From red-line to renaissance

Things are looking up in Harlem, but some poor black families are being driven out by the neighborhood renewal.

By Keith Moore

Aug 2, 1999 | The news last week that New York political leaders finally resolved their differences and came up with a way to spend another $35 million of the $300 million in federal empowerment zone dollars allotted for Harlem and the South Bronx was more than welcome in those neighborhoods. The zone's board approved 13 projects, including $1 million to move a meat-processing plant from lower Manhattan to the South Bronx, $800,000 for an east Harlem museum and roughly $200,000 for the Highbridge Community Life Center in the Bronx.

But even without the new empowerment-zone spending, Harlem is clearly experiencing what some have called a second renaissance, referring to the area's legendary artistic and cultural flowering in the 1920s. Starbucks recently had a grand opening on West 125th Street and Lenox Avenue, and a new Pathmark supermarket, perhaps the first in a generation, has opened a few blocks away on Lexington Avenue. Harlem's first mall, featuring the Disney Store, HMV Records and a Magic Johnson-sponsored nine-screen movie theater, is scheduled to open at year's end.

A little over $1 billion has been pumped into Harlem housing in five years and has helped trigger a fledgling retail revolution, with outlets such as Blockbuster Video, Rite Aid and Duane Reade now becoming part of the West 125th Street main thoroughfare. That, together with a 60 percent lower crime rate, soaring rentals and upscale families pursuing reduced-priced brownstones, has led to high but wary optimism among Harlemites accustomed to having their hopes dashed.

"This is a Cinderella story about how to rehabilitate a neglected part of the city with a combination of public and private funding," said William Shanahan of Cushman Wakefield, a realty concern. Benjamin Fox, a partner in New Spectrum Realty, said, "Corporate executives are looking at Harlem in economic terms these days, not in racial terms."

"Harlem is hot and it's good for business," said Vie Wilson, a real estate broker with the upscale Corcoran Group. The neighborhood is about 25 minutes by subway to Wall Street, and although the two areas aren't ordinarily thought to share much, they are developing common ground, according to Spencer Means, a fellow Corcoran Group agent who says he's selling property to many Wall Streeters. His pitch is simple: Harlem is cheaper than other communities and it offers easy access to transportation.

But how long bargain basement townhouses will last is questionable. A townhouse that was $160,000 two years ago is now about $450,000, according to Wilson and other brokers in the area. Those rapidly escalating prices thrill realtors, of course, but worry locals who have lived in Harlem for years. Some acknowledge that while it's good to see improvement in the community, the pace of redevelopment frightens them.

"It's a double-edged sword," said Haskell Gray, 42, a corrections officer who was born in Harlem and has lived there all his life. Gray said he and his wife, Nina, a nurse, couldn't buy a brownstone in the 1980s because of red-lining by banks. Now loans for townhouses are readily available, but he can't afford the prices that are being asked. "What are you supposed to do? It's frustrating as all hell. It's good we're making improvement but I'm not sure most of us can afford it," Gray added.

The fact that some corporate leaders say Harlem is no longer being viewed in racial terms alarms some residents, who see Harlem being taken over by major developers and worry that there is little room for the small investor. "We should have a vehicle for investing in the community, but we don't," said David Givens, 41, who was born and raised in Harlem. "The way the system is working, either you are a major developer or you're not, and most of us are not. This is our community but we are not players."

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