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Mixed feelings over Harlem's gentrification
The Apollo Theater in Harlem.
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Kai Ryssdal: For the first time in 40 years, one of New York City's most famous neighborhoods has a major new hotel to boast about. Harlem hasn't had a brand-name place to stay since the 1960s. Starwood Hotels has broken that dry spell with a new boutique chain: the Aloft hotel in Harlem opened just after New Year's. But the controversy over what the new development is doing to the area has been brewing for a while.
Marketplace's Janet Babin reports.
Janet Babin: I'm waiting for a tour of the Aloft Hotel in what I assume is the lobby. But the hip, tech-savvy travelers the hotel is trying to attract, equate lobbies with waiting -- bad.
Here's Aloft's sales director Aleks Truglio.
Aleks Truglio: So instead of a lobby, we have the Remix area, and that is comprised of the Aloha Desk, our check-in area...
Aloha is the standard staff greeting.
Truglio: Aloha, Adrian.
Truglio shows me a typical room, spacious by Manhattan standards. Nine-foot ceilings and a clear view of Harlem's iconic Apollo Theater.
Announcer at the Apollo Theatre: Show time at the Apollo!
The last hotel in Harlem, the Theresa, catered to Apollo performers who were shut out of other Manhattan hotels. The Theresa closed in 1967. Over the next two decades, drugs and crime moved into the neighborhood and blacks who could afford to moved out.
Columbia University professor Lance Freeman says it took Harlem another decade to begin its recovery.
Lance Freeman: Probably starting in the late 1990s you really start to see gentrification happening, people buying and refurbishing brownstones, opening up restaurants or boutiques.
Now, fueled in part by rising rents in the rest of Manhattan, the latest Harlem renaissance is underway. Starwood Hotels VP Brian McGuinness says Harlem can attract tourists who'd normally stay in Midtown.
Brian McGuinness: Harlem is a dynamic neighborhood, and certainly it's up-and-coming. It made sense to go into an emerging neighborhood, you know, introducing the new Harlem and being part of rewriting the next chapter of history for that area.
But some Harlem residents say they're the ones who should rewrite that chapter. Not long before The Aloft opened, a group called the Harlem Tenants Council led a small protest against gentrification -- that is, the displacement of locals by wealthy buyers who want to snatch up Harlem property.
Organizer Nellie Hester Bailey says the Aloft Hotel is an example of predatory development.
Nellie Hester Bailey: Landlords and developers have targeted Harlem to develop luxury housing far beyond the means of Harlem residents.
Rooms at the Aloft average about $240 a night. The building's condos sell for $340,000 to more than $1 million.
A few blocks over from the Aloft, celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson recently opened a new restaurant, the Red Rooster.
Marcus Samuelsson: You have the mushrooms there?
On a busy Monday night, Samuelsson prepped his staff for VIPs.
Marcus Samuelsson: So like, Charlie Rose is coming in today. So it's not just "Hi, welcome," it's like "Welcome back Mr. Rose," right?
Samuelsson, who is of Ethiopian and Swedish descent, says gentrification doesn't have to be about exclusion. He hopes old and new Harlem mingle at the Red Rooster.
Samuelsson: You can sit in the bar, have a beer and have cornbread, and we're going to treat you just as good as the person that is super VIP and pays $300.
And at a time when African Americans face higher jobless rates than the national average, the Aloft Hotel and the Red Rooster have hired locals. More than half of the restaurant's employees live in Harlem.
Gentrification's effect on a neighborhood is hard to measure. And plenty of Harlem residents welcome the new businesses. Clemmie Rice has been here for eight years. He passes the Red Rooster on his way home from work.
Clemmie Rice: You know, you're going to have some negative people that are going to feel that they disagree with it, but then you're going to have a lot of people that's in the area, that think that it's a great thing, and I'm one of them that feel it's a great thing.
Dinner guests have begun to gather at the restaurant. But tonight, the crowd is thicker at a tiny storefront just a few doors down, a reminder of a less-glamorous Harlem. The store's red neon sign blares "Checks Cashed."
In New York, I'm Janet Babin for Marketplace.
The problem is when large big box corporations, owned by people outside Harlem, get tax breaks from the Harlem BID, and move in. They don't pay a living wage and take their profits outside the community. Meanwhile, the neighborhood hardware store who lives in the community and has been really committed to the neighborhood and everyone lives in the community and the money stays in the community, can't compete against the govt subsidized Home Depot and goes out of business. The NYS Economic Devlpt Corp and Harlem BID folks all went to the same Ivy League schools as the Big Box retailers and live in the same suburbs, and do not care about local Harlem retailers much less creating a sustainable, stable business environment. That is gentrification, using tax money (including Harlem residents taxes) for non-Harlem big businesses, to wipe out neighborhood mom & pop Harlem businesses.
I have a deep seated struggle to understand the complaints of these local advocates who are against gentrification. I think these local advocates are misguided and need to refocus on what makes Harlem special. Where were they during the plight that got us to where we have to gentry? Here is my story: I moved into a redeveloped brownstone four years ago. I was one of the few white young professionals to move in on my street. My brownstone was an abandoned, former crack and illegal gambling house for 20 years. Now it serves as a beautiful, affordable, four family condo. Additionally, I know and love my neighbors on my street. I never knew my neighbors when I lived on the upper east side. Here I live in a truly diverse and friendly community. Most people in my circle look at me cross-eyed when I tell them I live in Harlem. They think it is dirty, dangerous, and unwelcoming and this stems from the plight that hit this area and perpetuated into our minds, and rightly so. Harlem was a dangerous place to live (anyone here see that Denzel Washington 1970s drug lord movie??). I do not understand local advocates who are against gentrification. It is the only way to get out of the mess Harlem was once in, the only way to restore Harlem's famed past, and the only way the hotel, my brownstone, and all the redevelopments could be possible. Where were these local advocates who are protesting gentrification all these years when these lots were boarded up, abandoned, empty and plaguing the community? What have they done to stop the tide and turn the tide that took place over the past 20 to 30 years that ruined much of Harlem? The best thing that can happen to Harlem, is exactly what is going on. These advocates should focus on what truly makes Harlem unique: protect landmarks, retain the rich Afro-American history, support and encourage Harlem culture, music, literature, and dance scene, the cuisines, etc. That is Harlem and that is what they need to advocate for. The burden is on us to keep the Afro-Harlem spirit alive and support it is through the daily life on the street and in the faces of the people. Otherwise we will become another Soho or West Village and we do not need another one of those. Gentrification is not the problem, having the need to gentrify in the first place is the problem.
I think that I am one of the most active advocates for human rights currently out there. I can place my finger right on the change or challenges (includes a stop in its tracks)that have occured in Harlem over the last several years and see my thumbprint. So what you're about to read in not ranting.
A lot of big things could have happened in Harlem for Black folk but the powers in control did not want to see that happen. Still don't. So a lot of what [we] call gentrification is just that. Gentrification, which technically is illegal.
You can't push a particular group of people out by zoning measures and put in another group of people, which come in as a result of such zoning. That is a clear violation of the law. Giving everyone a fair opportunity and having change happen like that, well you won't get a complaint out of me over that.
But that's not what you call gentrification. Letting certain people develop and demolish without permits and messing with vendors who don't have permits, I got a problem with that. So let's call it what it really is.
Local Harlemites aren't looking to stay at the overpriced Aloft Hotel in this economic depression. With high unemployment at crisis levels in Harlem and gentrification driving up rents people are looking for jobs that pay a living wage. Most of the corporate entities moving into Harlem are looking for a cheap labor market with no union affiliation. And finally time will tell if the Aloft Hotel survives on the specious hope that tourists will prefer Harlem to downtown when if fact the hotel business in NYC has slowed down. There are now three major hotels scheduled for development on Harlem's 125th main commercial corridor. How will the Aloft fare in the future? These are the most relevant points I made in the interview with Babin that she chose to exclude.
A few months before this new hotel opened up there was a new law passed by Governor Paterson,that made B&B's and vacation rentals illegal in the state of NY. It was backed by the hotel lobby.52% of NYC hotels lost money last year and the tourist business in NYC is booming.Janet Babin is a journalist or a puppet?
In order for a place to remain relevant is must evolve.Harlem is evolving! Please don't confuse evolution under the umbrella gentrification. It is complex with many layers. You don't complain about ebb and flow of the ocean. You either swim, sink, drown, float or coast. We have choices. The neighborhood is changing, that is just a common fact. You can get involved and influence the process or complain and watch that you are not included. We are all growing. Allow this neighborhood to grow too!
