"We'd be working to pay the rent if we stayed," said Lorraine Waxman of Schneider's Juvenile Furniture - which opened at 20 Avenue A when Harry Truman was president.

Landlord Rubin Margules wanted $85 per square foot for the 4,000-square-foot storefront, instead of $22 Schneider's was paying.

So, Lorraine and her husband Allan Waxman moved the store - which was founded by his grandfather - to 41 W. 25th St. in Chelsea. The rent there is $35 per square foot.

Citibank was interested in moving its current Avenue A branch to Schneider's space, but that plan didn't pan out.

A decade ago, the nabe lost another baby furniture store, Ben's Babyland.

Gentrification continues to roil Alphabet City, traditionally home to artists, anarchists and squatters.

Now real estate brokers call it the East Village - which sounds nicer - and upscale bars, restaurants and shops line Avenue A.

Tompkins Square Park at Avenue A and E. Seventh St. was once a campground for hundreds of homeless people, and the scene of bloody riots.

Now it has dog runs where Jack Russell terriers and golden retrievers play, like parks in rich folks' neighborhoods.

Saving P.S. 64

One unfinished battle in Alphabet City concerns the former P.S. 64 at 605 E. Ninth St. - which housed the Charas/El Bohio community arts center until the Giuliani administration sold it to developer Gregg Singer.

More than 100 protestors stood in the rain on the steps of City Hall yesterday, demanding the century-old Beaux Arts building be landmarked - and returned to their community.

"We know Mayor Bloomberg is not like the other mayor," Democratic district leader Rosie Mendez told the crowd. "He will do the right thing."

The developer wants to replace P.S. 64 - whose architect was C.B.J. Snyder, a prominent designer of New York City public schools - with a high-rise dorm for 1,000 college students.

There are no colleges in the neighborhood, so the new structure wouldn't be a community facility, protestors argued. That's grounds to declare the buyer in default and have the building revert to the city - because city law requires buyers of properties that were schools to develop them for community use.

A Grinch in a Santa suit came to the rally and presented a gift box decorated with a picture of P.S. 64 to City Councilwoman Margarita Lopez (D-Manhattan).

Still, the protest was tamer than one staged at the July 1998 auction of P.S. 64 - where activists tossed 10,000 live crickets into the crowd, and chaos erupted.

School lease

City University of New York renewed its lease at 28 W. 44th St., the 1920s building where New Yorker magazine was launched.

The university - which is the property's biggest tenant - rents 56,200 square feet, mostly for Queens College. Its Worker Education and Labor Resource Center and John D. Calandra Italian American Institute are there.

Harry Blair and Alex Jinishian of GVA Williams served as the landlord's brokers in the deal.

Originally published on December 8, 2004