Harlem Renaissance

[brianac]

Powerful Harlem Church Is Also a Powerful Harlem Developer

James Estrin/The New York Times
After a service on Sunday, members of Abyssinian Baptist Church gathered.

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
Published: August 17, 2008

Since its founding 200 years ago as a breakaway congregation, Abyssinian Baptist Church has built itself into one of the city’s most powerful institutions, by virtue of its activist pastors, who have included Adam Clayton Powell Jr., and its congregation, which has long been among the city’s largest.

James Estrin/The New York Times
The church’s development corporation will build a tower on the site of the Renaissance Ballroom and Casino.

But for about the past decade, the church’s most potent resource has been not its Neo-Gothic home on 138th Street, but one of its offshoots, the Abyssinian Development Corporation, situated in modest offices on 125th Street.

The nonprofit development corporation, formed in 1989 with a single employee and a $50,000 grant, has grown into an organization that owns or has developed some $500 million worth of property in Harlem, expanded to 125 employees and played a critical behind-the-scenes role in the transformation of the neighborhood.

Its projects include the first high school built in Harlem in 50 years, some of the neighborhood’s first national retail chain stores, one of its few full-service supermarkets, a department store and a shopping center. Abyssinian also owns more than 1,100 rental units, nearly all of them for low-income residents.

As the church’s development arm has grown in size and influence, however, it has become a target of critics who say it has ushered in a wave of gentrification that has displaced longtime residents and has been a neglectful landlord of some of its apartment buildings, which have amassed hundreds of unresolved violations. But the Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, Abyssinian’s pastor, who founded the development corporation 19 years ago, said the organization is a good landlord that has stayed true to its aim of providing affordable housing and offering an array of social services in a neighborhood where more than one-third of the residents live below the poverty line.

“The claims that we have been responsible for gentrification, or whatever you want to call it, are usually made by people absolutely ignorant of our work, or jealous of our work,” Mr. Butts said. “We are really keeping to our mission. The other market forces coming into Harlem are things which most of us have no control over. We don’t own the real estate.”

Shaun Donovan, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the city agency that has worked with Abyssinian most frequently, said in a statement that the church’s development corporation “has been instrumental to the continuing revitalization of the surrounding community.” The corporation, he added, “has had its hand on the pulse of the community and its various needs, from tenant advocacy to participation in neighborhood task forces to the development of affordable housing on numerous formerly city-owned properties.”

(The Abyssinian Development Corporation was one of 10 semifinalists this year for The New York Times Nonprofit Excellence Awards. It was not among the four winners selected in June.)

Still, each of Abyssinian’s major commercial projects has encountered opposition in Harlem.

Critics have a list of complaints: that Abyssinian does not keep the community apprised of its development plans; that it has pushed through projects over the objections of the local community board; that it does not ensure the hiring of minority contractors; that it has opposed historic preservation; and that it has virtually ignored small businesses in favor of chain stores that have damaged the small-town character of Harlem.

“They’re just a big business,” said Jeanne Littlejohn, 48, a former parishioner at Abyssinian church who was baptized by Mr. Butts but became disenchanted after a building she owned was damaged, she said, during the construction of an Abyssinian Development project next door. “They don’t care about the community.

“He’s doing nothing but what any other large real estate developer has done,” she said of Mr. Butts.

The church’s development arm was formed in 1989, a particularly desperate time in Harlem.

The prevalence of cheap guns, crack cocaine and unemployed young men and women had tipped the neighborhood into a downward spiral in the 1980s in which violence, AIDS and homelessness had become common.

To make matters worse, disinvestment by banks meant building owners who sought to make repairs had a difficult time getting loans. From the 1960s to the ’90s, few new commercial or residential buildings were built. At one point during the 1980s, the city controlled 65 percent of Harlem’s residential property, city officials said.

“The concept was simply to stop the deterioration of the housing stock in Harlem and restore it for working-class families — what you might call the working poor,” Mr. Butts said.

That effort was an expansion of the church’s tradition of social justice advocacy, he said, which began in 1808 when a group of Ethiopian merchant seamen who went to pray at the First Baptist Church in Lower Manhattan were directed to a segregated section of the church.

Josh Haner/The New York Times
Its president, Sheena Wright, says the facade will be saved.

Nicholas Roberts for The New York Times
The Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, Abyssinian’s pastor, founded the development arm in 1989.

When they refused to be seated there, several African-American worshipers joined them as they left. The group formed Abyssinian Baptist Church, giving it a historical name for Ethiopia.
Over the years, the church has followed the movement of African-Americans in the city — first to Midtown, and in 1923, to its current location in central Harlem.

Abyssinian’s most influential period came during the 1950s and 1960s, when it had one of the largest Protestant congregations in the nation, and its pastor was Mr. Powell, who also represented Harlem in Congress.

Unlike his predecessor Mr. Powell, who was free-spoken, Mr. Butts has employed a more pragmatic approach, using his influence with Democrats and Republicans alike, particularly with former Gov. George E. Pataki, to turn Abyssinian into an economic engine.

The development corporation won its first major project in 1999, a $17 million, 65,000-square-foot Pathmark grocery store on 125th Street in East Harlem. The store had faced significant opposition from local shop owners, and originally, reluctance from Pathmark, which had expressed skepticism that a large supermarket in Harlem could be profitable. Pathmark has since opened a second Harlem store.

Abyssinian Development has partnered with the city’s Department of Education to build a 90,000-square-foot public school, the Thurgood Marshall Academy for Learning and Social Change, atop an International House of Pancakes, which has become a popular neighborhood destination.

The corporation’s largest project to date has been Harlem Center, an $85 million retail and office complex on 125th Street it developed with Forest City Ratner. Businesses there include Marshall’s, Staples, H & M and a Washington Mutual bank.

Abyssinian’s next major project involves tearing down the old Renaissance Ballroom and Casino and an old Y.W.C.A. on 138th Street, not far from the church.

The buildings are to be replaced by what will be one of the tallest buildings in the area, a 19-story tower with 116 condominiums, along with cultural and retail space, and 90 parking spaces.

Much of the ballroom’s tapestry-brick façade will be preserved, said Sheena Wright, the development corporation’s president and executive director. Ms. Wright said about 20 percent of the housing would be set aside for lower-income residents.

The foray into market-rate housing is part of a strategy the development corporation will pursue more often in the future, Abyssinian officials said. Ms. Wright said such a business model does not contradict the group’s original calling to provide affordable housing to the poor.

“One of the things we’ve learned is that you have to have diverse income levels in a neighborhood,” Ms. Wright said.

At another Abyssinian project, Odell Clark Place Condominiums, which is under construction on several parcels of land on 138th Street that the city sold to Abyssinian for a total of about $50,000 — perhaps one-tenth of what it would command on the open market — 14 of the 40 units will be sold to lower-income buyers.

Additionally, most of those 14 units will most likely be pegged as affordable for households earning $60,000 annually, four times higher than the neighborhood’s average household income of about $15,000, according to Abyssinian.

“One should not relegate Harlem to housing just for the poor,” Mr. Butts said. “Everyone must be able to live here.”

Some Abyssinian tenants, however, said the church should stop building new housing and take care of the property it owns.

According to city records, Abyssinian has hundreds of outstanding violations on its buildings, some dating to the 1990s.

At 301 West 148th Street, a 13-unit apartment building, there are 295 open violations, including lack of hot water, peeling lead paint, missing smoke detectors, bars on windows blocking access to fire escapes, and apartments overrun by mice and roaches, according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Abyssinian said that the violations existed before it bought the building, and that a recent rehabilitation had resolved them.

Lisa Jones, who lives in a 24-unit Abyssinian building on 135th Street that has 143 open Department of Housing Preservation and Development violations, said tenants there had been withholding rent for several months until basic repairs were made. Residents have won three court orders forcing Abyssinian to make repairs.

“Abyssinian is an iconic presence in this community,” Ms. Jones said. “But you can’t be an icon of the community and not take a certain level of responsibility.”

Ms. Wright acknowledged that the building was in disrepair. “Residents were very upset because the quality of living was not good,” she said. “And they wanted repairs made immediately — as I would, or anyone else would. Unfortunately, the fix was not immediate.”

Ms. Wright said Abyssinian hoped to begin rehabilitating the building in the next three months.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/18/ny...1&ref=nyregion

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

[brianac]

Harlem Plan for a TV Base Deteriorates

By CHARLES V. BAGLI
Published: August 22, 2008

The grand plan to bring the headquarters for Major League Baseball’s new cable television network to East Harlem is unraveling, real estate executives and government officials said on Friday.

The MLB Network, which is scheduled to begin broadcasting to 50 million subscribers in January, was to be the anchor tenant in what was originally to be a new 21-story office building at 125th Street and Park Avenue, a short distance from Yankee Stadium and players who would be among its guests.

Now baseball executives are balking at new lease terms proposed by the developer, Vornado Realty Trust, that would have required them to take additional space and pay $2 million a year more in rent, said real estate executives and government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are involved in the negotiations.

That has placed the future of the entire building, which was to be the first office tower built on 125th Street in three decades, in jeopardy.

The MLB Network, in turn, is reconsidering its own plans. It is operating out of temporary quarters in the old MSNBC studios in Secaucus, N.J., not far from Giants Stadium and the National Basketball Association’s network studios. The baseball network is now assessing whether to stay in Secaucus, rather than moving to Harlem in a couple of years.

The $435 million project began running into trouble virtually from the time it was announced in January. Unable to obtain financing or additional tenants, Vornado scaled down its plans earlier this summer, proposing a 14-story building and a new lease with Major League Baseball.

Both sides in the negotiations, as well as city and state officials, are hoping to salvage the deal, which they had hailed as an important commercial catalyst for the Harlem renaissance. With or without Major League Baseball, some officials say, the tower may still be built.

“We’re working hard to put this back on track as an important project for our city and this area,” said Steven Roth, Vornado’s chairman.
Seth W. Pinsky, president of the city’s Economic Development Corporation, said, “We remain committed to working with all the parties and seeing development at the site and along 125th Street in the near future.”

Matt Bourne, a spokesman for Major League Baseball, declined to comment, except to say, “Any negotiations we have are and remain a private matter.”

During the recent real estate boom, developers have pushed into Harlem with new residential projects and retail malls. Two hotels are in the planning stages, and earlier this year the city rezoned 125th Street for development, with an emphasis on arts and entertainment.

City and state officials have been eager to help Vornado build the office tower, called Harlem Park, and lure the MLB Network to it, offering a package of tax breaks, tax-free financing and loans. “This would catalyze 125th Street as a major corridor,” said Kenneth J. Knuckles, chief executive of the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone Development Corporation. “Over time, certainly when the economy turns around, you could see other kindred uses coming to 125th Street.”

An earlier version of the plan announced by Gov. George E. Pataki and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in 2005 called for a different developer to build a $236 million hotel on the site. But that project stalled, and Vornado, one of the city’s biggest commercial landlords, took it over last year.

In January, Vornado said it would build a 21-story luminescent tower of glass cubes, with the MLB Network taking about 20 percent of the space as the anchor tenant. Vornado lobbied hard for an exception to the proposed rezoning that would have forced it to reduce the height of the building. After protests and months of tough negotiations with the City Council, Vornado got its way.

Work on the tower was supposed to begin in April. In the meantime, the MLB Network leased the old MSNBC studios in Secaucus and began installing high-definition digital broadcasting equipment.

The city provided Vornado with up to $17 million in mortgage-recording and sales tax breaks for the Harlem project and an additional $5 million in sales tax breaks for the MLB Network. The Empowerment Zone agreed to give the developer a $25 million low-interest loan, tax-exempt financing, a property tax abatement and income tax credits from the state and federal governments. But Vornado, like many other developers in the current credit crisis, was unable to obtain financing, despite plans to invest $127.5 million, or 30 percent of the building’s cost.

To keep the project alive, Vornado offered to sell the land to the MLB Network at cost, or to build it a five-story building for its exclusive use.

But it focused on a third option: slicing off about one-third of the building’s height, to cut the overall cost of the building by $100 million.

The developer also sought additional subsidies from the state as well as a higher rent, about $15 more per square foot, or $2 million a year. But that infuriated baseball officials, who thought that Vornado was changing the terms of their agreed-upon deal, according to three people who were involved in the discussions.

The MLB Network had also wanted to be in a marquee tower on 125th Street, not a generic office building.

MLB Network executives, who had expected to move to Harlem in the spring of 2010, now expect to remain in Secaucus, at least until the start of the baseball season in 2011. They are considering whether it makes sense to build expensive high-definition studios first in Secaucus and then in Harlem, real estate executives said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/23/ny...=5070&emc=eta1

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

[Derek2k3]

Originally Posted by brianac

Harlem Plan for a TV Base Deteriorates
The MLB Network had also wanted to be in a marquee tower on 125th Street, not a generic office building.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/23/ny...=5070&emc=eta1

I like this line...take that Vornado.

[antinimby]

Why doesn't MLB take a look at 11 Times Square? Or if that doesn't work, they can also see if the Port Authority Bus Terminal tower will work.

[NYC4Life]

Crain's New York

August 27. 2008 3:34PM

Planning Commission OKs 125th St. rezoning

The city took another step Wednesday toward building a 1.7 million-square-foot, mixed-use complex on the eastern portion of 125th Street. No developer has been selected.



The New York City Planning Commission voted on Wednesday to rezone the eastern portion of 125th Street, helping to pave the way for a 1.7 million- square-foot, mixed-use complex.

City officials spent months working with community activists on the plan, which is to include stores, restaurants, offices and housing. However, strains began emerging in March because the city opted to start to rezone the parcel before selecting a developer.

In fact, on Wednesday one commissioner, Karen Phillips, voted against the zoning changes because a developer hasn’t yet been selected, according to a spokesperson for the City Planning Commission. Ms. Phillips didn’t immediately return a call for comment.

Vornado Realty Trust, Thor Equities and General Growth Properties confirmed they are going to bid on the project.

Proceeding with a rezoning without a developer is not unprecedented, but it is unusual. Some community activists argue that rezoning without a designated developer weakens the city’s bargaining position as it seeks to extract benefits for the neighborhood. But city officials counter that delaying a selection extends the competition and increases the potential benefits for the community.

A developer will be chosen before the City Council votes on the rezoning proposal in October. It is likely that the Council will approve the proposal because members usually vote in accordance with the member that represents the district, and Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito backs the plan.

The city owns the majority of the land that will house the development. But some of the other landowners have complained that the city has not made them offers on their property, and they fear their land will be acquired through eminent domain.

“The vote is horrible,” says Damon Bae, who owns three parcels in the proposed zone, which is roughly six acres and extends from East 125th to East 127th streets, between Second and Third Avenues. “It paves the way for eminent domain. It means the city is going to condemn my property and not negotiate fairly.”

But Ms. Mark-Viverito said the city has reached out to the landowners and that they are being treated fairly and respectfully through the process.

[brianac]

In Plans for Vacant Harlem Market, City Envisions a Cultural Base

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
Published: September 1, 2008

Across the street from the Apollo Theater is an indoor marketplace that the city once hoped would ease Harlem’s economic woes. Instead, the building has long been shuttered, the images of shoppers on its white facade rusting away.

Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times
Street vendors have set up stands outside the shuttered Mart 125 market, across from the Apollo Theater. It opened in 1986.

Over the years, efforts to redevelop the old market, called Mart 125, have failed. But this summer, the Bloomberg administration and the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone have been gauging interest in the building’s prime location.

The city began soliciting proposals last month from nonprofit cultural organizations to occupy the ground floor of a building that would replace the vacant Mart 125 and would likely include a street-level performance space.

Arts groups in Harlem will be given preference, and officials with the city’s Economic Development Corporation said that several cultural organizations with sufficient financial resources and community involvement would be selected by October to vie for the space.

Only then, the officials said, would the Bloomberg administration seek a developer to construct the building. The officials said they expected the developer to work with one or more of the arts groups on a joint proposal.

The plan’s unusual mandate for a developer to include a cultural group with local ties is testament to the symbolic importance of Mart 125 among Harlem residents, said Lynnette Velasco, a spokeswoman for
Councilwoman Inez E. Dickens, who represents central Harlem.

“Mart 125 was very, very important to the councilwoman from a historic perspective because it was a place originally designed for minority vendors and artisans to sell their goods,” Ms. Velasco said. “The councilwoman wanted what will replace Mart 125 to be a place where community people would be stakeholders.”

Once completed, the building would be near several other key Harlem cultural venues, including the Apollo, the National Black Theater, the Studio Museum in Harlem and a proposed complex at the Victoria Theater, which has also been vacant for many years.

Madelyn Wils, the executive vice president for planning and development at the Economic Development Corporation, said she did not believe that the various venues would be forced to compete for patrons.

Rather, she said, “these kinds of cultural hubs really work well because the organizations feed off each other.” She added that the theater district was an example.

City officials said that besides a ground-floor performance space with about 199 seats, the building would probably include a cafe and an NYC & Company tourist office specializing in attractions in Harlem and the rest of Upper Manhattan.

“The strategy is really to create a destination” for tourists and local residents, said Hope Knight, the chief operating officer of the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, which is helping to finance the project.

“There are a large number of visitors who come to 125th Street, and we felt that with a center there, we can get them moving around Upper Manhattan.”

Decisions about the height of the new building and whether it will be primarily office or retail space will not be made for several months. Ms. Wils said that the city would issue a request for proposals from developers in November and choose a winner next year.

Assemblyman Keith L. T. Wright, who represents central Harlem, said he did not want the site to be occupied by chain stores, which have proliferated along 125th Street.

The latest additions to the area around Mart 125 include a Starbucks, which opened its second branch on 125th Street, just blocks from its first Harlem coffeehouse, and now has four in the neighborhood. American Apparel, a youth-oriented clothing store with branches all over the city, including in SoHo and the Upper East Side, also opened a branch recently on 125th Street.

“I’m all chained out,” Mr. Wright said. “I would like to see Mart 125 have some remnant of what it was originally slated to be — an incubator for vendors. I would like to see some retail with some community folks able to make some money.”

When Mart 125 opened in 1986, the state rented stalls to street vendors and pledged to provide them with management training. The goal was for the market to operate as a small-business incubator, with budding entrepreneurs eventually starting their own stores in the neighborhood and perhaps even owning a stake in Mart 125.

The training never took place, however, and before long, the building began to deteriorate. Not enough customers followed the merchants inside, and vendors struggled to pay the rent, with many refusing to do so to protest the building’s leaky roof and faulty air-conditioning system.

Finally, the Giuliani administration evicted the vendors, leaving the building empty since about 2001.

Proposals to turn the building into an arts complex, a Barnes & Noble and a restaurant have gone nowhere, but Ms. Wils said that this time the city was optimistic.

“There’s a lot of interest,” she said, “and we think we’ll have a strong group there.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/ny...on&oref=slogin

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

[NYC4Life]

New York Times

In an Evolving Harlem, Newcomers Try to Fit In


James O’Brien, 34, an artist who moved to Harlem in 2003, says the occasional racially charged exchange can provide an opening for frank discussion.

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
Published: September 6, 2008

In the past few years, the “Village of Harlem,” as older residents still call it, has become a 21st-century laboratory for integration. Class and money and race are at the center of the changes in the neighborhood. Lured by stately century-old brownstones and relatively modest rents, new faces are moving in and making older residents feel that they are being pushed out. There have been protests, and anger directed as much at the idea of the newcomers as at them personally.
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Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times

Mark A. Thomas, 29, formerly of Atlanta, says more middle-class residents would benefit Harlem, but he worries about older neighbors being priced out of the area.

Through it all, the voices of those newcomers have often gone unheard, at least publicly. But to listen to them is to hear the story of a neighborhood in transition from a different perspective. For some, it is a daily struggle to fit in or an extra effort to develop a defense for the occasional flare-ups of anger they encounter. Others are charmed by Harlem’s quaint formalities and distinct sense of its history — qualities they say are missing in neighborhoods in the rest of the city.

There have been tensions — a woman recounted being subjected to constant sexist and racist epithets before she moved out of the neighborhood. But there have also been fish-out-of-water situations laced with humor, like new arrivals looking for barbers who cut straight hair or buying expensive wine in liquor stores with plexiglass partitions. A white pastor teased his parishioners, many of whom are black, about the stereotypical lateness of Harlemites, and got a laugh.

A move of just a few miles can necessitate significant adjustments, recent arrivals say, that can be as staggering as grappling with what it means to be the only white face in a particular place for the first time in their lives, or simply adapting to the practice of greeting strangers. But again and again, newcomers, many of whom are white, and older residents, who are typically black, describe one phenomenon: If the old-timers do not like the idea of the new arrivals, once they get to know them as individuals, much of the animosity fades away.

Joshua S. Bauchner, 35, joined the local community board this spring, becoming the only white person among its 50 members.

“At my first meeting, I was the white guy in the suit,” said Mr. Bauchner, a lawyer who bought a Harlem town house with his wife last year. “Someone said, ‘That seat is for a board member.’ I said, ‘I am a board member.’ Everyone came up to me, shook my hand, asked what I did, and we traded business cards. To the extent that I was an integrationist, there was no issue.”

Megan Newman, a woman in her 40s who works in publishing and recently moved to Harlem with her husband, after having lived most of her life in other neighborhoods in the city, described it as “such an interesting, oddball place.”

“It was like moving to a different city,” she said. “There’s a courtliness where people say ‘Good morning’ and ‘Good night.’ I wasn’t used to that.”
What is occurring in Harlem is part of a wider trend across the nation reshaping poorer black enclaves like the Fillmore District in San Francisco, Bronzeville in Chicago and Columbia Heights in Washington. Harlem, because of its status as a symbol of black success and independence, has been among those most closely watched.

As their numbers have increased exponentially in central Harlem, many white residents say they would like Harlem to rethink its view of itself as a neighborhood that belongs to black people.

“Yes, Harlem is an African-American symbol, and I want to know all the history, but it has also been other things, too,” said Denise Hand, 39, a public school teacher who won a lottery in 2004 to buy a condominium in a building near Morningside Park that had been vacant for years. “My grandmother lived in Harlem. I don’t feel like the interloper, because I realize the city changes. I don’t feel guilty.”

Even during its bleakest years in the 1970s and 1980s, Harlem possessed a modest-size black middle class. But from the postwar period until recently, central Harlem had only a tiny white population.

In 1980, for instance, the neighborhood had 672 white residents, about half of 1 percent of the population.


Page 2 of 3)

From 1990 to 2005, the percentage of white residents rose from 1.5 percent to 4.3 percent of the population — or about 5,000 residents, according to census data. But real estate agents and politicians say they believe that number has probably at least doubled during the past three years.

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Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

Chrissy Nance with her daughter, LuLu, at home on 120th Street. Before moving there, she said, “a major concern was how the people would take to us.”



Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

Russell Nance and his wife put in solar panels as part of a renovation of their brownstone.



During that same 15-year period, the percentage of black residents in central Harlem declined to 72 percent from 88 percent, even though the black population remained steady, at about 85,000.


Awkward Introduction

Russell Nance, 36, a lawyer, and his wife, Chrissy, 35, a schoolteacher, who bought a vacant 19th-century brownstone on 120th Street in 2006, are typical in many ways of the recent arrivals who moved to Harlem for its housing value.

Their first visit, however, in 1998, was accidental, and it brought a forbidding sense that Harlem was not safe for white people.

“We were visiting friends on the Upper West Side and we missed our stop,” Mr. Nance said. They got off the subway at 125th Street.

While waiting for another train, the couple said, several people began taunting them while invoking the name of Yusef Hawkins, a black teenager killed by a mob of white youths in Brooklyn in 1989.

The Nances hopped on the next train and made no plans to come back. “We never really had any reason to,” said Mr. Nance, who lived downtown at the time.

Years later, once they decided they wanted more space, Harlem, because of its affordability, became an option, however unlikely. They made several tentative trips to the neighborhood to see whether they felt comfortable.

“A major concern was how the people would take to us,” Ms. Nance said.
The couple eventually settled on a brownstone near Marcus Garvey Park, and for much of the past two years they have been restoring its hand-carved wood detailing and tin ceilings.

Now that they have a sense of belonging in Harlem, the Nances have turned their attention to more quotidian concerns, like what kind of business the neighborhood is most in need of — a topic that has become a parlor game among newcomers.

Ms. Nance, who had the couple’s first child four months ago, says it is a good Thai restaurant. For Mr. Nance, it is a place with beer and burgers.
“Like anybody else, I want a nice place to live with reasonable amenities,” Mr. Nance said. “I think that’s what anybody wants. The trick is to do that while affecting as few people as possible. Harlem does have a character. I don’t want Harlem to become Union Square any more than anyone else does.”


Settling In

Mark A. Thomas is an African-American resident new to Harlem. His introduction to the neighborhood could not have been more different than the Nances’. A visit two years ago left him so enthralled that he moved from Atlanta a few months later, even though he owned a home there. He now rents an apartment in a 19th-century red-brick town house on Strivers’ Row, a landmark area in central Harlem that is still one of the most sought-after addresses in the neighborhood.

Mr. Thomas, 29, who works as a deputy director for City Futures, a nonprofit urban policy organization, said that while he worries his presence might be harming longtime residents because of the rent he is willing to pay to live in Harlem, he believes the neighborhood needs an infusion of middle-class black residents like himself.

“We’re part of gentrification too,” said Mr. Thomas, who has become a self-taught student of Harlem history. “I’m torn about it because I can afford to live in Harlem.” He said many of the objections to newer white residents come not from people his age, but from those a generation or two older.

“Older blacks didn’t have any choice but to live in a black neighborhood,” Mr. Thomas said. “So they get nervous when a white person wants to move in. But if you talk to young African-Americans, they want the neighborhood they live in to be integrated.”


(Page 3 of 3)

At New Song Community Church on Frederick Douglass Boulevard one day this summer, the pastor surveyed the hundred or so people who had gathered in the sun-splashed sanctuary and began a folksy homily on Psalm 24 and the importance of faith and prayer. It was all standard stuff for a Sunday morning in Harlem, with one exception: The pastor at New Song is a white man who moved the church to Harlem from his Washington Heights apartment about four years ago, while many of his parishioners are longtime African-American residents.

The minister, Jeff White, has grown so comfortable in the pulpit there that during the service he referred to a common stereotype.

“God doesn’t work on our schedule,” he said, urging his congregation to find time each day to pray. “You know, sometimes when I’m waiting for a friend and they’re late, I’ll say to myself, ‘I’ll give them another 10 minutes.’ ” He paused, then added, “Since I’ve been in Harlem, it’s more like, ‘I’ll give them another 30 minutes.’ ” There were both groans and laughter.

The clash of old and new has led to other humorous situations. One evening, Ms. Newman, the publisher, made a trip to a liquor store to buy wine for a dinner party. The shop had a thick, bullet-resistant plexiglass window separating the clerk from customers.

“I bought three bottles of wine,” Ms. Newman said. “The guy at the register asked if I wanted him to open them for me.”

Not everyone, however, believes Harlem’s experiment with racial integration is going well.

Michael Henry Adams, a historic preservationist and community activist, said the influx of newcomers, particularly whites, had begun to turn Harlem into something ordinary.

“This is happening all over the city, and it’s wrong everywhere, but it’s particularly wrong in Harlem, where you have the black cultural capital being devoid of black people,” Mr. Adams said. “I don’t think tourists will continue to come to the neighborhood if it is entirely white.”


Harsh Words

And many new residents are uncomfortable with Harlem’s noisy street life, including sidewalk barbecues that can draw large crowds. Some believe there are too many churches on the one hand — Harlem has more than 100 houses of worship — and a casual flouting of the law on the other, with people littering, double-parking and drinking alcohol on the street. Some white women complain that they seem to receive more rude sexual come-ons in Harlem than elsewhere.

One of them, Amelia Cason, a 25-year-old teacher, lived in Harlem for about three years until she switched jobs a few months ago and moved to the Upper West Side.

Ms. Cason said that while she enjoyed much about Harlem, she was made uncomfortable by a barrage of sexual comments when she wore a skirt and heels. She took to wearing coats, even in summer.

“It was impossible for me to walk two blocks without someone saying something,” she said.

Ms. Cason said that now she wonders whether she may have overreacted at times.

“It’s hard to divide what is nervousness about being white in the neighborhood from standard sexual harassment,” she said. “It’s entirely possible that if a well-dressed white guy on the Upper West Side said something, I would take it in an entirely different way than I would with a black guy in Harlem, so it could be my perception. But you can’t mistake the meaning” of a racist, sexist epithet.

James O’Brien, 34, an artist who bought a condominium in Harlem in 2003, said he had become accustomed to occasional uncomfortable exchanges.
Mr. O’Brien said recent arrivals were sometimes verbally challenged by African-American residents — although he said the face-offs seemed to be more a way of reaching out than an act of hostility.

“Every couple of months, I have a confrontation with someone,” Mr. O’Brien said, that involves complaints that “you white people” do not care about the neighborhood’s longtime residents. “I’ll ask, ‘What are you angry about?’ And their anger kind of dissolves, and then they’ll say, ‘The new money coming in is aloof and snobbish.’

“What I realized is that it’s an introduction to dialogue. And so we’ll talk.”

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

[brianac]

The Local: A Record of Harlem's Change

by Lysandra Ohrstrom | September 23, 2008

Bebeto Matthews for AP.
Sikhulu Shange outside his old Record Shack in December.

Harlem's most ubiquitous activist and resident Cassandra, Sikhulu Shange, has been warning against the perils of gentrification and the displacement of small businesses in the community for decades. He became living proof of his most dire prophesies this summer when he was forced to close his iconic music store on 125th Street, the Record Shack, after losing a two-year legal battle with his landlord.

A team of city marshals seized all of his inventory and evicted him on July 24 from the store he occupied for 36 years -- more than three months after the May 31 deadline a civil court judge had given Mr. Shange to vacate the space. He claims he was in the process of appealing the decision, and did not know that "they would be coming after me after a certain date."

His apartment is now packed with boxes of the estimated $200,000 worth of confiscated music and films that he redeemed from a warehouse in Yonkers in August for $6,500. Now, a few feet from his vacant former storefront at 274 West 125th Street, Mr. Shange sets up daily a table piled with CDs and DVDs.

"It's a very gloomy day in our community, seeing that everything is being taken over," he said Friday from his outpost in front of a new Foot Locker store. "Peoples' homes are being taken over [and] businesses that people have been used to for generations and generations, like my business.

"The children who were little girls and boys running around my store when I started are now grandmothers and great-grandmothers."

Mr. Shange believes the Record Shack is one of many casualties of what he calls the "gentrification and displacement process." Bobby's Happy House Records, a 52-year-old Harlem staple on Frederick Douglass Boulevard that was once the Record Shack's friendly rival, was evicted in January. The neighboring stores between 125th and 126th streets have followed as their leases expire.

His landlord, the United House of Prayer for All People church, never gave him a chance to renegotiate his lease, Mr. Shange says. "They just wanted me out," he said. "'We are not talking about increments or increasing your rent.'"

The United House of Prayer could not be reached for comment.

"The big corporations are clamoring for space, and they are favorable because they have much more money than I do," Mr. Shange said. "Now the displacement is in full gear. I don't know what they're going to do [for the community]. Duane Reade has been here, and we don't see much except young people carrying the broom and sweeping up the floors."

Even without a store, Mr. Shange remains a Harlem fixture.

In the span of a half-hour, four pedestrians greeted him as they walked by -- one calling out, "Peace my brother," and another "Black Power." A customer gave Mr. Shange a $20 bill for a $10 CD and told him to keep the change -- a fairly regular occurrence since he got evicted, he said.

"It's not really about money," Mr. Shange said of the bill in his hands.

"This is the tears of the people, showing me that they still need and respect my services."

Another friend stopped by to see how Mr. Shange was doing and to offer words of encouragement.

"How are you on the job," the man asked.

"Always working," Mr. Shange said. "I have to do something."

"You gotta do something," his friend agreed. "That's what it's all about.

Like they say, once you accept the way things are, then you can change your reality. That's my quote.

"Out. Peace," he called as he walked away.

Though Mr. Shange is not unrealistic about the neighborhood's future, he seems willing to fight interminably to preserve the old Harlem reality. He's currently looking for a lawyer to represent him in a suit against the city marshals for failing to inventory the merchandise they seized from his store and for a new space so he can stop vending on the street. But with the rents being asked, he is not optimistic.

"The future of the Record Shack is dismal," he said.

"The only hope is that the economy is crumbling and it's not going to get them to where they want to go," Mr. Shange said.

"For instance, they were supposed to have a big network on Park Avenue going up 21 stories," he said of the Major League Baseball headquarters being developed by Vornado Realty Trust. "Now, they are saying 15 or 16 stories. That's a sign that people are failing to finance the big corporations. ... This unsung depression or recession within the United States looks like it possibly may make them start pulling back."

http://www.observer.com/2008/real-es...sikhulu-shange

© 2008 Observer Media Group,

[brianac]

City Taps Developer General Growth to Build Big on East 125th

by Eliot Brown
October 7, 2008

NYC.
A planned entertainment and housing complex for East 125th Street.

The Bloomberg administration has designated a team led by Chicago-based developer General Growth Properties and Archstone Smith to construct a 1.7 million-square-foot mixed-use, mixed-income complex on East 125th Street, the city announced today.

The selection was coupled with a vote on the project by the City Council, which this afternoon approved a rezoning of the site that runs from 125th Street to 127th Street, between Second and Third avenues.

Developer General Growth--which is a leader on a team that includes Archstone-Smith, the Richman Group, Monadnock Construction, the Carey Group, Hope Community and El Barrio's Operation Fightback--faces financial troubles nationally. Federal regulators named General Growth as one of nearly 1,000 stocks banned from short selling last month, as the company has investors concerned about its outstanding debt.

Its stock has dropped 92 percent in the past year, falling from $55 a share to about $4.50. Today alone, the stock is down 43 percent.

The project is one of the rare Bloomberg administration initiatives for which city officials backed down amid community resistance to their initial plan, and then developed a more palatable concept with community support.

Back in 2006, the city was ready to move forward with a $1 billion development by Urban Strategic Partners that would have put in 700,000 square feet of commercial space and 1,500 apartments, 80 percent at market rates. But the community and local elected officials cried foul, and the city scrapped its plans with a pledge to devise a new plan with the community.

According to figures from the city, the $700 million plan approved today calls for more than 800 apartments, three-fourths of which would be targeted for families and individuals with middle and moderate incomes; 250,000 square feet of office space; and 30,000 square feet of nonprofit-run cultural space.

The numbers released by the city did not address a signature element of the site, the retail and entertainment space. Before the last-minute public selection of General Growth, the city called for about 470,000 square feet of entertainment and retail space in the project, according to figures in a report from the Manhattan Borough President's Office.

The project is to be built on mostly city-owned lots (the city says it controls 82 percent of the site), though the Bloomberg administration is attempting to acquire the remaining parcels.

http://www.observer.com/2008/real-es...big-e-125th-st

© 2008 Observer Media Group

[NYC4Life]

New York Times

Wall Street’s Tremors Leave Harlem Shaken

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
Published: October 7, 2008


Before its economic turnaround in recent years, Harlem was a case study in disinvestment.

Banks were unwilling to make mortgage loans or to open branches, national chain stores could not be lured uptown, city services lagged and the neighborhood became economically isolated from the rest of Manhattan. This has given way in the past decade to a resurgence, as national chains like Starbucks and American Apparel have moved to 125th Street and housing prices have steadily risen.

But the collapse of financial institutions like Washington Mutual Savings Bank, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers has left Harlem facing a double loss: The disappearance of companies that helped propel the resurgence will not only make it immediately more difficult for business people to get loans and mortgages or for developers to build large commercial projects, but will also lead to the loss of millions of dollars in charitable contributions from those same companies. That will affect everything from children’s health and adult literacy to the Apollo Theater’s famed amateur night.

The effect in Harlem of these companies’ failure is an example of the long — and in some cases, unexpected — reach of Wall Street across the city, even in neighborhoods with high poverty rates, and where relatively few people work as stockbrokers or investment bankers.

“People talk about Wall Street greed, but one of the things many people don’t understand is that there are a lot of organizations that have been the recipient of largess from the same Wall Street,” said Geoffrey Canada, president and chief executive of Harlem Children’s Zone, one of the neighborhood’s largest private, nonprofit groups. “Their absence leaves us scrambling to replace what has been a significant amount of support.”

The relationships between Harlem and the companies ranged from the personal — 240 Lehman Brothers employees helped build a six-unit apartment building and tutored children in mathematics each Saturday — to the symbolic: Washington Mutual had its name on the marquee of the Apollo as the primary sponsor of amateur night.

Then there is the strictly financial: Bear Stearns provided critical funds for the $85 million Harlem Center, a retail and office complex on 125th Street that includes, among other businesses, a Washington Mutual branch.

The tight credit market will very likely have other consequences in Harlem as well, observers said, most significantly a slowdown in economic development, which could moderate the neighborhood’s rapid gentrification.

“One of the factors that led to the changes was high housing prices in the rest of the city, which pushed people who would not have otherwise moved to Harlem into Harlem,” said Lance Freeman, an urban planning professor at Columbia and the author of “There Goes the ’Hood,” a book on gentrification in Harlem and Clinton Hill in Brooklyn. “So if housing prices in other parts of the city stop rising, that could reverse or stall some aspects of the cycle of change.”

Much of that change during the past five years has been the result of millions of dollars in private investment, some by Wall Street companies. In recent years, so many banks sprouted up along 125th Street — more than 15 — that the city approved a zoning law this year that limits banks there. That legislation will also allow for high-rise office towers and some 2,100 new market-rate condominiums to be built on 125th, Harlem’s main artery, effectively transforming the predominantly low-rise avenue.

Representatives from Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, Washington Mutual, Merrill Lynch and A.I.G. — institutions that have foundered in various ways in recent months — have not returned calls seeking comment or have said it was too early to determine their investment and philanthropic strategies in Harlem.

Business owners in the neighborhood, however, are worried.

Lloyd Williams, president and chief executive of the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce, listed several troubling signs: an already high local unemployment rate is climbing, seasonal jobs with the Postal Service and department stores have not materialized, credit for small businesses has all but dried up, and construction and rehab work on brownstones has slowed considerably.

The other major concern is the loss of millions of dollars each year in charitable giving from the financial industry to community organizations, including schools and hospitals.

W. Franc Perry, chairman of Community Board 10, which covers central Harlem, said many of the grants came only after years of putting pressure on the companies.

“We have held these companies’ feet to the fire, told them, ‘If you want our dollars, you’ve got to help us out,’ and they’ve been helping,” Mr. Perry said. “Now, this is all so new. There are so many unanswered questions, including whether they will continue to invest in Harlem.”

Among the organizations that have benefited the most in recent years is Harlem Children’s Zone, which runs a variety of programs focused on improving the lives of children in the neighborhood.

Among its contributors have been A.I.G. and Lehman Brothers, which had pledged $3 million before its collapse last month. The status of the Lehman aid is unclear, but Mr. Canada, the nonprofit group’s president, said he might need to cut back.

The Apollo has been another favored recipient of Wall Street aid. Merrill Lynch underwrote tours for schoolchildren. Nadja Fidelia, a managing director at Lehman Brothers, became a member of the Apollo’s board of directors. Lehman had pledged $1 million to the Apollo’s education and outreach initiative.

This year, Washington Mutual became the primary sponsor of the theater’s 74-year-old talent contest when it was renamed WaMu’s Apollo Amateur Night. An Apollo spokeswoman declined to comment on the bank’s sponsorship or the future of the theater’s educational programs, which include literacy training and free nights out for poor families.

JPMorgan Chase, which bought Washington Mutual and Bear Stearns recently, has been active in Harlem philanthropy.

It now inherits a portfolio that includes, among other things, an after-school squash and tutoring program started by Bear Stearns; a pledge by Washington Mutual to establish home loan centers in underserved communities like Harlem; and Washington Mutual’s sponsorships of several neighborhood cultural institutions, including the annual Harlem Week celebration and the Dance Theater of Harlem.

A spokeswoman for JPMorgan Chase would not comment about the bank’s plans for the future.

The unusual confluence of Harlem and Wall Street might best be represented by a nonprofit lacrosse organization called CityLAX, whose board includes members of Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns.

Since 2005, the group, heavily supported by financial industry employees who grew up playing the game, has persuaded the city’s Department of Education to start lacrosse teams around the city, including in two Harlem public high schools, where most students had never heard of the sport.

The project is jointly financed: funds for equipment, transportation and playing fields comes from the group, and the coaches are paid by the school system. But since the failures of Lehman, Merrill and Bear, the future of the programs, at A. Philip Randolph Campus High School and Frederick Douglass Academy, are uncertain.

“Our work is vulnerable,” said Mathew J. Levine, president and chief executive of CityLAX. “A lot of our kids are not the elite athletes in the school, but this is a chance for them to play, so we’re pulling kids from the margins who would not necessarily be involved in an organized athletic activity. And we think that’s good.”


Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

[NYC4Life]

New York Amsterdam News

Phillip: Keeping the soul in Harlem




By CYRIL JOSH BARKER
Amsterdam News Staff

Published: Thursday, October 2, 2008 2:16 PM CDT
Phillip Bulgar, 44, is a lifelong resident of Harlem and a familiar face to those who frequent the Manna’s Restaurant location at 125th St. and Frederick Douglass Blvd., where he is assistant manager. But along with serving up some of the best soul food Harlem has to offer, he never lets his customers leave without giving them his opinion on social issues. "I'm a family man, but I do a lot for my community," said the father of two, speaking of the various causes he fights and advocates for, including Pan-African issues, education and the environment.

Born and raised in Harlem, Bulgar said he grew up during the neighborhood's dimmest hours in the 1970s, riddled with crime and drugs. Whenever he would take trips to down-town Manhattan via city bus, he saw a distinct difference between life below 110th Street. "At that time, the drug of choice in Harlem was heroin and I saw a lot of things that have stayed with me even today as adult," he said. "I saw the effects that drugs were having on Harlem, but you would never see that down-town. There was no urban blight. I was distinctly aware that there were two different worlds." Seeing the deterioration of Harlem back then inspired his need to be an activist, but a revelation came to him after reading Alex Haley's "The Autobiography of Malcolm X." Bulgar was given the book by a neighborhood elder when he was 17. "When I read about Malcolm's life, his words spoke to me in such a way that I still live by today. In this day and age, I try to live my life by doing some of the things he did for my people," he said. But today, one of the key causes he is fighting for is the gentrification of his beloved neighborhood. The ongoing development of new buildings and the destruction of small businesses have Bulgar fighting to save what he calls a "village." He said that, while he can visibly see the changes, he is bothered by the displacement of lifelong residents and small businesses. "I see what's going on in Harlem and it hurts me," he said. "It really hits me personally because I don't know if I will be able to afford where I live in the next few years. Where were these business people and developers when Harlem was crying out for help? Gentrification is a horrible thing and it tears the soul out of our communities." Bulgar continues to participate in all aspects of activism that he can throughout Harlem. He said that while a renaissance is good, people shouldn't be forced out. He continues to fight for fairness in his neighborhood and enjoys carrying on conversations with customers at Manna's, keeping patrons informed about the changes. "You can choose to be one of two things. You can choose to be free or be a slave, and I choose freedom," he said. "Freedom is not too much a physical state as it is mental."



Copyright © 2008 New York Amsterdam News

[NYC4Life]

New York Observer

Manhattan Inches Toward the $300K Condo

by Oliver Haydock | October 28, 2008




Nigel Holmes: Source: Property Shark


Harlem condo sales plunged a staggering 76 percent annually in the third quarter of 2008, from 237 closed deals last year to just 57 for the three months ending Sept. 30. That’s according to an analysis of data, provided by research Web site PropertyShark, on Manhattan condo deals between roughly 110th and 155th streets.

Despite the anemic sales volume, accounting for the paltriest sales quarter since the start of 2007, Harlem condo prices increased 3 percent year over year in the third quarter, rising to a median sales price of $598,000.

The slowdown in buying activity is opening a window for an oversaturation in the Harlem condo market, as several upscale projects like 119th & Third and Graceline Court at 106 West 116th Street are scheduled to open in the coming months. The guiding principles of economics would suggest that something has to give, and although prices are firm now, it appears price cuts are imminent.

“This almost looks like a complete crash; prices are going to have to drop,” said PropertyShark CEO Bill Staniford.

The prospect of a drop in Harlem condo prices almost seems unimaginable to brokers and developers, especially considering that prices uptown are already substantially lower than in the rest of Manhattan. The median sales price for a new uptown condo was $560,000 in the third quarter, whereas the median price for a downtown one was $1,275,000, according to the Corcoran Group.

But the possibility of substantial Harlem and East Harlem price chops has potential apartment buyers giddy at the reintroduction of a nearly extinct New York species: the newer $300,000 (and under) Manhattan condo.

It’s been at least four years since newer condos were common at those prices.

Mr. Staniford predicts Harlem condo prices will fall 20 to 25 percent in the near future. According to Corcoran, the median sales price for an uptown condo in a new development was $560,000 in the third quarter; a theoretical 25 percent price drop brings that figure down to $420,000. The same report found the median sales price for an uptown studio condo in a new development to be $450,000; reduce that by just 20 percent and buyers would have to pay only $360,000--or less.

In a brave new real estate world defined by stricter lending, that may be all that potential home buyers can afford, particularly in neighborhoods like Harlem, where developers and sellers depend primarily on buyers priced out of Manhattan’s more expensive neighborhoods.

Vie Wilson, an uptown-based senior vice president at Corcoran, attributes the slower uptown market to an uncertain economy rattled by the ongoing financial crisis: “There are still a lot of people out there looking, but they are not really pulling the trigger.”

Ms. Wilson declined to predict a price drop, noting, instead, that prices are frozen at their current levels and will eventually move (or stay the same) depending on how things play out in the economy and the credit markets.

“Developers and sellers are waiting to see what happens,” Ms. Wilson said.

With fewer buyers competing for more, often new condos, gone is the fear that, unless you buy now, some richer, more aggressive buyer with double your credit score and twice your annual bonus will swoop in and steal the apartment of your dreams. Buyers have more time to mull things over and, with looming price cuts, are probably asking themselves: Why buy now?

If Mr. Staniford of PropertyShark is right, and Harlem prices do fall by 20 or 25 percent in the next several months, who is to say they don’t keep falling and inch closer to $250,000 or $200,000 per condo in many cases?

Anthony DeVivio, the sales director in Halstead Property’s Harlem office, is as optimistic as Mr. Staniford is pessimistic about the condo market there and doesn’t predict any significant price softening in the future.

“There is no doubt that business has slowed down, but it’s still a healthy market up here, no doubt not as healthy as a year ago, but still healthy,” he said. If Mr. DeVivio is correct, developers can weather the slower market by offering a mix of more amenities and free upgrades in basic services and forestall any permanent price reductions.

The market is still unsettled, and developers, who will no doubt closely monitor the credit markets and the year-end Wall Street bonuses, have some time to plot their courses of action. If this slow Harlem condo market bleeds into next year, a continued tight credit market or a weak bonus season could lead to substantial price cuts not only uptown, but throughout Manhattan.

Just as unsettled is the interplay between Harlem’s newer condos and the traditional and long-established identity of the neighborhood. The area has seen rapid development during the prolonged real estate boom, and certain areas above 110th Street, like Hamilton Heights and Morningside Heights, are well past the emerging-neighborhood label.

At the same time, other uptown nabes, like Central and East Harlem, are hitting the financial crisis and credit crunch in an awkward transitional phase of gentrification.

Some people may no longer have the means to afford Harlem condo prices, and others, assuming there are price chops throughout the city, may look elsewhere and invest in other, suddenly more affordable neighborhoods. Brokers and real estate professionals working around Harlem are concerned about the direct and indirect ways a recession will impede future development in the area, but they remain cautiously optimistic that the newer condos will draw buyers.

“I think Harlem will still gentrify, but I don’t think it will be at the same pace,” Ms. Wilson of Corcoran said. “It won’t stop, because we’ve gone too far to stop.”

© 2008 Observer Media Group, All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

[brianac]

Hunter College School of Social Work to Move

By GLENN COLLINS
Published: October 27, 2008

With the help of the largest gift ever to the City University of New York, the Hunter College School of Social Work is moving uptown. The school will trade its tower on East 79th Street for a new $135 million building 39 blocks to the north in East Harlem.

Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
Third Avenue between 118th and 119th Streets, site of a $135 million building for the Hunter College School of Social Work.


Cooper, Robertson & Partners
A rendering of the planned Hunter College School of Social Work, looking from 119th Street.

In a multiparty real estate deal of byzantine complexity, the school’s current building will be sold, and $40 million of the proceeds, along with state construction funds, will be used for the larger, eight-story school building uptown. The graduate school, with 930 students, has occupied the building at 129 East 79th Street since 1969.

“We had to move out of the physical structure that didn’t work for us anymore,” said Jennifer J. Raab, president of Hunter College. “Now we’ll have a building to match our vision for the 21st century.”

The new school, to be called the Lois V. and Samuel J. Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College, after its benefactors, will be at Third Avenue from 118th Street to 119th Street, stretching west toward Lexington Avenue. The parcel now consists of a vacant lot and low-rise buildings; there are no residential tenants, Ms. Raab said. Small stores and restaurants on the site will be demolished.

Harlem is “exactly the right place in the city to build the school,” said Matthew Goldstein, the university chancellor. “Many of our students live in the Harlem area, and our faculty members are connected with Harlem and will be working with organizations that reside there. It made a tremendous amount of sense.”

As the city’s only public school for graduate training in social work, Hunter, with its $7,500 tuition, “will be very attractive to students in the community,” Dr. Goldstein said.

The school’s current building, leased by Hunter, was built and expanded with $5.675 million from the Lois and Samuel J. Silberman Fund. The Silbermans retained ownership of the land and tower in conjunction with the New York Community Trust, a nonprofit organization that oversees charitable gifts.

The trust and the Silbermans, after working out the plan in secrecy, have signed an agreement to sell the current school’s land and building for $65 million to a private developer, Daniel Brodsky of the Brodsky Organization.

They are to donate $40 million of that to help pay for construction of the new school; the university’s largest previous gift was $30 million for its Honors College in 2006.

Under a separate agreement, Mr. Brodsky will build the social work school at the new property and deliver it at cost, though he will receive a lump-sum fee for administrative expenses.

The developer can then build on the 79th Street site, subject to approval by the New York City Planning Commission. Ms. Raab said that the deal was structured so the developer would have to complete the school before building on the 79th Street property, an incentive to rapid construction.

The remaining $95 million for the new building will come from state education funds appropriated last spring. The leftover $25 million paid to the Silberman fund for the current building will be used to establish a program of social work grants “in perpetuity,” said Lorie A. Slutsky, president of the community trust.

The developer and his brokers found the property for the new building in East Harlem, and the university bought it for $23.5 million, closing on the land earlier this month. All stakeholders in the deal — the most complex the university has ever undertaken, according to Iris Weinshall, the school’s vice chancellor for facilities planning, construction and management — said it was not likely to be affected by the Wall Street crisis. Dr. Goldstein said he was confident that the project would go ahead because the $95 million from the state had already been appropriated.

And J. Dean Amro, a partner at the Brodsky Organization, said he did not foresee financing difficulties “because we are good for the $65 million; we are not borrowing any money.”

The Brodsky Organization has built, owns or manages 60 buildings in Manhattan, and has previously developed properties with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, the General Theological Seminary and St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center.

The community trust chose Mr. Brodsky because he was the highest bidder and “he has a good reputation and is civic-minded,” Ms. Slutsky said. Increasingly, Manhattan nonprofit groups have been involving developers in projects around the city.

On Tuesday, for example, St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan is to seek approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission for a plan to build a $1.6-billion medical tower and condominium that would require the demolition of five buildings in the Greenwich Village Historic District.

Mr. Brodsky is paying a premium price for the building on 79th Street — nearly $650 a square foot, according to Mr. Amro, who added, “We think that it is one of the great sites available on the Upper East Side.”

The New York Times
The property for the new building cost $23.5 million.

The new school will be built to the specifications of the university by the architect Cooper, Robertson & Partners, designer of the 2004 Columbia University School of Social Work.

A dozen developers were informed about the project but only several made bids because of the stipulation that they could not build on the 79th Street property for about three years after buying it, when the new school was occupied. They would also have to accept state-mandated construction and bidding rules required by the university.

The future building will devote about 10 percent of its space to the university’s new School of Public Health, which will share a library and other resources with the School of Social Work.

The university, which will not seek any zoning variances to build the new school, expects construction to begin this summer and hopes for completion by June 2011. The 142,000-square-foot building will have five large floors topped by three smaller floors set back, and will exceed the size of the current school by more than 32,000 square feet.

Unlike the current building, with its massive gray stone front, the new school is to have a large glass exposure on Third Avenue as well as community spaces and a public cafe. “The building will be physically welcoming,” Ms. Raab said, praising the community trust and the Silbermans for being the catalyst for the deal.

The new school “will be a bright spot for the city’s future in what could be a difficult economic time,” said Jayne M. Silberman, vice chairwoman of the Silberman fund.

As for the 79th Street site, Mr. Amro said that the Brodsky firm would most likely not have to seek zoning changes for a new residential building there — probably a luxury condominium. The current 10-story school rises to a height equivalent to that of an 18-story apartment building.

“We want to build an old-world-style residential building that would fit into its surroundings,” Mr. Amro said.

Mr. Silberman, a former president of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York in the 1960s, died in 2000 at the age of 84. His wife, Lois, 87, termed the deal “something he would have loved.”

Mr. Silberman was a fixture at the school in his later years, spending time with students and faculty members. “He had a passion,” Ms. Slutsky said, “to ensure that there would be a first-rate public social work school for the City of New York.”

By law, the state attorney general and the State Supreme Court must approve the trust’s sale of the current school, since the principal assets of the Silberman fund — the building and land — will be sold. “We are confident it will be approved,” said Jane L. Wilton, the general counsel of the community trust.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/28/ny...ref=commercial

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

[ablarc]

^ This is not in Harlem, right?

[Stroika]

Nowhere near it. It's in Williamsburg.