125th street rezoning

The City Council is expected to approve a modified plan to rezone 125th Street to allow for denser residential and commercial development today, but the rezoning’s most vocal opponents are not giving up the fight.

The Coalition to Save Harlem is mounting its umpteenth protest against the plan, which they contend “falls woefully short of what is needed for the future development of Harlem," outside the City Council’s legislative building at noon.  read more »

Buoyed by a set of concessions and modifications hammered out in the past few days, the Bloomberg administration’s plan to rezone 125th Street is set to sail through the City Council, as a key subcommittee voted to approve the plan today.

Key to winning support was a boost in the amount of affordable housing added to the proposal. The city’s original plan unveiled last year allowed for about 500 units or 20 percent of the total new housing to be considered affordable; in the accord reached today between local Council Member Inez Dickens and the city, 46 percent of the housing would be affordable.

This theme has made appearances before, as in an age of soaring property values, the concept of affordable housing wins many friends, especially at the last minute. Columbia University agreed to a $150 million community benefits agreement, much to go to affordable housing, just before the vote of its contentious West Harlem rezoning; in the Greenpoint-Williamsburg rezoning, the city boosted the amount of sub-market rate housing from about 20 percent to about 30 percent before the Council vote; and Sheldon Solow committed to hundreds of affordable units in seeking approval for his apartment complex planned to rise south of the United Nations.

   read more »

Word that a key City Council subcommittee had approved the rezoning of 125th Street this morning had just started to make its way up to Harlem by the time an “Emergency Demonstration and Rally” organized by a group of neighborhood street merchants began at 3.

Vendors had been passing out fliers for the rally that advised local City Councilwoman Inez Dickens to “Do the Right Thing!! Vote No against the 125th Street rezoning” all morning and continued well after the subcommittee's vote ensured the rezoning's passage by the full Council.

The first protestors started to gather in the plaza at Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard at 2:50, wearing sandwich boards with slogans like “Freedom is economic,” and “We have a right to earn a living.” A middle-aged woman railed against Mayor Bloomberg through a megaphone. “We are not going anywhere, Mayor Bloomberg. This is not your land.”  read more »

About 100 people turned up at a rally in Harlem on Saturday aimed at blocking the Bloomberg administration’s plan to rezone 125th Street to allow for denser residential and commercial development. But the rally quickly turned into an omnibus protest about everything from Columbia’s Harlem expansion to Robert Mugabe’s teetering government in Zimbabwe.

The Coalition to Save Harlem planned to create a human chain stretching across 125th Street from Second Avenue to Broadway. In the end, “Hands Across Harlem” only spanned about one block of the area to be rezoned, from Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard to Lenox Avenue, though we heard one organizer remark that it was a “pretty good turnout.”  read more »

The Coalition to Save Harlem is planning on Saturday to create a human chain stretching the entire length of 125th Street to protest the city's plan to rezone the neighborhood's main commercial corridor.

Dubbed “Hands Across Harlem," the demonstration is one of dozens of local protests aimed at halting the rezoning proposal that was approved by the City Planning Commission in March before it comes up for a City Council vote this month.  read more »

Ronald McDonald walked onto the stage of the Apollo Theater on Wednesday night to introduce the first two performers during the venue's weekly Amateur Night.

The handful of young children in the audience were delighted, but others seemed confused by the appearance of such an incongruous corporate mascot on the hallowed Harlem stage.  read more »