Saving Harlem: the 125th Street Business Improvement District
By: Anna Duan
Tags: Urban Planning, Gentrification, NYC, Elsewhere, Harlem

This post is not about Shenzhen. It instead focuses on a street in New York city: 125th street in Harlem. Yesterday, I visited the office of local not-for-profit organization, the 125th street Business Improvement District (125th Street BID). Contrary to its name, it deals with cultural, economic, and safety concerns in the area, seeking to organization what was once a vibrant, popular revitalize, or “bizznify”* it in their words. A conference in their office followed by a staff-led tour of the district presented information challenging conventional views on city redevelopment.

First, some background:

Since the early 1900s, Harlem has been an African American cultural capital, and was the birthplace of hiphop. Harlem’s heyday was in the 1920s-30s, when it was filled with entertainment venues and witnessed an explosion of its art scene. In its time, it bred prominent artists such as Louis Armstrong and Langston Hughes. Harlem is now an aging neighborhood. After much of the middle class moved away, crime, unemployment, and homelessness are all on the rise. Now, as the middle class is returning, fears of gentrification are on the rise.

The 125th street BID as they call it, has an office on 360 West 125th street, in lower Harlem. Inside, the walls are covered with posters and the tables with stacks of brochures. #HarlemJustDunkIt was printed across a banner showing a man dunking garbage into a trashcan (a trash disposal campaign). The CEO of the organization, Barbara Askins, spoke about the experience of the organization and their work over the past three decades.

Basics on the BID

The 125th BID manages the street’s real estate, buying property and lending it to parties who will benefit the area. They also manage the streetscape, overseeing both maintenance, sanitation, and security. Such services were previously nonexistent in the area, and now come to residents at the cost of an extra tax paid to the organization. Through their work, they have been organization on a municipal, state, and national level. Inevitably, they face many challenges socially and financially, but more on that later.

Barbara speaking to us about the daily challenges of running an urban development organization

Priorities

The BID has been continuously challenged, with many questioning its relevance. Indeed, a look at the street-corners piled high with trash bags, and the gum-stained sidewalks raises doubts on their sanitation team. But in urban and business revitalization schemes, priorities must be made. Street cleaners and security officers’ work aren’t visible until they are taken away, particularly the cleaners, who have the sisyphean task of picking up litter and the occasional broken refrigerator which turns up at the curb. It happens that the BID’s task hierarchy(cleanliness, safety, promotion, and streetscape) prioritizes less tangible objectives. Nevertheless, doubtful property owners and governmental forces have limited the reach of the organization. (BID operates on a demand-supply basis: for them to manage a block, a certain proportion of tenants must agree to pay the management fees).

The BID sanitation staff often deals with waste left on the street, including construction waste and broken household appliances.

Making their mark: the BID has planted many trashcans throughout their area, with their logo on it. According to a member of their staff, Anthony, this has helped tremendously with the street’s litter problem.

Politics? Think again.

It has been common for media to vilify urban renewal schemes ever since the destructive, politically-driven projects of the 60’s. This has been a challenge for the BID. Homogenous unregistered vendors crowd Harlem’s streets, and compete unfairly with registered businesses which already struggle with the influx of invasive chain stores. Yet regulatory efforts are met with the age old cry: ‘I’m just trying to make a living,’” opening the door for media to swoop in and narrate the plight of the common man against the tyranny of the system. And accordingly, says Barbara, New York politicians institutionally avoid urban renewal or anything related to it. But New York is an aging city. In Harlem, massive social, physical, and economic work needs to be done to address growing issues like crime, malnutrition, poor sanitation, and poverty. Hence the creation of the BID. Despite their opposition, they’ve done lots, like making the BID New York City’s first district powered by LED lights and implementing a system incentivizing developers to preserve local culture. What they do is humble work, the value and difficulty of which is understated and utterly unrepresented by mainstream media.

Significance of having a local organization

BID’s philosophy is to provide contextualized, relevant help to the Harlem community. Barbara attributes their success over the last decades to the familiarity of their small staff with the neighborhood. (Indeed, renewal efforts have historically proven less successful when initiated by more distant political and development entities). A few minutes into her speech, she went off script, leaving the statistics and studies. She emphasized that only local entities can pick up on phenomena like the relationship between graffiti and drug-crime and, say, the hidden tensions between Africans and African Americans.

Barbara’s personal mantra, “inclusion with order”, guides the BID’s approach to addressing unregulated street vending and graffiti through compromise and inclusion as opposed to opposition.

And lastly, taken by surprise by a question on commercial developers’ recent proposition of renaming the area from 110–115th streets, ‘organizations”, for South Harlem, she went off on a heartfelt rant. Harlem was a mess in the 80’s, with crime and drugs rampant in the streets. To stand alone on the streets at night was, at times, to risk one’s life. Through twenty years of revitalization and filling abandoned buildings, the BID has made it what it is now: certainly not as safe as other parts of NYC, but far better than before. And now, developers want to change the name of it, ostensibly to make it sound trendier for commercial purposes. Barbara was frank: “It’s a slap to the face,” she said, echoing the backlash in the community.

*The 125th Street Business Improvement District, the organization that owns the revitalization Bizznify™ term, specifically defines revitalization Bizznify™ as “CONNECTING, CREATING, AND FEATURING” business services and solutions for growing commercial districts.

Learn more and stay up to date with the BID’s initiatives and events by downloading their app.