1 5.8% 12 | Crain’s New York Business | August 27, 2012 http://www.crainsnewyork.com/smallbiz http://www.CrainsNewYork.com/podcasts

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crains New York - August 27, 2012

Crains New York - August 27, 2012
Contents
In the Boroughs
In the Markets
The Insider
Real Estate Deals
Business People
Corporate Ladder
Opinion
Greg David
Small Business
From Around the City
Stats and the City
Classifieds
Source Lunch
Out and About
Snaps

Crains New York - August 27, 2012