Saving Bedford Stuyvesant, Part 2

The conclusion of the history of the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation

(Prospect Place “Superblock.” Photo: Suzanne Spellen)

The Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation was established in 1967 as the United States’ first community development corporation. The marriage of politics, federal funding, community-based action and major corporate funding was envisioned by Robert Kennedy, along with Jacob Javits, Bed Stuy resident Elsie Richardson, and a host of other leaders and activists. It was seen as the only way to raise forgotten inner-city communities like Bedford Stuyvesant up, and out of the cycle of poverty that seemed to have overtaken much of it.

The 1960’s was a wake-up call to the nation in many ways. The Civil Rights Movement had called national attention to the Jim Crow laws of the South, and to segregation and discrimination there.  The violence and death of innocent people seeking equality moved national leaders and much of the nation to change. But as Northerners volunteered to go down South to aid in voting rights, it took riots and unrest here in our northern cities for people to realize that we had our own forms of segregation and apartheid right here.

The plan was brilliant in its simplicity. As Robert Kennedy would announce in 1967, “The program for the development of Bedford Stuyvesant will combine the best of community action with the best of the private enterprise system. Neither by itself is enough, but in their combination lies our hope for the future.” The visible arm of the program would be the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation (BSRC). It would be a non-profit run by community people and would be able to have the pulse of the community, setting the agenda for necessary programs, and deciding what projects would best serve the community.

Behind the scenes would be the Development and Services Corporation (D&S) based in Manhattan, composed of business, banking and professional leaders, who would advise and fundraise private funding for the BSRC’s projects. Initial government funds, along with private monies would be placed in these corporations’ hands to rebuilt and restart Bedford Stuyvesant.

The first project was centered around the abandoned Sheffield Milk Bottling Plant, on Fulton Street, which would be transformed into BSRC’s offices, and a community center in 1967. The next projects concerned housing. That same year, the BSRC began a program of exterior restoration to residents of Bed Stuy. Administered only through block associations, this program employed hundreds of residents to work with contractors to repair facades, restore stoops, fix and replace railings and fences, and redo sidewalks.

Blocks that did not have block associations were encouraged to form them, and apply for this program, thereby incentivizing neighbors to organize and revitalize the community, block by block. For $25, a qualified resident could have as much work done as was needed.  The program lasted for 10 years, and thousands of homes had repair work done. A look down many Bed Stuy blocks today can attest to the effectiveness of this program.

In addition to aiding present homeowners, the BSRC administered a $73 million mortgage assistance program to encourage African-American homeownership. Bedford Stuyvesant already had a higher percentage of resident homeowners than Harlem, 15% compared to $2%, in a much larger neighborhood. That is why so much of Bed Stuy remained intact throughout these lean years, and the program allowed many more qualified people to get mortgages, valuable beyond belief in a neighborhood that was still redlined by the commercial banks.

The BSRC also bought many properties in the area, again using local workers to rehab apartment buildings and rowhouses into affordable housing, and later in the program, building new units of affordable housing in Bedford Stuyvesant. The BSRC managed those buildings, recycling the funds into maintenance and more housing. BSRC Job training programs offered training in carpentry, clerical work, refrigerator and A/C repair in an initiative that trained over 1200 local people.

Thomas J. Watson, chairman of IBM and a board member of the D&S, opened an IBM computer cable factory in Bed Stuy. This was what Bedford Stuyvesant needed; a real Fortune 500 company investing in the community. This was Kennedy’s dream.  It was housed in the historic Jenkins Trust and Empire Storage building on the corner of Gates and Nostrand avenues.

It opened in 1968, making computer cables and employing over 300 people. By 1972, the plant was producing 25% of IBM’s cables and 39% of their power units. They had job applications in their files for over 4,000 people, were employing over 400, and three-quarters of their 42 plant managers were black. That year IBM won a Business Week award for “developing human resources.”

By 1979, the company had outgrown the Gates Avenue facility, and moved to a new building on the corner of DeKalb and Nostrand avenues. This 168,000 square foot facility allowed them to manufacture products beyond the cables and power units, and they were also charged with manufacturing display stations and switching systems for several models in their lines.

In 1993, IBM was going to close the factory down, but instead decided to sell everything to Advanced Technological Solutions, a minority owned company consisting mainly of former IBM staffers, who subcontracted work from IBM. They remained at this location for several more years before they seem to have gone out of business. The block long factory site is now partially taken up by a Home Depot, built in 2005. Much, if not all of the original ATS building is now the Brooklyn Job Corp Academy.

In 1975, BSRC completed Restoration Plaza, the block long and wide commercial heart of Bedford Stuyvesant.  The supervising architect for this project was Bedford Stuyvesant-born and raised architect Harley M. Jones. The Sheffield Milk plant building and surrounding former factories and store buildings were now the center of commercial, business, recreational, and cultural events. The Center for Art and Culture, which had been founded in 1970, launched a large cultural program which included the Billy Holiday Theater, housed in the Sheffield plant, the Restoration Dance Theater, the Skylight Gallery for art exhibitions, and a Youth Arts Academy offering local kids lessons in music, art, dance, martial arts and visual arts.

The Bedford Stuyvesant Family Heath Care Center was opened in 1976, across the street from the Plaza. The complex housed Bedford Stuyvesant’s first new supermarket in 30 years, a large Pathmark, as well as retail clothing stores, branch offices of three major banks, Con Ed, Brooklyn Union Gas and NY Telephone, a day care center, Caribbean radio station, Post Office, Social Security office, classrooms for New Rochelle Community College, meeting rooms, a large public plaza and an ice-skating rink. Today, many of the names have changed, as has the architecture of the Plaza, but it remains the heart of Bed Stuy’s business community. In 1976 the Bedford Stuyvesant Family Heath Care Center, a brand new walk-in facility, opened across the street from the Plaza.

And then there were the Superblock projects, perhaps the most ambitious piece of urban and social engineering to take place under the Restoration umbrella. They were also the most controversial. The Superblocks were the brainchild of architect I. M. Pei, the eminent American master architect, one of the real “starchitects” of the 20th century. He was the favorite architect of the Kennedy family, the designer of many Kennedy-related projects, including the JFK Library in Boston, and later, Robert Kennedy’s own gravesite at Arlington Cemetery. 

The website for I.M. Pei’s architectural firm, Pei Cobb Fried and Partners, still touts the Superblock sites. Pei had a grand plan to take two Bedford Stuyvesant blocks and transform them into a new urban form. Pei’s website states that “a series of superblocks was proposed, relieving the monotonous urban grid by providing a variety of focal points for neighborhood activity and identity.” For Pei and the social scientists working on the project, the Superblocks would change the dynamic of the street. In their eyes, the street scene was a boiling cauldron of social problems, everything from child safety and recreation to street crime and the ability to sit on one’s stoop in safety and peace.

They searched all over the vast area of Bed Stuy to find two adjacent blocks that would work for the project, and work in terms of traffic, safety and other more mundane concerns. They also wanted blocks that were eager to receive whatever was being planned. After much searching, they picked St. Marks Avenue and Prospect Place, between Kingston and Albany Avenues, now part of the Crown Heights North neighborhood. The vast area between Flushing Avenue and Eastern Parkway was all considered Bedford Stuyvesant until the 1970’s.

The two blocks couldn’t be more different, and there lay the problem and the challenge. St. Marks has several small groups of row houses, but most of the block consists of apartment buildings, some of them quite large. None of them were in good shape, and one had been abandoned. Prospect Place is almost entirely row houses, with only a small 8-unit apartment building midblock, and another similar apartment building on the corner of Kingston Avenue.

St. Marks had a much more transient population and many more children on the block. There was far more unemployment, a need for social services, more drugs and more crime on St. Marks. Junkies inhabited the abandoned apartment building on the block, and they hung out in the streets and nodded out on stoops. In comparison, Prospect Place was like a different neighborhood. It had many more working homeowners, far less unemployment, far fewer children, and a very strong block association. The people on that block were better educated, and included the family of Shirley Chisholm, and a family headed by one of the famous Tuskegee Airmen.

I.M. Pei’s original plan was to close off Kingston and Albany Avenues between the two blocks and cut a new street through the middle of the blocks, creating an enclosed enclave that could be enhanced from the inside, using the old streets as park and recreation spaces. Buildings would have to be destroyed to cut the new streets. In return, they would get a playground and recreation space, as well as Pei–designed street structures that would encourage outdoor activities and allow people to safely hang out in their streets.

Well, needless to say, that plan did not fly. Neither block was in favor, and Prospect Place’s strong block association quickly vetoed that idea. Nobody was going to bisect their street and destroy their homes, not after they had worked so hard to get them, and further worked to keep the block safe and attractive. All Prospect Place wanted from the city was some better lighting, better sidewalks, and a way to keep people from speeding through their block. St. Marks needed so much more.

After much planning and re-planning, Pei and his team came up with this compromise: the blocks were not closed off, and the idea of bisecting them midblock was abandoned. St. Marks, a much wider street, got a park and playground in the middle of the block, and the street was reconfigured into two cul-de-sacs, with center parking on either side of the park. Prospect Place had its sidewalks widened, and new Pei-designed streetlights installed. The street was narrowed at both ends and speed bumps were installed, causing cars to enter single file, and slow down. Finally, cast concrete seating areas were built into both sides of the sidewalk at midblock, creating places for residents to socialize. Both blocks also had substantial landscaping projects put into place.

It cost far more than planned and took far too long to finish. The project received a million-dollar grant from the Astor Foundation, as well as other budgeted funding. Money put aside for subsequent Superblocks ended up being spent on this one, and what money remained, went into buying an apartment building.  The grand plan also included long range urban planning, but that didn’t happen.

However, the blocks were deemed successful by the administration, and Pei and Restoration won several prizes for the design and execution of the project. Prospect Place, which needed only cosmetics, and had so much more going for it anyway, was trotted out as the poster child for the program. As icing on the cake, Prospect Place was chosen as the location for scenes from the 1978 Sidney Lumet movie adaptation of “The Wiz” and was cast as Dorothy’s block. Diana Ross, Richard Pryor and Michael Jackson starred in the movie.

In 1969, right after the Superblocks were finished, the Village Voice newspaper printed a scathing review of the Superblock project, as well as the BSRC in general. They saw Restoration as a typical white do-gooder project, run by clueless rich white guys in Manhattan, with complicit black folks fronting for them in the trenches. Using the Superblock project as a metaphor for the entire endeavor, they said, “St. Marks Avenue west of the Albany Housing Project in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn used to be an undisguised urban slum, but through massive infusions of money and good will, it has been thoroughly transformed – now it is the glossiest slum block in the world.”

They went on to describe the project as being totally absurd, that what was needed on St. Marks Avenue was not a park, but jobs. They pointed to the irony of having to hire 24hr/7 days a week security service to protect the project from the people it was supposed to serve. They took both the BSRC and their corporate partners the D&S to task for “having a weakness for the kind of flossy-glossy project, which at best has some small beneficial effect on community moral.”

The Voice did admit that the BSRC did succeed in some of their programs, specifically their mortgage loan program and home repair program, as well as in the building of Restoration Plaza, which wasn’t finished when the article was written. But as to lifting the poor out of the morass of poverty? No. And I’d have to agree. None of Restorations plans included the schools, either. An improved education remains the surest path to better jobs and better lives.

The most successful programs helped those who were already best able to help themselves: working people who needed mortgages and established and new homeowners. The clear winners were the individuals such as the people of Prospect Place, whose block had long been organized and its people more successful than their more impoverished neighbors in in the rundown apartments on St. Marks.

 IBM’s contribution was a great contribution and training ground to 400 people, but they had 4,000 applications for those jobs. 400 was a drop in the bucket. Massive job creation never happened. If other large Fortune 500 corporations had participated, and relocated facilities to Central Brooklyn, there would have been tremendous economic change.

But industry was fast disappearing in all of New York City at this time, headed south and overseas to cheaper manufacturing locations. New York City was about to go through its worst period since the Great Depression, almost resulting in bankruptcy. Remember the famous Daily News headline, “Ford to City: Drop Dead?” That was only a few short years in the future.

I don’t believe that Kennedy, Javits and the white board of businessmen, politicians, and social activists lied to the people of Bed Stuy. They underestimated what they were up against, and sometimes couldn’t see the forest while looking at the pretty trees. They often were paternalistic and liked flashy projects with impressive photo ops. Some of the recipients of their largess squandered their opportunities. Everyone made mistakes and missteps. And tragically, Robert Kennedy was assassinated in 1968, leaving this project, and the nation, in shock and despair.

As any sociologist can tell you, Bed Stuy’s problems in the 1960’s were the result of complicated issues. The neighborhood’s problems were years in the making, and nation-wide in America’s cities. City policies, disinvestment through redlining joined racism, while poor educational opportunities, absentee landlords, and a lack of skills and jobs perpetuated the crisis.

The heroin epidemic exacerbated by the Viet Nam war was a major crime factor. Segregation and the marginalization of black men, especially young men, added to the problems. Unfortunately, many of those issues still hamper the progress of what is often called the “underclass” to this day. Overcoming those obstacles and moving into productive society has improved incrementally, but those who need help most are the ones first forgotten and first cut when the budget ax falls.

However, when all is said and done, the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation should be commended for its efforts. Bed Stuy’s progress in the last 50 years was made easier by their presence. The physical presence of Restoration Plaza is still a hub for retail, community and cultural events.

BSRC’s mortgage and rehab programs 50 years ago enabled many now long-time homeowners to get their start, building a core of invested neighbors who fought long and hard to keep their blocks clean and free of drugs and criminals. Today, these are still the people involved in block associations, the community board, police council, and other organizations.

What is important is no longer that wealthy and well-connected Manhattanites lend a helping hand, as most of them are now long gone and forgotten, but that the Bed Stuy community has been able to bring itself back. Restoration’s legacy is that the community was always worth saving. The job is far from complete but continues to look confidently into the future. There will always be pride in living in Bedford Stuyvesant, the heart of Brooklyn.