The Café Must Go On: The Cingir Brothers Fight to Save Park Café

On a chilly night in March 2024, Yelhan Cingir closed the Morningside Heights café he owned with his brother, Hakan, heading for a Mount Sinai Hospital on the Upper East Side. Hakan was about to undergo triple bypass surgery there, a procedure that opens blockages in the heart’s arteries. At 55, three years older than Yelhan, Hakan had always acted like a second father to his younger siblings. That night he was the vulnerable one.

Hakan was afraid of needles, so a procedure that required cutting through his chest terrified him. But, he kept his usual humor. When the nurse asked him if he would sign the consent forms, he cheekily replied, “I trust my doctor and I have a beautiful nurse. Why wouldn’t I sign?”

Still, Hakan feared that something would go wrong with the surgery. After Yelhan talked to the staff, Hakan approached him and, through tears, asked for forgiveness.

“I told him, ‘You’re the most beautiful brother, why would I need to forgive you?’” Yelhan recalled. They embraced, Yelhan tried to comfort him before he left.

The next day, nothing went as expected. Hakan didn’t regain consciousness for several days. Tests later showed that he had suffered a stroke.

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Seventeen years earlier, Hakan Cingir, an immigrant from Turkey, opened his first café, serving deli food and Turkish cuisine. The original spot, Park West near Central Park, became a beloved neighborhood gathering place. His brother joined full-time once the business started to thrive. They later added a second location and two food trucks, one in Central Park, the other on Wall Street. They hired four to five employees, up to 10 in the summer.

Then the pandemic hit, forcing them to hand over the keys of the original café spot and sell the trucks.

The brothers now run their last remaining café, Park Café at 153 Manhattan Avenue with one other employee. But after Hakan’s stroke, Yelhan had to take over. He thought he was managing well until August, when he realized he’d missed the deadline to renew his lease. He immediately tried to contact the landlord, but the only responses came through lawyers warning him to stop emailing or face harassment claims. Three months later, on Nov. 21, they received an eviction notice ordering them to vacate by December 31.

“Our life has been changed completely. Since three months ago, we can’t sleep,” Yelhan said, about the eviction. “I’m worrying about Hakan’s health, and I’m also worrying about my health,” he said.

What’s next?

“I don’t know what’s going to happen—we have nothing left,” he said. “We’re desperate because this is the only income we have.”

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Yelhan Cingir, 53, has kind eyes and chubby cheeks. He often wears polo shirts with track pants. He isn’t the business-savvy brother; Hakan handled that. But when Hakan’s stroke made it unclear if he would walk or fully function again, Yelhan scrambled to learn everything about the business and took care of Hakan while also running the café.

“I was trying to treat the customers with respect and a smiling face, even though I had a terrible pain inside of me,” said Yelhan about this period. But, “like the Broadway shows: ‘The show must go on.’”

Mornings, Yelhan and Hakan set out an outdoor table, a sign, some plants and water for dogs. Yelhan makes chai tea for himself and reminds Hakan to take his medicine. He greets customers, prepares their coffee and, in the quiet moments, reads everything he can to make sense of his situation.

The café is small, with just three tables. One of the bar tables no longer seats customers: it’s covered with medicine, Yelhan’s papers, folders, a computer and a printer. He feels bad about his business lapses.

“I’m really naive,” he kept repeating when he mentioned how he trusted his brother’s doctors and how he didn’t foresee their landlord evicting them. Now he keeps multiple folders of documents: his brother’s medical records, bills, emails, Google searches. His worries have overtaken the business.

***

The brothers had accumulated rent debt during the pandemic, which the government helped cover with a loan of almost $80,000. Then, during Hakan’s coma, Yelhan had to keep paying the $3,290 monthly rent while also covering mounting medical expenses. A customer helped set up a GoFundMe to ease the burden of the medical bills, raising $17,738 of the $35,000 goal. Still, they managed.

“I told myself: ‘Yelhan, you did it. You brought your brother back to life, run the business, pay all the debt. Now, the good days are going to come,’” he recalled.

But in August, when he tried to pay the rent, the check was returned. Months of trying to explain their situation to the landlord and contacting anyone he thought could help changed nothing. The eviction notice still arrived.

The brothers drafted a lease-renewal proposal with the advocacy group Build Up Justice, offering to increase their rent by 25 percent, for a total of $4,112. Still, they believe the market value for a retail space like theirs is closer to $5,000 or higher, meaning that if they’re pushed out, the landlord could quickly re-lease the storefront at a much higher rate.

“A normal person, if he or she has a little bit of conscience in their heart, would say, ‘Those guys are having a really tough time,’” Yelhan said, referring to the silence from his landlord, Robin Baez.

Robin Báez is the executive director of the Manhattan Valley Development Corporation. According to data compiled by WhoOwnsWhat, she appears as the landlord of 41 buildings, totaling 841 units. The café building is owned by 153 Manhattan Avenue H.D.F.C., an entity under Robin Baez’s company. Housing Development Fund Corporation (HDFC) cooperatives emerged during the financial crisis of the 70s as a way for the city to transfer ownership of distressed, city-owned buildings to the residents living in them. Currently, this designation also grants the building certain city tax exemptions.

“In Turkish, we say, ‘If somebody falls down, even your enemy doesn’t kick you.’ What kind of treatment is that?” The brothers have been tenants since 2011. “We paid almost half a million dollars during those 14 years—half a million dollars! I mean, why?” Yelhan demands, “I’m just trying to figure it out, but I can’t find any answer.”

Baez, contacted by phone and email for comment several times, did not respond.

***

Even with the stress of a pending eviction, Park Café still feels like part of the neighborhood.

“People like them make a neighborhood what it is. They have real, genuine, bona fide friendships with the customers who live around the store,” said Sam Hosmer, a regular customer. “That’s New York to me. But also, that’s just what good people look like.”

Hakan is recovering here. He can walk, talk, and serve customers, although slowly because of his resulting cognitive disability. Between customers, he sits calmly in a chair and waves to people passing by outside. He dozes off but wakes up as soon as a customer walks in, stands up as fast as he can to hand them a menu and lists possible orders: “We have bagels, breakfast platters, coffee.”

Bringing him back to the café has helped, Yelhan said, even though it was hard. “He could easily fall and I couldn’t let him hit his head. At the beginning, I even used to put helmets on him,” he said, with a laughter that turned into tears.

“Talking with the customers and seeing people really helped,” said Yelhan. “I believe, being in the café was better therapy than the hospital.”

Zoe Millán is a M.S. student at Columbia School of Journalism. This Columbia News Service publishes the work of enrolled students at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City. For more of our stories, please visit www.columbianewsservice.com.