Former Chocolate Factory Houses Now Upscale Lofts

More than half century has elapsed, but from the outside at least, the chocolate factory still looks pretty much like it did 100 years ago. Inside, though, the former factory facade now has a different heart: a residential one.
More than half century has elapsed, but from the outside at least, the chocolate factory still looks pretty much like it did 100 years ago. Inside, though, the former factory facade now has a different heart: a residential one.

Wallabout, Brooklyn — In New York, the history of a neighborhood can sometimes be reflected in a single building. Take the blockwide brick structure that stands on Park Avenue between Waverly and Washington Avenues in Clinton Hill.  Today it is a seven-story luxury residential rental-featuring loft that is home to 123 households; but in the 1900’s, it was a thriving chocolate factory. And in the years in between, an abandoned building.

At the turn of the century, the Rockwood & Company chocolate factory resided in this small Brooklyn neighborhood, known as the Wallabout District. Founded in Manhattan in 1886 by W. E. Rockwood and W. T. Jones, the company, once aligned with Hershey, ranked as the second largest  chocolate producer across the country.  The factory closed for good in 1967 and had been abandoned for a few decades. A part of the building was dilapidated when a real estate developer took it over in 1996 and transformed it into a luxury apartment building called, aptly, The Chocolate Factory.

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Interactive Map/Slideshow

Wallabout Grows Younger

Wallabout Grows Richer

The building has come a long way since the Van Glahn Brothers constructed the building in 1890 and established a wholesale grocery here. Since, it has become a witness to the vicissitude of industrialism in the neighborhood. The manufacturing flavor of this district is now residential—and The Chocolate Factory illustrates that shift. Today, the area that surrounds the former factory is populated by a growing number of young people: According to census data, the number of residents aged 20 to 35 has increased 21 percent over the past decade.

“It is just amazing to see how it was transformed from an empty shell to beautiful loft apartments,” said Mira Goldin, who opened SPA, a lounge that serves drinks, on the first floor of the building six years ago. “A lot of nice young people live here, with families, dogs and children. It’s totally revitalizing the whole neighborhood.”

Back in late 19th century, after the openings of the Brooklyn Bridge and the elevated railroad on Myrtle Avenue, industrialism burgeoned in theneighborhoods of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill. And Brooklyn’s population was only a third of what it is nowadays. From 1880 to 1920, Wallabout stood as the fourth largest manufacturing center in the entire country, according to a report published by an architectural historian and Columbia professor Andrew Dolkart. In 1860, approximately 1,000 industrial firms with close to 13,000 workers thrived here. Nearly 50 years later, the number of industrial establishments reached 5,200 and employed 10 times more workers.

“Much of the industry clustered in the neighborhoods along the East River waterfront, including Williamsburg, Greenpoint, DUMBO, and Wallabout,” Dolkart wrote.

Imports of cocoa bean and spice entered into the city here, so food production, including many bakeries and confectioners,  sprouted in this area. Wagons and trucks jammed the streets and here stood  the Wallabout Market, the world’s second largest produce market at the time.

Whispers of what this neighborhood once was still resonate here, sometimes in faded lettering along the sides of this now thriving residential community: American Self Storage, a large building across the street from The Chocolate Factory, was once the Consumers’ Biscuit and Manufacturing Company. And the Benjamin Banneker Academy, a community high school, located only one block away in the junction of Clinton and Park Avenues, used to be the home of the Drake Brothers Bakery (known as today’s Drake’s Cake). Its famous products like Yodels and Ring Dings can now be found in convenience stores across the country. Inside the school, some floors still remain in Drake’s style.

Rockwood Chocolate Factory leased the Van Glahn complex on Washington Avenue in 1904, and extended its scale northward to Flushing Avenue and westward to Waverly Avenue as its business grew greatly over the next decade. The complex was listed on the National Register as the Rockwood Chocolate Factory Historic District.

“It is just amazing to see how it was transformed from an empty shell to beautiful loft apartment. A lot nice young people live here, with families, dogs and children. It’s totally vitalizing the whole neighborhood.”
– Mira Goldin,
SPA Lounge Owner
But World War II brought changes to the district as a result of the outward expansion of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. When the Yard finally shut down in 1966, the industrialism in the neighborhood also declined. Rockwood shut its doors and remained so, until 1996 when the building was reconfigured as a residential structure.

“There was a fire in the old section that a portion [of the building] was completely gone, and we were unable to restore it,” said Jake Zorka, the manager of the loft’s development and administration office that reconstructed the building in early 2000’s. “What is original now is only the shell. Everything else was redone.”

Around the time of its renovation, a bunch of other apartment buildings also sprung up in the neighborhood, attracting many people who were bothered by the rising costs in Williamsburg and Greenpoint into Fort Greene and Clinton Hill.

Various small businesses also opened up. So far, a grocery supermarket, Goldin’s SPA lounge, a Cuban restaurant and a cocktail lounge have all taken root in this newly fertilized former chocolate land.

More than half century has elapsed, but from the outside at least, the chocolate factory still looks pretty much like it did 100 years ago. The West building in the complex retained its red brick walls with white limestone and yellow brick trim. And the East building, designed in the Romanesque Revival style, still has the Van Glahn name inscribed on the corner. Inside, though, the former factory facade now has a different heart: a residential one. Apartments still hint at the building’s origin.

“Our apartment has industrial ceilings, but they’re covered for fire safety,” said Mengia Hong, who lives in a 1,300-square-foot open loft with hardwood floors with her husband and two kids. The family moved here from their tiny but expensive Tribecca apartment a year ago.

Hints of cocoa no longer waft from street to street; the neighborhood is no longer industrial. Even so, when you pass by the southwest corner of Waverly and Park Avenues, the large bronze “R”s set on the third story of the red-and-yellow brick wall will always remind people of the building’s original identity—and of the district’s former industrial character.

Stuyvesant Town Showdown

College students celebrating the last days of school in the sun, but older residents are not fond of these dormitory-like parties.
College students celebrate their last days of school in the sun with beer much to the chagrin of older residents.

Stuyvesant Town, New York — Jacqueline Duran, 23, left her sixth floor apartment in Stuyvesant Town one recent April afternoon with her recycled bottles in hand. But as she stepped out of the elevator in the lobby of her building, she was greeted by a handwritten note on the glass garbage disposal room door that read: “College students, you’re the reason why we have bugs and rats. Why don’t you go back to your mommies and daddies in the suburbs.”

Duran, a student at Parsons New School for Design, along with her three roommates, are caught in a war between rent-stabilized residents at Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village and college students.  Tensions began in the 60-year-old red-brick residential complex, in the heart of Manhattan’s East Village, when management began adding wall-dividers in 2007 to allow large groups of students into the complex. Financial overseer CW Capital and Rose Associates management are now marketing the 11,000-units to students with the promise of safety, convenience and pressurized walls, which can turn any one-bedroom apartment into three.

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Battle for Sty Town

Before & After

Reporter’s Reflections

“We paid about $3,000 for a contractor to divide the apartment,” said Nadia Zuban, 22, a student at Fashion Institute of Technology who moved into Peter Cooper Village in January and hired one of the three contractors recommended by management.

A standard one-bedroom apartment, which usually costs about $3,400 a month, is completely painted white with wooden floors, a small dining room and kitchen at the entranceway.   A squared alcove connects the living room and dining room, and in the corner a narrow hallway leads to the master bedroom.  But, a student one-bedroom apartment is divided from the dining room across the living room up to the master bedroom by a wall.

Zuban, like other aspiring tenants, were told that they can move into a flexi-one-bedroom apartment or have their one-bedroom converted to fit three roommates by Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village’s leasing office.

Joe DePiasco, spokesman for Stuyvesant Town, said, in response to an email question, that the complex is no longer allowing the construction of these non-structural walls.

Even though management says its stopped separating the units, long time residents are unhappy with the behavior of many of the complex’s newer occupants.

“You have a lot of bad things like people vomiting in the elevators and drunkenness and people smoking outside.”
– Jane Holland,
Long-time Resident

Social worker Jane Holland says that the  atmosphere of Stuyvesant Town now resembles a dormitory with excessive drunkenness and noise.

Residents are striking back with its Tenant Association, a representative group which has called for several fire code investigations, more security control of drunkenness, and more support for residents to own their apartments in order to maintain a family environment.

“You have a lot of bad things like people vomiting in the elevators and drunkenness and people smoking outside,” said Holland, 59. “It used to be a nice middle class neighborhood, and I hoped that we could maintain that for our families.”

A small war is brewing in the housing development because many residents believe that dormitory life cannot coexist with residential family life.

Tolerance of college students reached its limit a year ago after Jim Flanagan, an 80-year-old resident that has lived in Stuyvesant town for 30 years, found a drunken student passed out in front of his 11th- floor apartment door. Flanagan knew that the young man lived on the 10th floor of his building, but still escorted the student outside and told him to have someone else let him back in.

Flanagan reiterates his experience:

 

“They put like four or five people in a one-bedroom apartment, and then they move out in one semester,” said Flanagan.

Students like, David Keltz, 22. have felt the wrath of older residents when a 60-year-old woman yelled at him for talking on his cell phone while walking along the grass one afternoon this month.

Keltz, a student at Pace University, said she told him to find somewhere else to talk on his cell phone because he “was driving her and her husband crazy. She didn’t say I was talking too loud, but that I was talking at all.”

 

Keltz reenacts his encounter:

 

Stuyvesant town is mostly a rent-stabilized multi-building apartment complex, with some residents paying as little as $1,200 a month for a two-bedroom apartment.  But tenants, like Holland, say, management has increased the amount of student leasing to help increase rent for individual units.

The Tenants Association  is trying to help rent-stabilized tenants take control of their residential environment by advocating for the conversion of apartments into condominiums.

“We will be able to set rules for ourselves about leasing to prevent a dormitory like environment that is detrimental to the quiet enjoyment of our homes and the long-term stability of our community,” stated the Tenant Association in a February press release on condominium conversion.

In March, the Tenant Association’s real estate partner Brookfield Asset Management released a statement agreeing that the aggressive amount of student leasing has gotten out of hand and interferes with the quality of residential life

Until the Tenants Association is able to purchase Stuyvesant Town, maintaining the residential environment is in the hands of CW Capital and Rose Associates management. An apartment conversion bid will not be made until the summer after CW Capital places a value on the residential complex, says congressman Daniel Garodnick a longtime resident of Peter Cooper Village.

“We lease to all qualified prospects who come into our leasing office regardless of age,” said Joe DePlasco managing director for public relations in an email.   “In some cases there are prospective residents who want to share units to reduce costs.”

While  many rent stabilized residents are not happy with this open door policy, students argue that they can coexist with families despite snarky notes, like the one Duran saw in her apartment, posted throughout the residential buildings.

“I agree that it is a family place,” said Duran, “But I think it is stupid to try and restrict apartments.”

Duran moved from Annapolis, Maryland two years ago to study fashion design at Parsons. She found that living in an apartment with roommates was $300 cheaper than living in a dorm (the usual cost of a Parsons dorm room is about $1,300.)

In Duran’s two-bedroom apartment, each roommate shares a room, splitting the $4,000 rent, four ways.  The apartment within Stuyvesant Town was the perfect place to enjoy the freedom of renting an apartment with no dormitory restrictions, like having friends visit and sleepover, says Duran.

But Duran got more than what she bargained for: countless noise complaints.

She and many of the other college students that live in the complex have received a barrage of protests from the sound of a broomstick slamming against the ceiling of her downstairs neighbor for wearing high-heels to residential security guards knocking at the door during small parties.

Some students, like Eric Feuster, 20, another student from Parsons along with his roommates, were even warned by security, on several occasions, that if they continue to disturb their neighbors with parties and drunkenness they would receive a $300 fine for every security visit.

“We’re terminating our lease because the neighbors just don’t like us,” said Feuster.  “They complain constantly that were too loud.”

For Duran, the note on the garbage disposal door was the last straw: she says she is likely not to sign another one-year lease, even if management lets her.

Iconic New York Food With an Ethnic Twist

Mohid Kumar, originally from Bangladesh, manages a pizza-by-the-slice shop in Midtown, Manhattan. (Patricia Rey Mallén)
Mohid Kumar, originally from Bangladesh, manages a pizza-by-the-slice shop in Midtown, Manhattan. Photo by Patricia Rey Mallén.

Flushing, Queens — The line stretching out of J.K. Bakery in Union St, Flushing, Queens, reached three doors down from the bagel shop. Inside, the scent of freshly baked onion bagels was enough to make one’s stomach rumble.

 Behind the counter, Joon Hee Kim, the son of the Korea-born owner of the shop for the past 20 years, greets the regulars by name and their preferred order in quick Korean. The star of the shop, a classic that doesn’t get old:    the plain.

“Koreans are very cautious with food,” said Kim, handing out the third plain bagel in a row. “Even among customers who have been coming for years, the plain is our best sold bagel.”

The bagel is the most beloved breakfast item in New York – even in Flushing, a predominantly Korean neighborhood.  But as the city’s demographics shift, so do its icons.

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Slideshow on J.K. Bakery, a Korean-run bagel store.

Korean-run Bagel Shop

Slideshow on J.K. Bakery, a Korean-run bagel store.

Indian-owned Pizzeria

J.K. Bakery, a traditional Jewish bagel shop which has been on Union Street for decades, is now owned by the Kim family. The bagels are as iconic as they’ve always been, but the faces behind this bakery’s counter are changing.

New York’s food staples like pizza or bagels cannot be attributed to any demographic group anymore, said City Comptroller John C. Liu, who represented Flushing at City Council from 2001 to 2005 and is a usual customer of J.K. Bakery. “They are a part of New York now,” he said.

J.K. Bakery has become a staple of the eating scenery of Flushing, the hub of the Korean community in New York City for over ten years. Before that it was mainly white and Jewish, as shown by the numbers from the 1960 Census. Since 1965, when the first Korean immigrants started arriving, the area’s Korean population has grown to reach 64,000 according to the 2010 Census. The numbers make Flushing the biggest Korean neighborhood in the U.S.

 One of those early arrivals was Kim’s father, who worked odd jobs for a couple of years before starting to work as an apprentice at J.K Bakery, then owned by a Jewish family. Five years later, when the Jewish owner retired, Kim’s father bought the shop.

 Twenty-three years later, he still owns the neighborhood hotspot—and still has a hand in how the bagels are made.

“My father tastes the dough every morning to make sure it’s perfect,” said Kim, 28. “No salty or bland bagels are sold here.”

Bagels are not alone in this demographic switch-a-roo – the other quintessential New York bite, the pizza, is experiencing a similar revolution. Pizza by the slice for $1, sometimes less, is still served by many Italians. But in at least one corner of Midtown, pizza slices are dished out by different hands.

“Everybody likes pizza,” said Mohid Kumar, manager of Bombay Pizza, an Indian owned pizza-by-the-slice place on 38th st. and 6th Avenue. “And everybody can make pizza, too.”

Kumar, 49, a Bangladeshi immigrant, has been managing the store for two and a half years. He employs four people, all Hispanic, which sometimes complicates communication just a little bit.  “When they talk among themselves, I have no idea what they’re saying.,” says Kumar, who insists thought that making pizza is team work. “One colleague makes the dough, the other puts in the ingredients, then to the oven. I cut it.”

“Everybody loves pizza. Everybody can make pizza, too.”

– Mohid Kumar,
Bombay Pizza Manager

In spite of his 16 years in New York, Kumar is not willing to give up in his roots: in the back of Bombay Pizza there is an Indian vegetarian food counter, which includes dosa, an Indian version of pizza. “Many customers change their mind when they come into the store,” said Kumar. “They come for the pizza, and stay for the Indian curries.”

The popularity of pizza and bagels in New York City date back to early 20th Century, when Jews from Eastern Europe and Italians were the two major immigrant groups in New York. This combined with the abundance of wheat made it easy for both bread-based products to spread.

“The particular demographics of New York brought bagels and pizza to other groups who would otherwise never have tried them,” said New York-based food writer Frederick Kaufman. “What is happening today is one step further in the fusion of cuisines.”

As deeply engraved into New York’s history as they are, these food staples must not be altered, at least anymore than necessary: Kim and his father adhere to that philosophy.

“We don’t toast bagels here, sorry,” says Woo Hee Kim – Kim’s aunt who also helps at the shop – to a customer who requested it be done to her bagel. “We don’t even own a toaster,” continues Kim. “Bagels are not traditionally toasted, so we don’t do it.”

Old habits die hard though, even when mastering the art of making a bagel. Kim, who was born in the States, does take daily advantage of the treats of his shop; his father, on the other hand, starts the day the Korean way: with a dish of rice, seaweed and soup.

“Koreans are still dazzled by the idea of bagels,” said Kim. He said that a couple of years ago, his father tried to open a bagel shop in Seoul, but ended up returning to New York when the business did not prosper.

Apparently though, the Korean population is actually opening up to new cuisines.

“We hear that Mexican food is all the rage now,” said Kim. “So who knows, maybe bagels will be the next thing! And then we can try again.”

The Holdouts: Staying Put in Bushwick

Robert Camacho stands outside Maria Hernandez Park in Bushwick.
Robert Camacho stands outside Maria Hernandez Park in Bushwick.

Bushwick, Brooklyn — Some New Yorkers, like Robert Camacho, never venture far from the neighborhoods they knew as a child.

Camacho, 51, went to the same elementary school as his mother, P.S. 26, on Lafayette and Reid Street.  He still lives on Stanhope Street, in the home of his father, who passed away in 2001. He has lived in Bushwick and Bedford Stuyvesant, the neighborhood that borders it, since he was a toddler and has no plans to leave

Camacho feels a strong emotional connection to his neighborhood, as many long-time residents in other neighborhoods do.  Recently, however, Camacho has come to feel like an outsider.

If you ask Camacho what makes the area so special, he’ll say it was the closeness among neighbors. When he’d see someone on the streets, they were almost family. He knew their parents, their brothers, sisters and grandparents. “They stay in your house, you stay in theirs,” Camacho said.  “Any food, they feed you.”

This feeling of community was important to a boy growing up without much family support. Camacho’s mother left when he was two.  At that time his father was only making $60 dollars a week. “There was nine of us. So it was rough,” he said. For a time Camacho’s uncle and his aunt helped raise him and two of his siblings.  Then when his father remarried, all three children were reunited with his father. His father’s new wife was 15-years old.  She became a mother of nine overnight.

“Now everybody’s flocking to Bushwick. You see new homes, new houses and they pushing us out.”
– Robert Camacho,
Longtime Bushwick Resident

As if his family situation were not tough enough, Bushwick had its own share of troubles. In the late 60s and early 70s the friction between Latinos and African Americans in Bushwick was well-documented. Camacho’s elementary school, P.S. 26, was mostly African American and as one of the few Puerto Ricans in his school Camacho was teased a lot.  He got into fistfights and knife fights. The right side of his stomach still bears faded red scars from the time he was stabbed on a playground.

At school there was one boy, Butch, an African American, who Camacho said he fought every day. Any time they saw each other in parks and grocery stores,  punches flew.

  “It was something like a hate thing,” Camacho said, “That thing was in me and it was in him.”

Camacho formed a “crew” with his friends. They called themselves the Kosiuszko Boys or KB for short, Kosiuszko was the name of the block his family had moved to. They carried guns and knives. “We made sure that who ever came in there, nothing was going to happen,” he said.

When Camacho was 16, he left home and the following year his stepmother signed him out of high school.  He lived in a nearby apartment building on Bushwick Avenue with his girlfriend and worked as a building super.  The couple had two children, but eventually broke up HOW MANY YEARS LATER.

Then WHEN?  he met Joanne,  his current wife,  and had two more children.  Unlike his own parents, Camacho promised he would treat his children equally and show them the kind of affection he never received.

Today, the anger Camacho felt for certan individuals is long extinguished.  As for Butch, the boy he fought everyday, “I see him now and we’re like the best friends,” Camacho laughs. “Are you kidding me? He gives me a hug and a kiss. “

Camacho’s hardscrabble coming of age mirrors the stormy evolution of his neighborhood, a farming village turned factory town. The town was  settled mostly by Dutch and Swedish and Norwegian immigrants in the mid-1600s. But by the 1830’s, the neighborhood had transformed into a factory town—replete with distilleries, refineries and warehouses—and a shipping yard. Germans and Italians filtered in.  In the 1960s an influx of low-income Puerto Rican and African American led to the “white flight” typical of that era.  Speculators bought low and sold high to the minority newcomers, many of whom defaulted.

In the early 1970s, the government withdrew its financial support to  the neighborhood shuttering social agencies and closing many of its firehouses.  Riots erupted in the streets, gangs flourished, and murders happened in broad daylight. Bushwick was crumbling.

“Nobody wanted to live in Bushwick,” said Camacho. “The city was giving land for a dollar and homes for a dollar, and you had a year to take care of it and people still wasn’t buying.”

Beginning in the late 1990s, Mayor Koch introduced major reforms that saw crimes rates drop and pushed Bushwick forward on its path to economic recovery. Today, Bushwick has turned around—and longtime residents, like Camacho, are trying to adjust.  There are more coffee shops, more bars, a thriving art scene and more urban professionals than in years past. “Now everybody’s flocking to Bushwick. You see new homes, new houses and they pushing us out,” he said. The number of non-Hispanic Whites has tripled in the last decade, growing from approximately 3,000 to 9,500. The average one-bedroom rental costs about $1400, which is out of range for many long-time residents.

When Camacho walks down the street he still pictures the neighborhood as it was. He remembers which houses sold drugs, where drops were made, and the best places to hide overnight, after the police broke up a fight.

“Everybody was saying that Bushwick was no good and Bushwick was terrible; a lot of drugs, a lot of gangs,” said Camacho. “You had good people there. You had people that care about each other.” The storeowners he knew have left, and the dynamic between him and his new neighbors is awkward.  “Sometimes when you do talk to them they think something’s wrong or you want something. They’re all to themselves,” he said. “It’s the transition.”

The Holdouts: Urban Residents Cling to Old Ways

Habiba Ali and Pamela Downing inside their apartment at the Hotel Wales.
Habiba Ali and Pamela Downing inside their apartment at the Hotel Wales.

 

Upper East Side, New York — They call themselves permanents.   Habiba Ali, 63, and Pamela Downing, 55, share a room at the end of a long, musty hallway in a boutique hotel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Excepting one other resident, they are the last of their kind.

Nostalgia, inertia and low rent keep some New Yorkers tied to their neighborhoods as the world around them changes. When Ali and Downing first moved into the Hotel Wales in the 1980’s, on Madison Avenue between 92nd and 93rd Street, the building was shabby and certainly wouldn’t have attracted tourists, but it was well situated.

Theirs was the neighborhood of  Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the Marx Brothers, Woody Allen, and Paul Newman.  Carnegie Hill, the stretch of blocks from 86th Street to 98th Street is named after the steel king, Andrew Carnegie.  Ali and Downing, hardly millionaires, managed to live among Manhattan’s wealthiest and most admired families for nearly three decades. Today the hotel has been renovated and an overnight stay costs around $200.

While many of the neighborhood’s more famous residents have died or left, the streets and stores still exude an air of  entitlement.  Ali and Downing’s lifestyle is anything but: their apartment is rent-controlled.  Ali and Downing  pay less in monthly rent than a guest of the hotel might pay for a week’s visit. No wonder they’ve stayed for nearly three decades.

Memories of New York Past

“We live in a posh five star hotel with no pennies in the pocket,” said Ali, who came to New York from Pakistan 1979, just after her father passed away.  Her plan was to complete a six-month course at the Pratt Institute’s School of Art and Design. She formed a close friendship with a French American woman Kathleen LePercq. The stranger was sympathetic to Ali, who didn’t know many people and was still mourning her father.   LePercq helped her to obtain a visa and ultimately her citizenship.

Ali moved  into the building in 1984, paying $225 a week.  Downing, a legal assistant, joined her the following year. The price increased by $35. Today, they won’t share their precise rent, but by Manhattan standards it is absurdly inexpensive.   Still, there are months when they have struggled to pay for it. When that happens, their families help.

The hotel may be posh, but their apartment certainly isn’t.  It totals 450 square feet, comprising one bedroom, a narrow kitchen, and a bathroom.  If a guest of the hotel were to accidentally step inside their apartment, he or she would not confuse it with their own room for a second. The sheer amount of stuff that is stacked on the floor or counter, nailed, taped or draped on the wall,  is overwhelming.  There is only one bed and it is Ali’s. Downing prefers the floor. She points to a folded up mat and blankets set beside a bureau, her bed.

At a small table near the wall, opposite the window and bed is a veritable shrine to Ali’s parents, Dr. Riaz Ali and Begum Amuzzinah Ali. Beside their framed photos are portraits of Kathleen LePercq, Ali’s “American mother” and mentor.

“My father was a doctor first. So, I grew up in a home where I didn’t know much about what difficulties are going to be,” Ali said. Her concept of America came from magazines like Vogue and Better Homes and Gardens. “I didn’t think there was poverty in New York,” she said.

Downing’s childhood was very different from Ali’s.  There was no television in her house, no store-bought toys and no alcohol. She was brought up as a Seventh Day Adventist. She actually did sleep on the floor in childhood as well, underneath a piano, oddly enough. Downing said the pets she kept in a bedroom she shared with her sister  chewed too loudly at night. Instead of moving their cages from her bedroom, she moved herself.

Downing came to New York after graduating college, to satisfy her curiosity about the city and perhaps to test her mettle.

Ali and Downing met at the Church of the Holy Redeemer, where Downing stayed in the community’s retreat house. She cooked meals for guests and managed the library.  Ali and her colleagues from Pratt came for a tour of the church . The two women connected, after discovering they had a mutual friend, and met often for lunch and walks. “We clicked to each other,” said Ali.

When her job at the Most Holy Redeemer Church ended, Downing still wanted to explore parts of the city she hadn’t seen.  “I’m a great procrastinator,” said Downing. “So, Habiba said ‘Why don’t you come and park your bags at my place,’” Downing said.  The two have not lived apart since.

Downing looks like a schoolgirl from a bygone era.  She wears her own kind of uniform every day: a long floral jumper over a blouse or other long-sleeved dress, her greying hair parted and clasped in a neat low ponytail, and glasses.  Her favorite joke is a pun involving papal edicts. Her favorite childhood story was Alice in Wonderland. She read it in Latin. And for years she has inventoried the flora and fauna of Central Park.  For nearly two decades, She worked in the same downtown office before retiring.

Ali wears a black canvas dress, like a judge’s robe, only short-sleeved with a blouse underneath and a cast on one arm—she fractured it in a fall.  Her hair is swept into a bun, her eyes dark and observant.  She speaks quickly tumbling over her words as if worried someone will interrupt her and occasionally Downing does.

When a guest or other listener looks confused by something Ali says or when Ali struggles to find the correct word, Downing inserts herself into the conversation. Neither has taken the traditional route of marriage and raising a family, though Downing has certainly thought about how her life might have been different.

“In a way I regret that I never did get married and have kids, but you know it’s too late now,” she laughed.

“You can do it,” said Ali.

“I’m too old. My knees won’t let me,” said Downing.

Fortunately Downing said she never felt any pressure or judgment from her relatives. “My family was always very unconventional and certainly nobody would judge anybody for how they wanted to live,” she said.

In the late eighties, the building’s first owner, Mr. Bernard Goldberg, converted 1295 Madison Ave. from an apartment building and transient lodging house to the elegant Hotel Wales. “Mr. Goldberg was a gentleman, a very nice man. He called all the permanents and asked them  if they want to go,” said Ali But to Ali and Downing he suggested, ““Just stay quiet and pay my rent on time.” He sensed that they if they left they would not be happy some place else. They agreed.

At that time, only 15 residents considered the hotel home. Most agreed to be compensated by Goldbeg and left.  The others died.  Today, guests change day-to-day, owners change every few years, and even the hallway art changes– Downing recalls sketches of Puss in Boots, from the famous children’s illustrator Alain Vaes.  Twenty-seven years later ,the only fixtures in the building are Downing and Ali.

When asked why they have stayed in New York so long, so far from their families. Ali restates her bond with Ms. LePercq, “my most important care person in my life”, after her immediate family.  Also, she said, “I found my love in New York real love. Genuine.”  Pressed for details, she resists. “That’s a special private question, I don’t want to go in detail.”

Living there is also comfortable. Ali doesn’t have to cook or clean. The hotel provides clean linens every week. There is a tea room, a rooftop garden and a large dining room on the second floor that where they can entertain friends as long as the hotel guests don’t need the space.  If there’s a problem, Ali will phone management and complain. They have defined roles. Downing cleans and fixes things. Ali supervises and on occasion, she cooks.

Sometimes, Ali, who is older, admonishes Downing for not doing something Ali asked, like cleaning dishes or not following precise directions.  “I sometimes feel that I get scolded unfairly when bad things happen with which I’m in some remote way connected,” said Downing. But Ali apparently gets her share of scolding too, from her own family.

“The whole family likes Pamela and they stand up for her against me,” she said.  “[They say] that I should be good to Pamela.”

Downing and Ali are not a couple. The insinuation that they are more than friends is offensive to them. When posing for photographs, they don’t touch and they keep a seat between them on the couch. Her eyes at once vulnerable, Ali said, “Once I told Pamela’s mother, ‘Mrs. Downing, people say all kinds of things about us.’  She said, ‘Leave it to God.”

Sometimes their fights threaten their arrangement.  “Pamela slams the doors and says I’m going away,” Ali said. “And if she wants to go now I says ‘Get out! Go! I don’t care.’”

“It’s true,” said Downing.

“But maybe,” Ali said, “I will call her the next day and say, ‘What are you doing? Are you coming back?’”

Swank vs. Street Smart in Harlem

Hans Modeste, a street vendor in Harlem, said that new residents don't care about how different Harlem is now. "They will never know the Harlem that I know."
Hans Modeste, a street vendor in Harlem, said that new residents don't care about how different Harlem is now. "They will never know the Harlem that I know."

Harlem, New York — He calls himself Hans.  An artist and businessman, Hans Modeste, 60, sells jewelry, music, and replicas of ornaments from ancient Egypt on the corner of West 126th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem.

“I work a lot with my hands,” Modeste said, “so I call myself Hans.”  Modeste sits down next to a table that displays his merchandise.  With calloused fingers,  he picks up his latest art project, a paper mache alligator.

On his table are several miniature pyramids and tiny busts of Queen Nefertiti.  Surrounded by vinyl records and pictures of Bob Marley, Modeste says he’s lived in Harlem for most of his life, though he is originally from Grenada. Fifteen years ago, he left the neighborhood and moved to the Bronx.  “Now the rent’s too high,” said Modeste.  He says he cannot afford to move back.

MULTIMEDIA

126th & Lenox Before & After

Lenox Ave Panorama

Once a non-commercial haven for cheap apartments and street vendors like Modeste, Harlem is now host to big box retail chains, luxury apartment buildings, and dozens of upscale restaurants similar to those found in downtown Manhattan.  Modeste’s business seems worlds apart from what’s sold just up the street in stores like Staples, Dunkin’ Donuts, Marshalls and a CVS.  Nearby are two new posh restaurants.  One is Red Rooster, where President Obama ate last year. The other is Chez Lucienne, with Hors D’Oeuvres and $14 Salmon burgers on the menu.  Four blocks away is The Lenox, a new luxury apartment building with some units going for over $1 million.

Average household income in the neighborhood also reflects the shift in tastes.  The median income for a central Harlem household in 1989 was, in 2009 dollars, $24,000.  In 2009, it was $45,000.

Many people welcome this new Harlem.  Anahi Angelone, the owner of the Corner Social, a new bar and restaurant on the same corner Modeste sells his art, is one of them.

“I fell madly in love with the neighborhood,” said Angelone, 31, who moved here two years ago.

But she noticed there weren’t many places she could go to hang out.  “I felt like I had to go on a train and hop down town if I want to enjoy myself,” said Angelone, who lives half a block away from her new saloon.  “So I felt that I wanted to open a bar with good food where people can meet their friends for drinks or meet new friends.”

So far, she says, the idea seems to be working. On a recent Tuesday night, men in neckties and blazers, and women in three-inch heels sat at polished wooden tables.  Paintings of old Harlem decorated the walls in the back.  The price of a cocktail: $12.  For a beer, it’s $7 to $12.

“I like the crowd,” said first-time customer April McCoy, 39, who works at J.P. Morgan Chase. “The conversation seems to be flowing.  There’s no animosity.”

“It’s a much needed place,” said Michele Ivey, 43, who works in marketing.

“The ones who have the money go there.”
– Hans Modeste,
Street Vendor

But some longtime Harlem residents like Modeste aren’t so enthusiastic about the neighborhood’s newest establishment or its polished wooden seats and $12 cocktails.  They aren’t too happy about how the neighborhood has changed either.  Rising rents, and the loss of small, community friendly shops leave people like Modeste displaced.  They are unable to participate in Harlem’s contemporary grandeur—but they don’t want to let go of their old ways either.

“I won’t take part in the social amenities,” Modeste said.  He refuses to eat at the Corner Social.  “The ones who have the money to go there.”

Tony Muñoz, who has lived in east Harlem since the 1980s, also does not like a lot about his neighborhood’s new vibe. “Now you see dogs running around Marcus Garvey Park,” Muñoz, 53, said.

Fans of  Harlem’s more upscale spots aren’t oblivious to the changes, however.  “Half of the people here are not from here,” said Michael Harrison, 42, a writer and a longtime Harlem resident.  He looks around at the clientele at the Corner Social.  “In my opinion it’s pushing out a lot of people that grew up here.”

Those that came of age in Harlem might remember that the Corner Social on Lenox Avenue used to be a scented oil shop called Scents of Nature.

A little over a decade ago ‘mom and pop’ stores dotted the blocks around 125th Street.  Running from east to west, 125th Street is considered the heart of Harlem.  It’s home to the Apollo and the Victoria Theater, and the Studio Museum in Harlem.

“There was the old Baby Grand Bar and lounge that should have been a landmark,” said Monique Ndigo Washington, a Harlem community activist and founder of Taking Back Our City, a grassroots organization.  “We had Martin Paint Shop.  The people who worked there were from the community.”

Residents fear this legacy will be lost as the neighborhood shifts, explains Washington.

“When you dictate to a community what they should have in their neighborhood, how it should be brought in, it’s almost as if you are erasing their heritage and it makes them nervous,” Washington said.  “There was a time when I couldn’t walk down 125th Street. I felt a loss. There was a spirit that was gone.”

New places like the Corner Social give the newcomers a chance to form their own heritage, their own traditions and lifestyle.   All of this is done to promote consumerism, Washington believes.  The result is higher rent and new luxury condominiums, starting at $500,000.

“You are going to price people out.  Vendors are not going to stay,” Washington said.

Modeste is a case in point.  He’s fully aware he’s been priced out.  He sees the changes.  He lives it everyday. “Now you see people walking dogs.  The homosexuals,” said Modeste. “You didn’t see that when I was growing up.”

But for now, he can’t ever imagine his life without Harlem. Everyday he still travels to his old stomping grounds to set up shop on the sidewalk.

Modeste puts down the paper mache alligator when a woman stops to look at his table.  No sale.  He hasn’t sold anything yet today.

“Harlem is home,” said Modeste, shrugging his shoulders.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Basketball City Warms Up to Change the Game

Basketball City still needs a paint job before opening. When the hoops come down, the facility could change the way basketball is played in the Lower East Side.

Lower East Side, New York — Beautiful Saturday afternoons draw Lower East Side ballers to Hester Street Playground. This is where some of the neighborhood’s best basketball players bring their Nike sneakers—and their game faces. All three courts were full on a recent Saturday, with two teams of five players on each court. The sun beamed down on the players, who battled for loose balls, rebounds, and ultimately, for a victory. Above the courts along the sidewalk, residents watched and gave their criticisms of every misstep.

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The Neighborhood’s Courts Up Close

Though the 80-degree weather was perfect for hoops, the players had to overcome the less than ideal court conditions. Cracks ran through the concrete and across the withered-away half-court line, causing the ball to bounce in unwanted directions like a football. The hoops were naked with no nets. And there were barely any distinguishable boundary lines; a feud broke out after a player stepped out-of-bounds during an acrobatic lay-up, but no one was sure where the boundary lines actually were to decide whether he stepped out of bounds or not.

“Maybe you should paint the lines,” said the player whose move was under question.

This is New York street basketball. It has its own rules, its own quirks and its own traditions—and it’s the way the game has been played on these streets for decades. Here in the Lower East Side, basketball stars learned how to shoot and dribble at the Hester Street Playground and built toughness while fighting for rebounds at the Lillian M. Wald Playground.

But basketball on the Lower East Side could change this summer. A new $12.5 million basketball haven, situated between the Williamsburg and Manhattan bridges, is set to open after five years of community negotiations. Once a gas depot for city vehicles, the facility, called Basketball City, will feature seven pristine hardwood courts, all of which will be lit by bright overhead LED lights. Each court has two NBA-quality Spaulding hoops with perfect nets. The newly installed air conditioning system will keep players cool during the summer, and a second-floor bar area will refresh players while giving them views of the East River. This is not a venue for streetball. The courts are level, the hoops are all at regulation size, and there are no game-altering craters in the court.

“It’s like a Madison Square Garden in our backyard, and we have access to it.”
– Tom Parker,
Community Board Member

“It will be a great place for kids to hone their games,” said Bruce Radler, the president of Basketball City. “Playing on outdoor courts deals with a lot of variables, and they’re unusable in the winter. Basketball City will be reliable.”

It’s also much more expensive. It’s tough for local families to spend $250 for youth basketball programs that span six weeks. And the five-day summer camps for kids ages 8 to 17 will cost more than $300. Basketball City will run 13 of these sessions.

The adult recreation leagues are more costly. For a 10-week season with playoffs, a 10-member team has to come up with $2,150. Each player then has to pay nearly $100 for uniforms, lockers and other fees. Recreation leagues are attractive to big companies; Monday leagues at Basketball City’s Chelsea Piers center matched teams from the New York Post and Daily News with squads from the Food Network, Goldman Sachs and Ernest & Young.

These costs may not seem so extravagant at first, but 40 percent of the households surrounding Basketball City (three surrounding census tracts) make less than $20,000 income, according to the American Community Survey (five year estimate, 2006-2010).  There isn’t much room for a recreation team that represents the nearby Valdeck Houses when the costs are so expensive.

But Radler has discussed his intentions on helping the Lower East Side residents in need. This includes holding free summer camps, sponsoring sponsorships and running clinics.

“Any time you have kids in an organized activity, not on the street,” Radler said. “They’re better off they’re better served, they learn life skills, being part of a team. That’s why we think the organized activity is so much more important than just free play.”

Though Basketball City is a pricey luxury, Radler is working with the community to give them services, according to Tom Parker, a Community Board 3 member. Parker worked with Radler to offer $25 basketball clinics to community children ages 7-16 on Sundays. For at least nine hours a day, the courts are open for local schools, not-for-profit organizations, and other local groups.

“It’s a multi-million dollar facility,” Parker said. “It’s like a Madison Square Garden in our backyard, and we have access to it.”

But Victor Papa, president of Two Bridges Neighborhood Council, a Lower East Side advocacy group, views Radler’s Samaritan side differently. It took too long to get some programs that benefited the Lower East Side, Papa argues, adding that he believes Radler should be more willing to help.

“Radler has made arrangements with schools with groups would use the facility,” Papa said. “But no effort was made to secure free time for our individual kids who are not part of institutions. Kids who need it most are the kids not attached. They’re aimless and the most likely to get in trouble.”

Many of these kids are also unaware of Basketball City’s eventual presence in the neighborhood. Basketball players at Henry M. Jackson Playground on Henry Street were baffled when asked about the new seven-court facility not too far from the playground. They had never heard of Basketball City. During an audit and report of city playgrounds, Comptroller John Liu cited the Henry M. Jackson Playground for having “tripping hazards or cracked safety surfaces.” These are all problems Basketball City will never have.

“I know a lot of people will probably love it,” one Jackson Playground player said. “But it sounds expensive. I’ll probably stick to my slanted hoops and cracked concrete.”

Greenpoint Businesses Adjust to Younger Crowd

Eva Wieczorek, the owner of the hair salon in Greenpoint, Brooklyn bearing her name, serves her customer for 40 years. "It's a big honor to have customers like that. I must have done something good". Photo by Natalia V. Osipova
Eva Wieczorek, the owner of the hair salon bearing her name, serves her customer for 40 years. "It's a big honor to have customers like that. I must have done something good"

Greenpoint, Brooklyn — “I miss my old customers,” says Eva Wieczorek, the owner of a well-groomed hair salon bearing her name on Nassau Avenue in Greenpoint. Since 1970, when she started her business, the regular customers were her compatriots, working-class Polish immigrants. But in the last decade, most of them left the neighborhood that didn’t fit their budget anymore.

MULTIMEDIA

Play the Change Game

Hear From Merchants

From 2000 to 2010 in Greenpoint, the population of 30-year-olds, the largest age group in the neighborhood doubled, Census comparison show. And as they moved in, they brought new tastes and consumer habits to the formerly conservative, Polish neighborhood.

Over the same period of time, the population of Polish-born immigrants in New York declined from 61,546 to 55,581, the Census bureau reports.

Vintage boutiques with names like Fox&Fawn and Kill Devil Hill, hip bars and cafes such as Papasitos and Troost have supplanted the neighborhood’s mom-and-pop shops and old-fashioned pizzerias that Wieczorek and her customers had come to love.

The businesses that have remained have had to adjust to the new, younger residents. Some of them have done it successfully and found their own ways to prosper.

Eva’s salon, for example, now orders more extravagant hair dyes like purple and green.

That’s what “yuppies” often ask for, says Wieczorek, 62.  New residents also increased demand for services that Wieczorek’s former customers likely never requested, services like hole-head bleaching for men and straight and sleek hairdos for women.

Wieczorek, however, smartly made changes.  manages the salon with her son Daniel, 34. She realized she could no longer handle demands for the newly popular services so she began recruiting people with the proper skills.  She haired several stylists the same age as the new clientele.

Older customers still opt for perms and wavy styles, but Wieczorek says the salon doesn’t do them as often as it did in the past.

“We are getting modern,” says Wieczorek.

“When you think of somebody working manually, ‘skinny’would not be a word to describe what people typically would wear.”- Ed Veneziano,
Clothing Store Owner

While she misses her old client base, she confesses, the change has been good for business. In the past two years, she has seen demand for beauty services grow by 20 percent, and people who live in the area now have more money to spend. “We love them,” she says.

Another family business a couple of blocks away, Greenpoint’s Toy Center on Manhattan Avenue, also welcomed the change in neighborhood demographics. When owners Herman and Nancy Hernandez took over the shop eight years ago, the local community was predominantly Polish. But Hernandez now says more non-Polish young families seem to moving into the area. “They are very faithful customers to the store,” he says.

Hernandez, 48, a former policeman, says traditional toys like Lego and Barbie dolls still sell well, but in the past five years different types of toys have risen in popularity. Durable wooden toys, as well as ones made of eco-friendly recyclable plastic, fly off the shelves.

“The young hipster families are looking for more earth-friendly type of toys,” he says.

Hernandez says young customers pay more attention to design now, and look for exercise toys, something to ride or to play with outdoors. Electronic and innovative toys such as micro robotic bugs and spiders or “beyblades”, metal toy combat sets, are also among top sellers now. “I get more of this stuff now,” says Hernandez.

In the donut and pastry shop Peter Pan across the street, the owner Donna Siafakas says she also has witnessed her clientele change dramatically from about two years ago. Long lines of young customers patiently waiting to be served is something Siafakas didn’t expect to see 10 years ago.

“Even myself, if I see a place with a crowd I would keep going. But these people come in and wait patiently in line, even in cold. And it’s amazing to me,” says Siafakas, 55, who has run the bakery with her husband Christos for the past 20 years. She says, if previous customers saw 10-15 people in line, “in a couple of minutes, they would be out.”

At Peter Pan, which opened in 1950, business is blossoming thanks to Greenpoint demographics’ change.

Siafakas says a few years ago she installed a coffee machine to offer espresso and cappuccino. “Before then we just had plain American coffee,” she says. Traditional Polish customers weren’t big espresso drinkers.

Jelly donut sales are another indicator of the changing tastes of  Peter Pan’s customers. “Polish people were big fans of a jelly donut, because they made what they called punchki which is a Polish donut with jam inside,” says Siafakas. Once a best seller, jelly donut now is the least popular item in the menu.

To fit new customer tastes, the bakery added a red velvet donut. “About a year or one and a half ago, we began to think about what they would like. And red velvet was very hot at that time,” says Siafakas.  The bakery substituted traditional red velvet cake’s crèam cheese frosting with glaze. She says, it’s better to eat them on the go this way, just as young customers prefer.

The neighborhood’s young hipsters and artists, Siafakas points out, seem to like the new offerings, but also appear to appreciate what the store has always been known for: its old-fashioned donuts.

For 20 years the bakery has kept low prices: for two dollars customers get a donut with coffee.

“It’s something that we had before that appeals to them. I think, it’s nostalgia of the place,” says Siafakas.

Before her family took over the bakery in 1993, it had been in Greenpoint for 42 years already.

The family did not change the recipes or the interior. The round bar stools remained – and they still do. Siafakas, who was born in Greenpoint, says, her mother always took her there to treat her to donuts after going to the movie theater that was nearby.  “I used to twirl around, and my mom always tried to stop me. Children still do, and I don’t stop them, because I think it’s fun.”

Inside the Greenpoint’s retail old-timer across the street, Cato’s Army and Navy, hardly anything has changed in the past decade either, or so it seems. The shop started as a men’s clothing shop 37 years ago and catered mostly to blue-collar workers, which were the main settlers in the neighborhood. Now business is shifting from practicality toward fashion. That’s what new Greenpoint residents crave.

The shop sells the same items, but in smaller sizes and brighter colors. The owner Ed Veneziano, 57, says, 10 years ago he wouldn’t even order size 28 for male pants.

“It would be too small for our traditional customers,” says Veneziano.  “When you think of somebody working manually, “skinny” would not be a word to describe what people typically would wear,” he says. “Greenpoint has been a blue-collar neighborhood forever,” says Veneziano. His traditional customers would have looked for clothes comfortable to work in.

Now the offerings are more stylish and appeal to women too. Veneziano said, he recently started selling female Western and military clothes.

“The challenge of local businesses was to figure new local residents’ needs.  And for some business it has not been successful. There are a lot of empty storefronts on Manhattan Avenue,” says Veneziano.

He refers to of Valdiano’s pizzeria across the street. Its closed door now carries the announcement: “Thank you for years of support.” The pizzeria, which had been there for decades, went out of business at the end of March.

Veneziano says, fortunately, his shop’s usual assortment became fashionable outside the blue-collar workers’ world.  But his survival, he says, depends ultimately on the fleeting preferences of consumers.  He just got lucky.

“It’s like a lottery ticket,” says Veneziano.

PNG icons in multimedia courtesy of Julia Soderberg, Olivier Guin and The Noun Project

The Holdouts: NYU’s Plans to Grow Worry Village Residents

 


 


Lifelong New Yorker Joffrey Wilson at the community garden at East 6th Street and Avenue A.

In the East Village, a dichotomy cuts the neighborhood in half. New apartment buildings, all glass windows and steel accents, stand alongside their brick forebears, with ivy trailing along their fire escapes. The modern constructions represent the changing population of the neighborhood, as the influx of students from New York University has continued to grow.

“The greedy landlords, they jump all over that,” said Joffrey Wilson, a longtime resident. “When the students are here for three or four months, they’ll paint the place and sand the floor down and add another few hundred dollars on the rent. People who have lived here for decades can barely afford to live here anymore.”

The university was recently in the news because of its controversial NYU 2031 plan, which proposed the construction of two “superblocks” near Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. The selected blocks would be used for NYU’s purposes, including academic buildings and a hotel. Though the plan was not well-publicized to students, it garnered support from the New York Times–and an outcry from community members seeking to preserve an older vision of New York.

“[The plan] really compromised the integrity of the neighborhood, the family structure of the streets,” said Wilson.

Community Board 2 obviously felt the same way and voted down the plan in February.

“We’re very strongly opposed to their expansion plan, we think it would have a terribly damaging effect on Greenwich Village,” said Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society For Historic Preservation, a leading challenger of the plan. “It would oversaturate an area that’s already oversaturated with NYU facilities. It would change the character. It would eliminate valuable public open green space.”

Since then, the university downsized the plan, which now includes the preservation of two playgrounds and an agreement to reduce the heights of new buildings. But residents still aren’t pleased.

“The 2031 plan is still very significant and will still have an enormous negative impact on Greenwich Village and its surrounding neighborhood,” said Terri Cude, co-chair of the Community Action Alliance on NYU 2031. “It still changes the nature of Greenwich Village and it’s still massive. The reduction was not enough to change any of that.”

The alliance is composed of community associations from the neighborhoods affected by NYU’s presence, which also include NoHo and Union Square. Members are concerned about the local character, including small businesses, being affected.

“The additional construction will change the neighborhood to the point where they will no longer have the audience they need to survive,” Cude said. “It’s the nature of the customers, as people don’t want to live on a college campus. They change the demographic from a diverse mix to more students.”

The high ratio of students in the population is a common concern.

“It changes the Village–and the word village is important–into something that might look more like Midtown,” Cude said. “Which is fine if you like Midtown, but if you want a village, it’s not.”

Keeping the area residential is also important to residents like Wilson. The community garden that he oversees lies at the intersection of East Sixth Street and Avenue B. It is also within a census tract, 26.01, that has gone from 54.2 percent family households in 2000 to 47.9 percent in 2010. In the six block tract, the total number of households has jumped from 1,224 to 1,486. He worries about the neighborhood being overrun by students.

“Any given night, the bars are swelling with NYU students,” Wilson said. “I don’t know where they get the money to buy all this alcohol and stay up so late. They should be studying and putting their money toward their books and loans.”

Though the NYU 2031 plan is continuing to be negotiated, residents are still suspicious of the eventual outcome.

“It doesn’t benefit the people, it only benefits NYU,” said Wladek Debowski, who noted that he first saw the population beginning to change during the 80s and 90s.

Greenwich Village preservation advocate Berman, the Community Action Alliance, and others have pushed for NYU to instead target a less residential area, such as the Financial District.

Click the image below of NYU’s previous expansion: