Starting “to Feel Like the Upper West Side”: Columbia Transforms an Already Gentrifying Manhattanville

The university’s expansion into a formerly industrial and commercial area has accelerated a neighborhood’s transition: it’s becoming whiter, richer and more educated.

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by Dayana Mustak

A walk along Broadway in West Harlem reveals a drastic landscape change. Around the 137th Street subway station, sidewalk vendors sell ceramics, children’s toys and detergent displayed on cloths spread out on the pavement.

Just 10 blocks away stands the gleaming Jerome L. Greene Science Center, which opened four years ago – complete with a climbing gym and a restaurant developed by an acclaimed chef. Other changes in the neighborhood are underway: On West 131st Street, the Columbia Business School is set to open in January, serving approximately 1,600 graduate students and faculty. On West 125th, a 34-story graduate student residence is under construction. All are part of Columbia’s new Manhattanville campus, which it calls a long-term plan to revitalize a former industrial area.

The university’s expansion into Manhattanville reflects and intensifies the neighborhood’s transition: it’s becoming whiter, richer and more educated. Crime is decreasing and rents increasing, generating a mixed reaction from local residents and business owners.

Juana Scanlon, general manager of Goals Service Station, at her store.

“The neighborhood has changed dramatically, but for the better,” says Juana Scanlon, 60, who runs a gas station and repair shop, Goals Service Station, on West 131st Street. “It was really bad around here.”

Having worked locally for 35 years, Scanlon welcomes Columbia to the neighborhood, which she says feels safer. “We still get a bit of trouble with stealing and all that,” she says. “It’s still here, but less.”

Crime in the Manhattanville area has fallen about 35 percent from 10 years ago, slightly beating the citywide decline, police records show.

Yet some longtime residents feel the pinch of rising living costs. “If not for rent stabilization, I would move – not even within New York, but other states,” says Ibad Khawaja, 76. When he first moved to West 125th Street 45 years ago, Khawaja paid $155 for his apartment; he now pays $950. “But I know next door’s rent is about $4,000,” he says.

Universities often modify the character of surrounding neighborhoods says Charles McNally, director of external affairs at the NYU Furman Center, which studies housing and urban policy.

While gentrification is “often thought of as rising rents,” it can also involve the “changing composition of a neighborhood,” McNally says – which people move in and out of an area and how its racial makeup, income and educational levels change accordingly.

Manhattanville’s Black population is four times larger than its white population, but 2020 census data shows the former shrunk by 13% while the latter grew by 91%. The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey found incomes rose 13% between 2010 and 2019 after controlling for inflation. The number of residents with a bachelor’s degree rose 59%, even though population size remained relatively stable.

While Columbia’s shiny new buildings stand out, they are hardly the sole driver of population changes. In New York, a “rapidly growing global city, you’ll find that public investment and anchor institutions don’t have the huge impact they do in other cities like Philadelphia or Chicago,” says Karen Chapple, who teaches city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley. “There are just many different forces at play.”

Overall, the city “is undergoing a very long-term slow gentrification,” says Chapple, a Columbia student herself in the 1980s. Gentrification was already transforming the neighborhood then, she recalls, long before the university announced the Manhattanville expansion in 2003. It would have happened “with or without Columbia,” she says.

Locals acknowledge this inevitability, too. “There’s nothing to be surprised about,” says Tareq Eid, 40, who has operated Falafel on Broadway for 10 years. In fact, Eid, who co-owns the restaurant with his brothers, says they chose its location partly because of foot traffic from Columbia students.

Columbia University student housing construction site, where a McDonald’s once stood.

So, is the changing neighborhood a bad thing? “It’s really only bad when involuntary displacement occurs,” says Chapple.

“Change is inevitable,” acknowledges Louis Bailey, manager of membership and organizing at WE ACT for Environmental Justice and a long-time Harlem resident. “But who gets priced out because of change? Low-income communities.”

Chapple says gentrification would have occurred more rapidly if not for the city’s rent stabilization and affordable housing policies. “There’s so much work left to be done,” Chapple says, but “often we don’t see what’s working.” According to the American Community Survey data, rents have increased about 31% in the last decade, controlling for inflation.

Even if rents are not increasing steeply, for low-income residents, “an extra $50 can go a long way for something else,” says Bailey, who notes that many residents, like seniors, live on fixed incomes.

Gentrification “commands a lot of focus because it spotlights a lot of growing inequalities,” says McNally. But many more people are “stuck in low-income disinvested neighborhoods.” A University of Minnesota Law School study found that in major U.S. cities, many more low-income residents are affected by economic decline than by displacement due to gentrification.

While investment in a neighborhood may bring benefits like job opportunities, McNally says it can also foster “cultural alienation and mental health impacts.”

Indeed, the balance between economic benefits and a desire to preserve neighborhood character lies at the heart of Manhattanville’s transition.

Residents “might not have all the accurate data” about rent or population trends, Bailey says, but “they see the stores have changed. They see new tenants.” Plus, Columbia faces community cynicism because, he says, its investment “didn’t translate into jobs.”

David Jang, co-owner of coffeeshop Kuro Kuma, has lived in the neighborhood for 10 years.

“It’s just the start of more construction,” says David Jang, 43, co-owner of Kuro Kuma, a coffeeshop on La Salle Street. The neighborhood “will start to feel like the Upper West Side or Midtown,” he says.

Still, Jang believes new residents will benefit the neighborhood long term. The stretch of Broadway between La Salle Street and 125th Street – almost entirely lined with restaurants – became “such a well-travelled path” because of how attractive the neighborhood has become, Jang says.

While locals appreciate the variety of restaurants, some lament the loss of conveniences like laundromats. The block between Tiemann Place and La Salle Street used to have three, all now replaced by restaurants, Property Shark records show.

When a McDonald’s on West 125th Street was demolished in 2019 to make way for Columbia student housing, residents paid tribute to the fast-food restaurant. In a Facebook group, Harlem Happenings, Conni Owens called the demolition “really sad times in Harlem.” Gothamist reported over 400 people RSVP’d to a Facebook event, “We all go to the 125th St McDonalds before it closes.”

Before Columbia’s expansion, Manhattanville was not a vibrant residential neighborhood. “It was mostly storage, not really people buildings,” says Scanlon.

The university signed a community benefits agreement as a precondition to redevelopment, including assurances it wouldn’t acquire residential properties or privatize public housing. It also committed to hiring minorities and local residents for its construction projects.

The agreement is legally binding, but “there’s really no recourse,” says Bailey. “They’ve already gotten what they wanted.”

(Featured photo of climbing gym on the ground floor of the Jerome L. Greene Science Center, and other photos by Dayana Mustak)

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