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February 23, 2011
BLIGHTED AREA? NOT AT ALL!
Welcome to Harlem
Damon Bae’s commercial laundry on Third Avenue in East Harlem may never be mistaken for the kind of glamorous businesses found near Wall Street, Times Square or Madison Avenue, but it is a thriving concern in this neighborhood of three- and four-story buildings and vacant lots.
The laundry, Fancy Cleaners, serves the five dry cleaning stores Mr. Bae owns in Manhattan, and the small retail dry-cleaning operation he opened inside the laundry has attracted customers from Harlem and beyond in the five years since he moved here from Murray Hill.
“I didn’t expect such a huge volume,” Mr. Bae said. “There aren’t many residential buildings nearby. But you offer a good price, and people will find you. You should see the line on Saturdays. I’ve even got people coming from the Bronx.”
But Mr. Bae, and more than a half-dozen other small-business owners in this neighborhood bound by Second and Third Avenues, from 125th to 127th Streets, are waging an uphill fight to hold onto their property. The Bloomberg administration has so far moved successfully in the courts to condemn six acres on behalf of a big developer for a $700 million East Harlem Media, Entertainment and Cultural Center.
“I think that the city is going to take away our properties and businesses so they can make another developer with deeper pockets a lot of money,” Mr. Bae said.
...Many of the business owners knew that a large stretch of the area was included in a 150-block urban renewal effort that was approved in 1968 but never quite materialized. But property owned by at least three of the businessmen was not included in the renewal zone, at least not until 2008, when the Bloomberg administration added those parcels to the mix.
At the time, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg hailed the creation of jobs and housing, and the city justified taking the private property by declaring the area “blighted” — a description that Mr. Bae and the other business owners found galling.
The city owned most of the land, allowing it to sit fallow for decades while turning down Mr. Bae and other business owners who wanted to buy parcels to expand their operations.
“It’s artificially manufactured blight,” Mr. Bae said.
...The battle against eminent domain in East Harlem has received less attention than similar disputes at Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, Willets Point in Queens and the Columbia University expansion in West Harlem. But in each case, longtime businesses were pushed out to make way for large developments.
Jacob Toledo, the owner of Cycle Therapy, runs the city’s largest motorcycle dealership in a refurbished five-story building on East 127th Street. Rows of new and used Triumph, BMW, Honda and Yamaha motorcycles and scooters line the neat shop, while the smell of oil hangs in the air. Mr. Toledo says he may be forced to close his business permanently if the city takes his land.
NoLandGrab: Besides everything else thats egregious about this situation, how can you countenance any project that would put a company as creatively named as "Cycle Therapy" out of business.
Posted by eric at February 23, 2011 10:19 PM