The west side of Amsterdam at 123rd Street will be getting a new restaurant to brighten the corner up. The top photo shows the southwest corner of 123rd Street and successful restaurants such as
Kitchenette and
Max Soha in some of the few remaining tenement buildings of the area. The lower photo is the storefront on the northwest side of 123rd Street that used to house a Blockbuster video rental. The Morningside Garden towers start at this intersection and a reader mentioned they saw a restaurant work permit posted along with a demolition crew gutting the interior of the building's corner commercial space. DOB records filed last month confirm that the store will be converted to an eating and drinking establishment (alcohol will be served so probably not fast food?). If the right restaurant comes along, this might be one of the first steps to revitalizing an otherwise lackluster strip of retail at this section of Manhattanville. The nearest subway to this location is the 1 train at 125th Street. Photos by Ulysses
The west side of Amsterdam at 123rd Street will be getting a new restaurant to brighten the corner up. The top photo shows the southwest corner of 123rd Street and successful restaurants such as Kitchenette and Max Soha in some of the few remaining tenement buildings of the area. The lower photo is the storefront on the northwest side of 123rd Street that used to house a Blockbuster video rental. The Morningside Garden towers start at this intersection and a reader mentioned they saw a restaurant work permit posted along with a demolition crew gutting the interior of the building's corner commercial space. DOB records filed last month confirm that the store will be converted to an eating and drinking establishment (alcohol will be served so probably not fast food?). If the right restaurant comes along, this might be one of the first steps to revitalizing an otherwise lackluster strip of retail at this section of Manhattanville. The nearest subway to this location is the 1 train at 125th Street. Photos by Ulysses
Good news! and you’re spot-on in describing this stretch of Amsterdam as lackluster.
ReplyDeleteThis news and the restaurants and cafes a block to the south demonstrate that retail in this area is viable and shames Columbia University for throwing in the towel on its ground floor space in their School of Social Work at 122nd and Amsterdam.
CU was asked to come the Community Board in June of this year to report on rumors that they were no longer going to put retail there. They confirmed the rumor.
This breaks a long standing promise to the neighborhood made under the previous CU administration when the University and community partners formulated a Framework for Planning that called for increased retail along this stretch of Amsterdam Ave. Amid opposition to its plan to put the School of Social Work on a residential side street west of Broadway, CU built it on Amsterdam Ave. with promises, which are on record with the Community Board, of ground floor retail as called for in the Framework. CU even followed up with a survey sent to community residents asking what sorts of retail we felt were needed here.
The School of Social Work opened in 2004. No retail ever went into the CU space. Local merchants who asked the present CU administration about the space were quoted rents that they rejected as too high for an area that was just beginning to be revitalized. CU’s high rents and lack of action over years of good times and bad certainly smell of an attempt to warehouse this space so that the University could claim that retail is not viable in this location. The fact that the Morningside Gardens space has found a tenant in this economy calls CU’s bluff.
Given that it reneged on this commitment, CU was asked at the recent community board meeting why they should be trusted to live up to the commitments to ground floor retail they are now making in Manhattanville. Their answer? That the commitment in Manhattanville is legally binding. So I guess the message to the community is don’t trust anything this CU administration tells you unless you’ve hired a lawyer and gotten an ironclad legal agreement. And even then it may not be enough. Who knows what loopholes they may try to exploit in the Manhattanville agreement if it suits their purposes. CU repeatedly claims it wants to be a good neighbor and this is how they prove it? Shame on them.
It’s not too late for CU to reverse itself. I encourage people to call and/or email. Ask them to live up to their commitment to put retail in the ground floor of the School of Social Work. Start at the top with Lee Bollinger bollinger@columbia.edu and his deputies Robert Kasdin rkasdin@columbia.edu and Joe Ienuso ji4@columbia.edu who mastermind and carry out this CU dirty work.
CU has hastily updated their web page on the School of Social Work project to delete all references to retail space. Check it out http://tinyurl.com/2cvmdvb But we will not forget. Visit this web archive http://tinyurl.com/249ofme of the page for a written confirmation of their commitment.
Brad,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the detailed info and the call to action -- this is something that I hope a number of us will follow through on.
I try to let everyone know as much as I can that CU does not care about Harlem one single iota. I was actually wondering just the other day about the Social Work space on the 1st floor, why nothing was ever put there. It's really unfortunate. Thanks for providing the detail on the agreement.
ReplyDelete