The Eminent Domain

The City Economic Development Corporation’s four years of careful engagement with Harlem’s local civic organizations around plans to rezone most of 125th Street for new retail and housing development appeared to yield results on Wednesday morning, as the City Planning Commission held a hearing on the proposal.

One group that weighed in, Voice Of The Everyday People (VOTE People), disapproves of the plan entirely and urged EDC to go back to the drawing board, with a larger and more inclusive advisory body from the community. But for the most part, Community Boards 9, 10, and 11 have gotten behind the plan, expressing specific reservations but supporting the overall goal of rezoning and revitalizing Harlem. Accordingly, much of the testimony at the hearing centered on ideas for making a rezoned 125th Street work for Harlem and its residents and businesses. Of special concern was the inevitability — acknowledged by the City in its own Environmental Impact Statement — that rezoning will displace existing businesses.

Carlton Berkeley, a retired police officer and longtime Harlem resident, summed up the reason that so many of his neighbors are resistant to development: “Walking along 125th Street…I saw 7 banks in half a block. I never knew Harlem had that much money!” he quipped, eliciting appreciative laughter from the audience.

Many of the morning’s speakers offered concrete suggestions for how City Planning Commission could move the rezoning forward while preventing gentrification and displacement.

David Cuttier of the Homeowners Association of East Harlem encouraged the commission to incorporate a proposal from Community Board 10, which provides explicit protections for local business owners and includes a bonus of greater building sizes for developers who hire Harlem residents for jobs.

Community Board 10 Chairman Frank Perry argued that the best way to preserve Harlem’s commercial character is to keep residential development out of 125th Street: “It is not and should not be a residential enclave.” Perry called for all residential upzoning along 125th Street be removed from the plan, a suggestion that appeared to spark the Commission’s interest. Commissioners Nathan Leventhal, Karen Phillips, and Angela Cavaluzzi questioned Perry at length about possible ways to stimulate arts and commercial development without significant upzoning. Perry insisted that commerce along 125th Street would develop naturally as rising rents below 96th street forced small business owners into Harlem, and that residential upzoning should be limited to 124th and 126th Streets.

125th Street Business Improvement District Chairman Eugene Giscombe pointed to what many residents see as the most serious threat to their neighborhood: national retailers that would follow the rezoning into Harlem. “People do not come from all over the world to see a chain drugstore,” he said. He also encouraged the Commission to build long-term developer accountability into the plan: “You need to manage a lot of these proposals,” he said. “Often, after ten years or five years or two years, it’s something different” from what developers originally promised.