Urbanities Volume 4 | No 2 - November 2014 - page 64

Urbanities, Vol. 4 · No 2 · November 2014
© 2014 Urbanities
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The construction of new housing in the areas surrounding 125th Street so far has not
even remotely made up for the amount of affordable units that are being lost because of recent
development pressures. By the end of 2013, phase 1 of the East Harlem Media Entertainment
and Cultural Center, a mixed-use megaproject at the corner of 3rd Avenue and East 125th
Street unveiled in 2008, has produced 49 ‘affordable’ units. These and the future units that
will be produced as part of the project will be affordable to families earning between 35,450
and 106,350 dollars — an income that is beyond the reach of most Harlem residents. So far,
these are the only ‘affordable’ units produced ‘on site’ at 125th Street since the rezoning was
adopted in 2008.
Commercial Gentrification
The process of commercial gentrification of 125th Street, boosted by the new developments
brought about by UMEZ funds in the late 1990s, has been steady since then, and only
escalated during the Bloomberg years. In the early 2000s, as the rezoning plan was in the
making, cases were reported of commercial rents along the thoroughfare soaring almost 500
per cent in the time of only one year (Boyd 2003). By 2005, average commercial rents along
the corridor had become comparable to those of the rest of Manhattan — the average asking
rent for retail space at 125th Street amounted to 90 dollars per square foot, compared to103
dollars per square foot for an average rent in Manhattan (REBNY 2005). After commercial
rents peaked in 2007, however, an abrupt drop marked the onset of the national recession,
which hit Harlem and other predominantly low-income neighbourhoods in the city
particularly hard. In 2008 and 2009, Harlem’s independent businesses experienced record
bankruptcies and foreclosures, which by 2009 resulted in a 37 per cent store vacancy rate in
some of Harlem’s main shopping strips (Neighbourhood Retail Alliance 2009), and in a 16
per cent vacancy rate along certain sections of 125th Street (see Ryley 2009). In 2009, the
Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce documented over 638 ground floor businesses that
had shut down in Harlem (Spitz 2009). Most of the boarded-up storefronts belonged to small
businesses that had been in the neighbourhood for decades. Many of these businesses were
forced to close because of the recession; others, unable to compete with large corporate retail,
or confronted with a changing customer base in the gentrifying neighbourhood, had no other
choice but to shut down (Hyra 2008: 104). At 125th Street, many were directly evicted by their
landlords who took advantage of zoning changes and rushed to vacate lots to build taller,
denser and more profitable buildings. The casualties include a number of stores that had
become cultural fixtures and that had served the community for decades. In 2007, Sigfeld
Group and Kimco Realty purchased a 50 million dollars 110-year-old building at 125th Street
and Frederick Douglass Boulevard with the intent of replacing it with a new mixed-use retail
and office complex. The 16 tenants forced to move included soul food restaurant Manna’s and
the Bobby’s Happy House music store (among the first African American-owned businesses
in Harlem). Business owners were told they had six months to vacate their premises and were
offered a paltry 5 thousand dollars for relocation costs (Mazor 2007). Several store owners
left immediately, while Manna’s and others filed a lawsuit against the developers and
eventually managed to settle for a restitution of over 1 million dollars (Pruitt 2010) before