Change In Harlem?

Cogsville was up in arms about the recent commercial revitalization of Harlem. After nearly 24 years, in 1995 his agency was dismantled by Gov. George Pataki under a storm of controversy, including charges of gross mismanagement. HUDC played no role at all in developing Harlem U.S.A., the impressive new mall at the corner of Frederick Douglass Blvd. and 125th St., the linchpin of the new Harlem everyone is reading about. Yet the mall is not Don's idea of the type of progress Harlem needs. When I reminded him that I had left the agency for a career as a journalist and author he beseeched me to write the real story of the comeback everyone is talking about in Harlem. Longtime observers and operators like Cogsville and his political enemies inside the community are nervous about what it will eventually become.

Cogsville was head of HUDC for almost 20 years. Though moderately successful in the field of housing, he and his associates were unable to get a single one of their large-scale commercial development proposals off the ground. Perhaps the most ill-advised was the multimillion-dollar Harlem International Trade Center. HUDC spent nearly its entire existence lobbying to build this skyscraper office tower and first-class hotel at the corner of Malcolm X Blvd. and 125th St., under the questionable assumption that government officials and trade representatives from Third World countries (primarily Africa and the West Indies), who normally interact with their counterparts from around the world in the vicinity of the UN building and the burgeoning office towers of midtown Manhattan, would prefer to leave the principal business district of the entire world and conduct their affairs all the way up in Harlem, isolated from everyone else.

On the face of it, any clear-thinking individual should have concluded the idea seemed destined for the rubbish heap. While there, I jocularly referred to it as the agency's fantasy (behind Cogsville's back). But it's hard not to fantasize in such a manner when every day you wake up to a world that prefixes your existence by sticking the label "black" on you at every turn. When you live like that you tend to harbor Marcus Garveyite aspirations: "Us black folks will simply circle our wagons, walling ourselves off from the rest of the world (who shun us), and build our own central business district?a mini-midtown that will become the shining beacon to 'our people' around the world." Harlem had to be brought back to reality, largely by Deborah Wright, former head of the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone (one of six federally designated redevelopment districts across the country earmarked for commercial tax breaks in order to bring in major commerce?hence, Harlem U.S.A.).

Now the community is becoming a place people of all colors are talking about. A buzz has been generated as it acquires some of the characteristics of yuppified Manhattan neighborhoods and tourist districts. There's a Starbucks, new first-class restaurants and tenants in Harlem U.S.A. that hardly reflect what comes to mind when one thinks of Harlem?an Old Navy, an HMV, a New York Sports Club, a Disney Store. This has generated an interest among the well-heeled in purchasing and renovating the neighborhood brownstones; which, in turn, resurrects a paranoia that even 16 years ago the people who remained in Harlem expressed five minutes into one's conversing with them: "The white folks got plans to take over Harlem..."

As then, the fear appears to outpace the reality. Middle- and lower-middle-income Afro-Americans still comprise the overwhelming majority of pedestrians along the commercial strips. And it will be a while before places like Showman's Cafe, a fixture on 125th St. since 1942, where you walk in and feel a warmth and camaraderie that's missing from a Starbucks, will see the wrecker's ball. Regulars at Showman's include men like someone I'll call James, a lean, dark-skinned 60ish West Indian with a law degree, who looks like a character from an August Wilson play. Approach this former chief assistant to a powerful politician in Albany with friendliness and respect. Several years ago, the founder of perhaps the most prestigious literary agency in America encountered him in Tavern on the Green and condescendingly inquired, "Who are you?" to which James replied with equal condescension, "Who are you?"

James is still recovering from the death of his beloved wife two years ago, who worked in publishing and was the reason he met the superagent. Like Cogsville, he's not comfortable with the prospects for the New Harlem. We discuss the latest en vogue venue, the renovated Lenox Lounge on Malcolm X Blvd. near 125th St., practically catty-corner from where HUDC proposed building its International Trade Center. On a recent Wednesday you couldn't even get inside the Lounge. In fact, you couldn't even see it. The place was covered in tarpaulins. Moviemaking equipment sat outside. Mysterious, casually dressed men and women (all of them Caucasian) with walkie-talkies milled about as if guarding Fort Knox.

No doubt for one day it was the scene of yet another of the plethora of elaborate movie or music video sets one sees in Manhattan. The Lounge was featured in the recent remake of the film Shaft. And now it's the epicenter of the latest aspect of the dream for a New Harlem: resurrection of the jazz days of the 1920s through the 1940s, when the community's nightlife rivaled that of Greenwich Village and all the other hot spots in the city, causing plenty of downtowners to come uptown, "slumming." Originally opened the same year as Showman's, the new Lenox Lounge (Afro-Americans who bought the place in 1988 reopened it last April after putting it through an eight-month, $750,000 renovation) hosts performers just a notch less prestigious than those found at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Yet the enthusiastic customers eager to pay the $15 cover charge are overwhelmingly Caucasian tourists. Rarely do Afro-Americans attend the jazz shows, observed a recent New York Times article.

James and a barmaid at Showman's say they distinctly remember the piece. "Yeah, I read it," comments James. "The owner said that black people here in Harlem can't afford his prices. He doesn't want them in there."

"He said that?" I ask.

"Sure did," agrees the Showman's barmaid, as though the two of them had caught a "traitor to the race."

"That's why I'll never go in there," vows James.

"Me neither," agrees the barmaid.

I strolled by the Lounge once more, only to see that the tarpaulins had come off and I could go inside. It was the middle of the day. The Lounge looked nice. The bartender, a dark-skinned Afro-American about a decade my junior, seemed relaxed and friendly. He was amused by a rap video playing on the tv overhead. There were only a couple of other people inside, also Afro-American. None seemed snobbish. When I asked the bartender for the telephone number of the owners, he gave it to me without the slightest hint of a hassle.

I go to the Times on the Web and retrieve the article. I decide I better reread it before calling one of the father-son owners, Alvin Reed Sr. or Alvin Reed Jr., to ask which of them said what James and the barmaid said they did, and why. As I read the article, I discover something that shouldn't surprise me. Alvin Reed Sr. is the one being quoted. And not only does he not say that regular Harlemites aren't welcome, he wonders out loud why they don't come by. He says that the very fact that they aren't coming hurts him to his heart, that he doesn't want the Lounge to become just a tourist destination and is considering knocking on doors to bring the community inside.

I conclude there's no need to call him. Only a need to understand what happens to even the most astute minds when consumed by fear and/or jealousy. Don Cogsville and James and Al Reed Sr. are like the chess players in Washington Square Park. At the moment, Reed appears to be the one winning his game. This time around the rumors of change in Harlem are becoming reality.

In the face of a recession, however, Harlem will probably be one of the first communities to see revitalization resources dry up. At that point, what will be the community's best game plan?