An architect's 1833 drawing of the Corn Exchange. (Photo courtesy HarlemBespoke.com)

Until she starts talking, Ethel Bates looks like anyone’s grandmother with her maroon windbreaker, a dun scarf wrapped turbanlike around her head. Short, forceful and sharp as a whip, this energetic 77-year-old community activist has spent much of the last decade in court – mostly pitted against various city departments. “She’s a little dynamo,” says Garry Johnson, Community Board 11’s treasurer and Economic Development Committee chair.

Johnson’s architecture consultancy on 125th Street looks right over the Corn Exchange, a landmark building that is the locus of Ethel Bates’ legal struggles. From the street, the 126-year-old red brick building decorated with ornate white masonry looks to be in good shape, though cosseted with scaffolding. From Johnson’s window, though, the building’s dilapidated innards present quite a contrast to the ordered lines of the adjacent Metro North station.

The building after demolition began in September. (Photo by Tim Kiladze)

The city is in the midst of carrying out an “emergency demolition” of the five-story building’s top three floors. Since 2003, Bates has officially been in charge of renovating this building, one of 125th Street’s scattered 19th-century landmarks. Bates, who harbors an above-average suspicion of government, claims that the disrepair is due not so much to neglect on her part as to obfuscation by the city and to the Department of Buildings’s “secret agenda.”

The Corn Exchange was built, in the Queen Anne and Romanesque-style, as the Mount Morris Bank by architects Lamb & Lamb. With well-appointed apartments on its upper levels (it earlier had seven stories, with gables at the top), the building later became the Corn Exchange, a bank that eventually merged with JP Morgan. Used briefly as a church, the building was abandoned in the 1970s and lay empty for almost 30 years. A fire destroyed the decaying upper levels before Bates decided to adopt the Corn Exchange as the site for a pioneer culinary school in upper Manhattan.

The Economic Development Corp. had doubts when Bates first approached the city with her proposal in 1999. “I wasn’t anybody as far as they were concerned,” Bates said. Bates said she got a boost from developer Lew Rudin, who put in a cameo appearance for her at an EDC meeting – “you would have thought a saint had walked in, or God himself.” Bates eventually landed an appointment with then-deputy mayor Rudy Washington.

Washington had “heard on the one hand that here was this elderly woman that had a good heart but who didn’t know squat and it would be a disaster to let her have this building,” Bates recalled. “On the other hand she was a person who had these certain merits.” Impressed by Bates’s personality and business acumen (she had studied business at New York University and City College), Washington told Bates that he was on her side.

So she was surprised to find that the building had suddenly been auctioned off to Elie Hirschfeld (son of Abraham), who she said just wanted to sell it back to her for three times the cost. Bates sued the city. It took a year for the decision, but she won her case as well as control over the Corn Exchange. In 2003, Bates held the property deed with a promise to develop the building in three years.

It wasn’t the first time Bates had sued New York. In the 1980s, she was involved in the restoration of Marcus Garvey Park. She sued the parks department after she was handcuffed by some of their officers.

Ethel Bates speaking at a Town Hall meeting (Photo by Edmund J. Eng)

Bates’ dream of opening a culinary school stemmed from a long history with foreign travel, food and art. Bates was born in Birmingham, Ala., but moved to New York with her father, a railway employee, her mother and her six siblings when she was a child. After college, Bates traveled to Europe and lived in France, England and Italy for several years. She worked as a contract negotiator for performers and traveled to Israel, Palestine and North Africa. When she returned to New York, she did everything from being an accountant to running a bakery.

Bates wanted to open a culinary institute because she felt that “in this community you have so many people who are able to do some cooking but they can’t compete. They can’t afford the Culinary Institute of America, they can’t afford the French Culinary… you can’t go and compete with somebody who’s got a reputation behind them and all you’ve done is work in a greasy spoon place.”

She was set on this building, “a place that gives you a certain amount of cachet… That’s my idea: save the building and do a culinary institute.” Bates had already signed on Ark Restaurants and several other potential tenants for the New Corn Exchange project.

Finding a developer proved more difficult. While candidates came to her in droves, Bates felt that each was after her valuable property and had no interest in creating a community culinary institute. Her unwillingness to cede equity control kept stalling the project.

Johnson felt Bates bears some responsibility. “I believe she’s had opportunities,” he said. “The real estate boom has come and gone now.” He said he knew of a big-name developer who had offered Bates a 49 percent stake in the building and that she had refused. He also said that the Community Board approached Bates with a proposal financed by its members. If Bates could not find a developer, he said, she should have tried to open the school elsewhere first, so that it could build a track record.

Bates’ account of her dealings with developers over the years is a laundry list of shady proposals and corrupt maneuvers. About once a year, a newspaper would report that restoration was about to begin. But Bates repeatedly wound up in court, fighting with would-be developers who she claimed wanted to wrest control of the building from her. The city held off on taking any action until 2007, when it moved to rescind Bates’ ownership.

Bates said she has spent $300,000 of her own money fighting cases and paying various fines the city imposed. She also arranged for the protective scaffolding that surrounds the Corn Exchange. Eventually, Bates filed for bankruptcy in order to restrategize. “We fought it nip-and-tuck,” she said.

Bates lost her plea for bankruptcy and the matter reverted to Supreme Court, where a judge ruled in January that the city could take over the building in a non-final disposition. The city claimed that the building was a danger to pedestrians and the 125th Street station and moved to tear down its top floors. Demolition began in early September, but Bates still hasn’t given up. She says her legal status is “sensitive,” but that she hasn’t given up on regaining control.

There is a discrepancy between the Court’s ruling that the deed revert to the city and an April 20 letter asking Bates’ group to take immediate action on repair and demolition. The letter stated that if Bates failed to take action, the city would move to demolish and “recover its expenses from you.” This summer, Assemblyman Adam C. Powell wrote to the Economic Development Corporation strongly backing Bates. The advocacy group Historic Districts Council wrote to Deputy Mayor Edward Skylar in August, stating that council members had visited the building and found the proposed emergency demolition unfounded. The members asked the mayor to intercede until “a more experienced developer can be found.”

The demolition of the Corn Exchange’s top stories may have been drastic. Calling for an emergency demolition allowed the Building Department to bypass authorization from the Landmarks Preservation Commission in the name of public safety. In an April field report, investigators cited loose bricks in various places, but maintained that the protective scaffolding around the building was sound. Johnson, for one, believes that demolishing three floors was overkill and that the fifth floor is the only one that really had to go. “As an architect, I believe those are load-bearing walls,” he said.

Bates suspects that the city will wait, then propose another demolition and eventually hand the building over to a prominent developer. Developer Vornado owns the lot across the street and the Corn Exchange is prime property, with empty lots and the train station just next door.

The Corn Exchange in its heyday, circa the 1920s or 1930s. Until recently, the building had five of its original seven stories. (Photo courtesy HarlemBespoke.com)

If the building is restored by the city or someone else rather than commercially developed, it may never be profitable. Real estate agent Eugene Giscombe, whose office overlooks the Corn Exchange, thinks the building is “economically obsolete.” He estimated that even if the Corn Exchange were raised to 10 stories, the cost of building (about $13.5 million) would be far beyond the recoverable yearly rent ($1.35 million). Giscombe believes the only commercial solution would be to combine that lot with others around it. If the building remains a low-rise, he said, the landlord might be able to get tax incentives to rent to a non-profit.

In all this controversy, the building’s historical significance has been largely overshadowed. Johnson thinks the city should have better preserved the building’s shell. He pointed to the example of a mental asylum on Roosevelt Island that has been kept intact pending future development.

“Had it been in the Upper West Side or Upper East Side there would have been meltdown,” he said. “People would have been screaming bloody murder. This wouldn’t have happened. It just shows a complete disregard for the community.”

P.S. 186 has been abandoned since the city shut the school down in the 1970s. (Photo by Sarah Butrymowicz)

The empty, neglected building of P.S. 186 has long been a fixture on 145^th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. But if one organization has its way, that will change by next year.

The M.L. Lewis Boys and Girls Club of Harlem recently secured a $100,000 loan from the Harlem Community Development Corp. for preliminary development costs to renovate the space, which the club’s leaders say they hope will bring a 23-year effort to fruition.

The project aims to turn the former school into a new home for the Boys and Girls Club and a large community center. There will also be an affordable housing component, in which housing prices will be tailored to the median income in the area, said Sherry Lewis, chairwoman of the board of directors for the Boys and Girls Club, which works as part of the Boys and Girls Club of America to help to provide disadvantaged youth with educational and recreational programs.

Harlem Community Development Corp. provides predevelopment loans to residential proposals or mixed-use projects that incorporate at least 10 units of housing, said Wayne Benjamin of Harlem Community Development Corp.

The group’s board approved the loan, which has a maximum term of 18 months at 5 percent interest, because it was familiar and supportive of the project. “It’s an interesting and ambitious program that a lot of people have been waiting for” for a long time, Benjamin said.

The project also stood out because of its feasibility. “It actually made sense,” Curtis Archer of Harlem Community Development Corp. said, describing the idea as having “some legs behind it.”

The loan will help the Boys and Girls Club take some steps forward by allowing it to hire design and financial consultants. It still needs to find financing for the actual construction, but “a lot of that is dependent on having final drawings,” Lewis said.

She said she was confident that the project would be able to secure financing in time to break ground by next summer.

P.S. 186 has sat vacant and neglected for more than 30 years. The concrete wall surrounding the building is covered in graffiti and several outdated work permits hang on a padlocked gate guarding the entrance. The building itself hasn’t had a roof in decades and trees grow inside, sometimes sticking out of the windows.

“It’s wasted space,” said Russ Kramer, who has lived in the neighborhood for more than 30 years.

P.S. 186 was one of several schools in the area that got shut down during the 1970s, Kramer said. Some have since been turned into senior centers, some into condos and some still sit empty, waiting on stalled plans.

The city sold the P.S. 186 property to the Boys and Girls Club of Harlem in 1986 for about $300,000, Lewis said. The club was supposed to develop the property within three years, devoting 85 percent of the space to non-profit use, but plans fell through and nothing happened.

A restructuring of the board of directors in 2005, breathed new life into the project though. The new board selected ARTAC Development Partners to take on the project, and it presented plans to Community Board 9 in 2007. Again, the project faltered, but the board persisted, putting out another request for proposals this year, this time selecting the Alembic Development Co.

Although in some senses the development has been years in the making, for this particular phase, many decisions have yet to be made. It is too early to tell what the final structure will look like and whether the building will be torn down or simply renovated – partly because the whole area is being rezoned. “Until you have closure on the zoning, you can’t really be definitive about what you’re going to build,” Lewis said.

Kramer expressed frustration about how slow the process has been. “You can’t let a building go and go and go,” he said. “They could have made a senior center out of it” by now.

But the Boys and Girls Club isn’t concerned about past delays. “I wouldn’t be able to speak to what’s happened in the last 20 years,” Lewis said. “But I think what’s important is that we’re moving forward now.”

The plans for the former school will be discussed at Community Board 9’s Housing, Land Use, and Zoning Committee meeting on Oct. 20.

Residents of Esplanade Gardens are working with the MTA to make sure their new neighbor is less harmful to the community than its predecessor. (Map by Lisa Waananen)

Under the watchful eye of a community task force, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is preparing to build the city’s greenest bus depot in Harlem. The old Mother Clara Hale Bus Depot, on Lenox Avenue between 147th and 146th streets, was demolished this spring to make room for the environmentally friendly new building, which will retain its original name.

The building will make use of “state of the art” technologies, MTA official George Menduina told task force members touring the 100th Street Depot recently.

The new depot will be constructed from recycled materials and outfitted with a green roof of plants. A rooftop collection system will gather rainwater to wash buses, said Phil Cross, design manager of the depot.

The facility will also use highly efficient T5 lights, many to be connected to motion sensors, and natural gas, instead of oil, will heat the building, Menduina said.

The MTA is applying for, and expects to get, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council, making this the first city depot to do so, Cross said.

The depot’s design will also significantly reduce pollution compared to its predecessor, important to nearby residents, especially those across the street in Esplanade Gardens, a six-building public housing apartment complex, who had complained about the old depot.

“The air around it wasn’t healthy,” said Deborah Gillard, task force member and Esplanade Garden resident. “A lot of people in the neighborhood had asthma and respiratory ailments.”

Although the MTA tried to bring cleaner buses to the old depot, the filter system was inadequate, said Gillard, who is also a member of Community Board 10.

Now, the MTA is considering different filtration systems, seeking the most efficient one, Menduina said. All buses will be kept inside the depot, and the building’s doors will close automatically once each bus has entered, to prevent exhaust from wafting outside.

The task force dates to a community meeting three years ago, convened by Assemblyman Denny Farrell, at which residents expressed apprehension about a new building and instead “just wanted the depot gone,” said Earnestine Bell-Temple, Farrell’s representative on the task force. Farrell asked for volunteers, and the Mother Clara Hale Bus Depot Task Force formed shortly thereafter.

Made up of community residents, organizations and elected officials’ representatives, the task force draws about 15 core members and maintains regular contact with about 200 people, said Charles Callaway of WE ACT for Environmental Justice.

It operates as a “watchdog” over the MTA and a “voice of the community in the project,” added Anthonine Pierre, community liaison at the Manhattan Borough President’s office.

The task force has stayed in regular contact with the MTA. “It’s beneficial to both sides for all of us to understand the issues and the challenges that are involved in having a bus depot in a neighborhood,” Cross said, adding that the task force has provided the MTA with “valuable information.”

So far, task force members say the MTA has been cooperative and responsive. Callaway said his group worries that budget constraints or other problems might become obstacles. But money has been allocated for the project and Cross anticipates no problems with the budget, he said.

Even so, the task force plans to continue its monitoring. “We have to make sure we press them and they do not like being pressed,” Callaway said of the MTA.

Task force members have already clashed with officials about art outside the depot. They want to put voting members on the panel that selects the artist, whom they hope will be Harlem-based. But the MTA insists it must follow established government guidelines, which would only allow task force members to suggest art professionals for the panel, said Sandra Bloodworth, director of MTA Arts in Transit.

Callaway described the procedure as “unjust.”

“They don’t have to see it,” he said. “We live here. We have to look at it.”

Constructed as a barn in 1860, the previous building stood in the neighborhood for over a century. “Once this is built, we can expect it to be here for the next 100 years,” Callaway said.