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Major Issues for District 9




Criticism of New Hotel on 125th Street Lingers

February 18, 2005

By Tanangachi Mfuni

The Hotel Theresa was once known as the Waldorf=Astoria of Harlem. Playing host to guests like Muhammad Ali, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Malcolm X, and even Fidel Castro on his 1960 visit to the United Nations, the Hotel Theresa was both a place - and a player - in Harlem history.

But The Theresa closed in 1970, and since then Harlem has not had a full-service hotel - until now.

The Marriott Courtyard Hotel broke ground on the corner of 125th Street and Park Avenue on February 17, 2005. It is a $200 million hotel-complex with 222 guest rooms, offices, retail stores, 70 condos, a 367-car parking garage, and a health spa.

“I saw an opportunity of an up-and-coming community that needed world-class facilities,” said Michael Caridi, developer of the Marriott.

The Marriott Courtyard complex in Harlem will be part of what City Councilmember Melinda Katz, chair of the land use committee, describes as “an important step for the city to revitalize the neighborhood.”

The project is expected to create about 1,500 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent jobs, according to the company. And other hotels are already being proposed for Harlem, including a $103 million W Hotel with 156 rooms just a few doors down from the famous Apollo Theatre.

But critics like Harlem City Councilmember Bill Perkins say that the Marriott and apartments in the complex are too pricy for local residents. The Marriott apartments will sell for an estimated $600 per square foot, in a neighborhood where the average income is $17,000 per year.

“[It is] not affordable to the people in the neighborhood,” said Perkins.

“Real Estate prices have been escalating since the 1980s,” says Renee Calvo, owner of the Harlem Flophouse Bed and Breakfast, a brownstone on West 123rd Street that has been around since 1917. “Only people with big money can come here.”

Some locals also worry that the Marriott’s 34-floor glass skyscraper will be an eyesore among 125th Street’s mid-sized brick and concrete buildings, even though it was reduced from 550 feet to 478 feet in negotiations between the developers, the community board, and the City Council.

While Caridi hopes the hotel complex, which is nearby Harlem’s Metro North Station, will accommodate tourists, others say the hotel should primarily serve the needs of the people already in the community.

“We are interested in building Harlem for Harlemites,” said Lloyd Williams President of the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce.“ The Marriott Courtyard will complement tourism, but of greater importance will be a meeting facility and gathering facility for people who live in the Harlem community.”

Related:
Harlem Marriott Is a Go

Ground Broken on $236 Million Hotel on 125th Street





Will 125th Street Become A Canyon Of Towers?

October 1, 2004

By Eliza Strickland

The City Planning Commission has recommended the building of a 29-story tower called the Harlem Park Hotel on the corner of 125 Street and Park Avenue. The proposed building would house a mix of residential, commercial and hotel space.

If the City Council follows the City Planning Commission’s recommendation, the Harlem Park Hotel will be the first commercial high-rise on 125th Street.

The project gives many Harlem residents the jitters. “I think it’s too high for Harlem,” says Daniel Perez, who chaired a central Harlem committee on land use last year. “[The Harlem Park Hotel rezoning] is already done so there’s nothing we can do, but we want to keep it from happening elsewhere in our neighborhood.”

At the Harlem Business Economic Summit, Harlem residents and small business owners expressed their fears that the Harlem Park Hotel rezoning will spark a new round of rezoning that will cause towers to sprout all along 125 Street. Perez and others say that high rises would overshadow the street's sunlit sidewalks.

The focus of concern is the “River to River Study,” which the Department of City Planning is conducting in cooperation with economic and development agencies throughout Harlem. Perez is sure the study, which will examine commercial conditions on 125 Street and make recommendations for future development, will champion rezoning the street. “There’s going to be some rezoning, there’s no question about it,” he says. “The question is what kind of rezoning it’s going to be.”

Rachaele Raynoff, the Department of City Planning’s press secretary, says that residents are leaping to conclusions. “The 125th street River to River Study is still in the preliminary stages.”

Raynoff says that for now, the department is simply gathering information about what the community would like to see happen on Harlem’s main commercial corridor. “It’s a big, big consensus-building effort,” she says. As for rezoning, “that may or may not be determined to be a good direction to go."

But few in the Harlem business community seem to have any doubts as to the direction 125 Street is headed: up. “I think at some point in time 125th street is going up,” says Keith McHenry, president of the Harlem Business Alliance. “Sooner or later, we will see high-rise buildings.”

Currently, the largest buildings on 125 Street include the 20-story Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building, and the 14-story building at 55 W. 125 St., where former President Bill Clinton keeps his office. The rest of the corridor is low lying, with most buildings ranging from three to six stories in height.

The Unfortunate 1000?
City Councilmember Bill Perkins, who represents Harlem, expects the River to River Study to propose new zoning for 20 or 30-story buildings along 125 Street. He admits he has mixed feelings about that prospect. “I’m not against upzoning,” he says, “or any other tool that the government has to help business. The question is, who’s going to benefit?

“Upzoning has the potential to be valuable,” Perkins continues, “but we have to be sure it benefits the community and local businesses. You have people saying, ‘oh, if we upzone we can get the Fortune 500 in there.’ Well, I don’t represent the Fortune 500. I maybe represent the unfortunate 1000.”

Not all recent rezoning projects in Harlem have met with community resistance. Last September, a 14-block stretch of Frederick Douglass Boulevard became a “contextual zoning district,” which prohibits towers that would be out of scale with the surrounding neighborhood, and limits buildings to 12 stories. Last June, a similar plan was adopted in East Harlem for parts of First, Second and Third avenues.

These contextual zoning initiatives have been a success, says Lionel McIntyre, an associate professor at Columbia University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. “It preserves the aspects of Harlem that people wanted to carry forward,” he says.

McIntyre says mid-sized buildings maintain a connection to street life, and nourish the neighborly interactions that keep the community healthy. Walk along Frederick Douglass Boulevard, he says, and it’s obvious that contextual zoning works. “Enough has been built along Frederick Douglass to say it has a good feel to it,” he says.

In contrast, Harlem residents fear tall, glossy, glass and steel corporate towers that would shade 125 Street’s sidewalks, squelch small businesses and turn Harlem’s historic main street into another midtown.

125th Street Is Special
City officials are quick to say this will never happen. “We know 125th Street is special,” says Nicole Poindexter of the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development. “It can’t look like 34th Street, it can’t look like 42nd Street.”

Poindexter adds that much of the street’s character comes from the shops that line the thoroughfare, and said the River to River Study will address the concerns of those business owners. “We need to find ways to encourage property owners to keep small businesses on the street,” she says.

But these are the very people who already feeling discouraged, says Derwy McCoy of HarlemUSA.com, a Web site that promotes Harlem businesses. “A lot of small businesses feel they’re being left out by this economic boom, this renaissance.” They blame the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone initiative, begun in 1994, which has been credited with bringing about Harlem’s commercial revival by enticing retail chains, banks and grocery stores to Harlem’s abandoned streets and avenues. While its success has been celebrated by the city, many residents grumble that the program quickly devolved from a community empowerment program into a system of corporate tax breaks, which gave locals only minimum wage jobs.

“It was a pure, unadulterated commercial venture at Harlem’s expense,” says McIntyre. “It had nothing to do with the growth and development of local businesses, entrepreneurs and dreamers.”

Not everyone agrees with this assessment. Alinda Mitchell, co-owner of the Edifice Elite realty company, says the pros of Harlem’s commercial development outweigh the cons. “It’s for the good,” says Mitchell. “With commercial business coming in, now people don’t have to leave the community to go grocery shopping.” Mitchell also says she’s looking forward to seeing high rises on 125 Street. “It’s good for the economy, it’s a good look for Harlem,” she says. “In the next two years you’re really going to see this neighborhood start to shine. We have a lot of tour buses rolling through Harlem, in a few years they’ll have a lot more to look at.”





A Community Institution Expands

August 6, 2004

By Josh Nathan-Kazis

Many residents were delighted to learn of the planned $236-million renovation of century-old Harlem Hospital, which has won kudos recently for the quality of its care. But few believe that Harlem Hospital alone -- or any hospital, no matter how modern -- can solve the serious health problems facing the community.

When the project is completed, three outdated buildings will have been torn down, and a new facility will have been constructed on Lenox Avenue between 136th and 137th streets. Rooms in the bed tower of the Martin Luther King Pavilion will have been completely gutted and refurbished, and all three of the hospital?s main buildings will have been connected for ease of travel.

The planned renovation, funded with $225.5 million in city money and another $11 million secured by U.S. Representative Charles Rangel, will take five years.

"When finished, Harlem Hospital will be among the most technologically advanced hospitals ? public or private ? in the city," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement. "The modernization project will allow for growth and change to meet the community?s diverse medical needs."

But some worry that the hospital expansion will not address some of those needs.

Harlem has an astoundingly high rate of childhood asthma. A recent study, coordinated in part by Harlem Hospital, found that 25 percent of children in a 24-block area in Central Harlem had asthma, compared to five to seven percent of the entire American public. Northern Manhattan also has the highest asthma hospitalization rate in New York City.

To explain this, many medical experts and environmentalists point to the six bus depots in the area. Four depots for sanitation vehicles, an outdoor parking lot for sanitation trucks and two diesel-fueled sewage treatment plants are also nearby. Many people in the community say that the pollution produced by these facilities makes Harlem?s children sick.

Beyond asthma, Harlem faces a number of acute health problems, including lead poisoning and obesity. Lead poisoning tends to be high in poor city neighborhoods that, like Harlem, have a lot of older housing, while obesity is linked to poverty -- low-income people tend to eat more junk food ?- and a lack of open green space for exercise. Harlem also deals with high levels of certain types of cancer, sickle cell anemia, and AIDS.

"There?s a unique health burden up here," says Cecil Corbin-Mark, Program Director at WeACT, the West Harlem Environmental Action Network. "It?s certainly, we think, triggered in part by the presence of the types of polluting facilities that are here."

Corbin-Mark is concerned that the orientation of Harlem Hospital, and of hospitals in general, limits their effectiveness in dealing with such health issues. "Medical schools train doctors to treat people," he says. "They are not into the necessary paradigm of prevention."

Despite such issues, the neighborhood views Harlem Hospital with pride. The facility went through difficult times in the 1990s when the Giuliani administration laid off hospital employees and sharply reduced the number of beds. But in the last few years, it has been recognized as one of the top medical centers in the area by a hospital accreditation commission.

And Harlem Hospital offers a number of programs for the prevention of environmentally related illnesses. These include the Harlem Children?s Zone Asthma Initiative, which ran the comprehensive surveys of children in the area and helps provide an array of services to families of children with asthma.

The modernization project is not designed to provide for any new programs of this kind. But many residents welcome the improvements nonetheless. When the board that created the plan presented it at a meeting, the response from those attending was positive, said David Weaver, a vice president of the hospital?s community advisory board. "I think, like most [meetings], people had come to criticize. But there was nothing to criticize, " he said.

Joy Wessler, the director of the Commission on the Public Health System, a private group, is among those generally pleased with the modernization plan. "Harlem Hospital?s plan is the best of several worlds," she said. Still, she believes it will not solve all problems. "The needs are tremendous," she said. "No hospital in and of itself will address those needs."

Related Story:
The Urban Health Challenge
Issue of The Week (August 9, 2004)





Harlem: Moving Off 125th Street

March 19, 2004

By David McGoy

On a chilly March afternoon, there is very little activity at the Shabazz Vendors Market on 116th Street and Lenox Avenue. Groups of rambunctious children traipse through on their way home from school. An occasional shopper stops here and there, but the market is mainly populated only by the vendors, who sit by their booths, eager to pitch their wares to the next passer by.

Ten years ago, Harlem street vendors were embroiled in a heated feud with storeowners on 125th Street. The resolution, brokered by then Business Commissioner Rudy Washington, relocated the vendors to a new location, an open air market nine blocks south of the area’s commercial hub. Now the disputes over street vending have moved downtown to Ground Zero and Times Square, and things in Harlem are relatively quiet. Too quiet, according to some of the vendors.

“The people just don’t have money, and if they do, they don’t come to shop,” said Bilal Mohammed, who was among the 125th Street vendors who moved in when the Shabazz Vendor’s Market was established in October 1994. “We did much better on 125th Street,” added his wife and business partner Angelique.

Disheartened by a long, lean winter, Mohammed says that he -- like many of the vendors in the market -- is struggling to make the rent on his booth, which can range from $84 to $154 a week, depending on the location. He and his wife sell sculptures and crafts imported from West Africa in one of the prime spots close to the market’s entrance. They believe that the poor economy and community apathy have played a big part in their struggles.

“When it first opened it was new and different, but it’s been going down ever since,” said Mohammed. “We do well in the summer and around the holidays, but it is difficult to stretch it out.”

There are efforts to bring traffic to the market. In the summer, the Harlem Business Outreach Center, which operates the market, coordinates events such as fashion shows and talent shows to draw potential customers. It is also a stop for the tour buses that bring tourists from midtown hotels to Harlem landmarks such as Sylvia’s restaurant, the Apollo, and Masjid Malcolm Shabazz, the mosque of the late Malcolm X.

The market faces “an uphill climb, but it can work,” said Dawud Muhammad, administrative director of the outreach center, pointing out that even in the leanest of times, at least 80 percent of the vendor spaces have been occupied. (There are currently 90 vendors and only six empty booths). “This market is a big part of the community.”

The center seeks to help entrepreneurs make the transition from vendors to store owners. It offers a variety of business development services such as business plan writing, financial planning, bookkeeping and inventory control. A new workshop, called Business American Style, is designed to bridge a cultural gap that he believes is one cause the predominantly African vendors’ struggles.

“This is not supposed to be a permanent situation [for the vendors]. We want them to move to the next level, so they can become the next store owner on 125th Street,” said Muhammad. “It is a natural progression, but many of them are not ready.”

Meanwhile, some business people say that street vendors have been trickling back onto Harlem’s main strip. “For the past two or three years, there have been more and more [vendors] on the street,” said Moira McDonald, an employee of African Paradise, which is located near the intersection of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue. “It’s a matter of economics. People have to eat.”

A decade ago, storeowners complained about overcrowded sidewalks and poor maintenance on the part of the vendors. But McDonald does not see these same problems returning, thanks mainly to the presence of the 125th Street Business Improvement District, which provides, among other things, sanitation and street maintenance and works to stimulate economic growth along the historic thoroughfare. She also believes that the vendors are more sensitive to the concerns of the storeowners. “I don’t see the same problems arising as before,” she said. Most of the vendors sell literature and the like, and so their presence on the street is protected by the First Amendment.

While empathizing with the plight of the street vendors, McDonald points out that they are not the only ones who are struggling. “Things are bad for everyone,” she said. “People just aren’t spending like they used to.”

Related:

Pushcart Wars by Joshua Brustein
Selling Hotdogs, Getting Ticketed by Anwar Hussein
Selling Jewelry, Spending the Night in Jail by Aeisha





St. Thomas The Apostle: End Of An Era

December 12, 2003

By Joshua Morales

Since 1907, St. Thomas the Apostle Roman Catholic Church on 118th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue has been a haven for Catholics in Harlem. So when the New York Archdiocese decided to close the church last summer, the members - some who had been attending for more than 50 years - did not take the news well.

Each Sunday, parishioners still gather to say prayers outside their padlocked building.  On Wednesdays, they protest in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral in midtown Manhattan, carrying picket signs and chanting "Save St. Thomas."  Parishioners from St. Ann's on East 110th Street have also joined in the protests.

"We've received a great deal of support from the community," said Monica Aska-Braggs of the Harlem Preservation Foundation, whose mother is a member of St. Thomas the Apostle.

Aska-Braggs and others hope to have the church declared an official New York City landmark, which could influence the archdiocese to reopen it or at least prevent the building from being demolished.

The final church service was held on August 3, 2003, which reportedly came as a shock to some who arrived to worship the following week, only to find the building doors padlocked. Parishioners said there had been talk of closing the church and their priest of 23 years left in June, but that they were never given an exact date nor were they told where they should go to attend Mass.

"They just locked the doors and left," Kenneth Baker, a parishioner, told the New York Times.

The closing of St. Thomas is part of a larger plan by the archdiocese to assess its 413 parishes, looking at issues like where worshipers live, church attendance, and community and historical issues. Like many religious institutions, the Roman Catholic Church in New York City is struggling with a declining membership and increasing costs of maintaining buildings.

"We are evaluating the needs of the city and what changes might have to be made by merging smaller parishes or closing others," said Joseph Zwilling, spokesperson for the archdiocese.

Earlier this year, two downtown Manhattan Catholic churches with small congregations, Our Lady of Guadalupe and St. Bernard's, both on West 14th Street, merged.

"Of course, mortar is not more important than human beings," said Kent Barwick of the Municipal Art Society, an organization that advocates for historic preservation.  "However, for a big [religious] institution that holds multiple properties in the city, it is perfectly responsible for them to take stock of what their needs are."

The archdiocese said the congregation had shrunk to fewer than 200 members, and St. Thomas - built at the turn of the century for an Irish immigrant community - can seat 1,000. The church also needs $5 million in repairs, scaffolding has been erected to cover the building's deteriorating facade, and cracks are visible on the exterior of the building.  

For a site or a building to be designated as a landmark, it must possess "a special character or special historical or aesthetic interest," and many believe St. Thomas fits that description. The church is known for its German pipe organ (reportedly one of only four of its kind in the world), and its Gothic architecture, which inspired one architectural critic to call it "one of the most unusual and special churches in New York City."

However, it can often take years to declare a site an official landmark, especially if the owners of the building object.

"The Catholic Archdiocese, in general, has an anti-landmark policy," said Simeon Bankoff of the Historic Districts Council. "They don't have the congregations that they used to and they are closing churches in underserved communities."

Aska-Braggs admits she faces an uphill battle to re-open the church.  "Papers are being filed, but it doesn't look good," she said.

Zwilling said that the archdiocese has made no definite decision about future uses for the church or the property.

Also In This Series:

Bowne Street Community Church: Adapting To The Times
(Flushing, Dist. 20)

West-Park Presbyterian: Neighbors Come To The Rescue
(Upper West Side, Dist. 6)

Shearith Israel: Preserving The Past Or Shaping The Future?
(Central Park West, Dist. 6)

Religion and Historic Preservation
(Overview)





High AIDS Rates

October 3, 2003

Harlem has the most new AIDS cases each year of any New York neighborhood -- 236.6 per 100, 000 people. Though Chelsea-Clinton is a close second, Harlem has nearly three times as many AIDS deaths per year. Community leaders attribute this to poor access to healthcare and a lack of AIDS education in Harlem.



Commercial Rents Rise

October 3, 2003

Commercial rents are increasing sharply in the area around 125th Street as many large businesses, including the Magic Johnson Theater, Pathmark and the Disney Store, open there. The new large businesses have contributed to Harlems economic improvement and increase in tourism, but many residents worry that Harlem is losing its distinct character.




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ALL DISTRICT 9 MAJOR ISSUES
Criticism of New Hotel on 125th Street Lingers
(Feb 18, 2005)

Will 125th Street Become A Canyon Of Towers?
(Oct 01, 2004)

A Community Institution Expands
(Aug 06, 2004)

Harlem: Moving Off 125th Street
(Mar 19, 2004)

St. Thomas The Apostle: End Of An Era
(Dec 12, 2003)

High AIDS Rates
(Oct 03, 2003)

Commercial Rents Rise
(Oct 03, 2003)

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