The Ones Left Behind from The Uptowner on Vimeo.

Last month, Columbia University’s Board of Trustees announced that President Lee C. Bollinger had agreed to continue in his post  for at least five years.

“Looking at where Columbia stands in 2010, it’s clear from many perspectives why the Trustees feel so strongly about the importance of having Lee Bollinger continue as President,” Trustee Chair William V. Campbell announced via email.

For residents and businesses near the future 17-acre Manhattanville Campus, the decision brings a further reminder of the changes soon to come. The main site, north of Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus,will stretch from 129th to 133rd Streets between Broadway and Twelfth Avenue. It also includes the north side of 125th Street, plus three properties on the east side of Broadway from 131st to 134th Streets.

“It is scary to think about the changes it’ll bring to the community,” said Xiomara Jimenez, who has lived in the neighborhood her whole life. “Most of us don’t have much to do with Columbia up here.”

Several businesses, including Floridita restaurant and Dinosaur BBQ, have already relocated in advance of Columbia’s arrival.  But as the new campus attracts a different demographic to an already gentrifying New York neighborhood, many business owners worry that their products and services won’t appeal to a new clientele.

Hear the staff and customers of Gloria’s Unisex Salon, on Broadway and 125^th Street, as they contemplate the future.

Floridita restaurant, on Broadway and 125th, has been closed for the last five months.

More than five months ago, Floridita closed its doors for temporary repairs. The Cuban restaurant on 125th Street and Broadway, a neighborhood institution for 34 years, was known for its student-friendly prices and its mouth-watering food.

“It was always busy,” said Elby Reinoso, part owner of the nearby barbershop. “Lots of people would go there to eat.”

Now the red and green building tells a different story. The metal shutters are down on the once-vibrant restaurant.  Noise and dust from construction next door force people to avoid the small block.  A black dusty awning pokes out of the building. The awning’s front, in fading letters, can be read from across the street: “Floridita Tapas.”

“The clientele was a mix of students, professors and locals,” said Benjamin Totushek, a Columbia student and member of the Student Coalition on Expansion and Gentrification. “It had a regulars vibe to it.”

Reinoso looked through his shop’s window at the empty restaurant as he finished a customer’s haircut. He said that commuters using the 125^th Street subway station, and neighbors don’t know where the restaurant disappeared to, or if it has a chance of reopening.

“I know he intends to reopen,” he said of the restaurant’s owner, Ramon Diaz. “I heard somewhere that it going to be around 12^th Avenue.”

But he was not sure.

****

Two years of sporadic lease negotiations plagued Ramon Diaz’s relationship with Columbia University, which own the building. The location is also part of the contentious Manhattanville campus expansion plan.

Columbia students have been asking where the restaurant has disappeared to, said Totushek.

“Floridita has students’ attention,” he said. “There has been no talk of the expansion recently, except for Floridita.”

Initially, the university had cited temporary closure due to emergency kitchen repairs, according to the Columbia Spectator. The negotiations, by the time April arrived, were focused on the relocation.

“We were discussing my relocation, and how long it would take,” said Diaz, “but we had not agreed on anything at that time.”

After Diaz notified the university of a crack on the tile floor last October, school engineers deemed the building dangerous giving it another six months, Diaz said. His own engineers disagreed giving it longer than six months.

“My engineers agreed that I could withstand another six months in April,” he said. “We had taken action to secure the floor farther at this time.”

These negotiations came to a head on April 27, when university officials entered the restaurant and notified him that they would be closing his kitchen.

“Closing my kitchen is closing my restaurant,” Diaz said, agreeing to close under protest. The school allowed him to keep the kitchen open until 6 p.m. because of the amount of food he had on hand.

Soon after, Diaz was served with a default notice from the school’s attorneys stating that if he did not give them full access in the next 15 days, his lease would become null and void.

“I had never denied them access,” he said.

The restaurant was popular among students and neighbors. (photo by Paula Rogo)

As he dealt with negotiations, Diaz and his employees spent the next two weeks in limbo.

“You have to understand my frame of mind at that time,” Diaz said. “On April 27, they closed my business. It was coming into mid-May and I still have no business with 36 employees.”

On May 10, Columbia and Diaz arrived at an agreement covering the location, the space, and the rental and lease terms. Diaz said a non-disclosure agreement barred him from talking about the details of the lease. The university confirmed that he would be moving to a new location.

“Mr. Diaz has signed a new lease for an attractive relocation space on 125th Street,” Daniel Held, Columbia University Facilities’ director of communication, said via e-mail. Columbia declined to comment further on its lease with Diaz, citing a policy against commenting on its real estate negotiations.

Diaz is convinced that the school never intended to repair the Broadway location for his return.

“They just wanted to put me out of business,” he said. “They had not even ordered the necessary permits to do the work.”

The Columbia Spectator had reported that the two necessary building permits for the repairs were not ready by the time the restaurant was closed. Diaz also pointed out that the school began construction next door soon after his departure.
“They started on the sewer work at least two weeks after I was gone,” he said, alluding to the construction taking place next to the restaurant.

Robb Pair, president of Harlem Lofts Inc., doesn’t believe anything should get in the way of Columbia’s expansion, for the good of higher education.

But Totushek disagreed. “Columbia doesn’t believe in social capital,” he said. “They are destroying lots of social capital and it’s disgusting.”

Pair thinks that Diaz probably got a better deal from the new lease.

“I ate there twice,” he said. “It’s next to a gas station and I didn’t feel as if it was a place I would like to take my family.”

Though a number of locations have been named, the most likely relocation for the restaurant will be at 125^th and 12^th avenue by the Hudson River.

Map of possible Floridita locations (graphic by Paula Rogo)

“This location is much better,” Pair said. “I’d rather have dinner by the river.”

Other reports have cited the intersection of Old Broadway and West 125^th street as a possible location.

“As long as Columbia is respectful with the tenants,” Pair added, “and giving them a better situation than they had, then it is all around positive.”

Although a majority of the customers were neighbors and students, Pair doesn’t think the new location will affect business.

****

Diaz says the closing of his restaurant has had consequences.

“In April 2010, I had a running business with 36 full-time employees and I was making a living out of this,” he said. “All of a sudden I see myself six months later, without that business, without those employees, many of whom are still collecting unemployment checks.”

A number of those employees had worked at the restaurant for more than 20 years, people like Connie Villavicencio who’d been there for 27 years.

“These are people in their late 40s and early 50s,” Diaz said. “They had spent their whole lives there.”

Although it has been a difficult period for Diaz, he does not hold a grudge against the school. He agrees that the deal, on paper, is good; his only dispute is that it did not have to be a difficult situation.

“Nobody would be unemployed, we wouldn’t be closed, and we would be given the opportunity to tell our customers that we were moving down the block, does that sound unreasonable?”

General Ulysses S. Grant Houses and other projects in the spotlight. (Photo by Zaheer Cassim)

On a warm Monday morning, 17-year-old “Cheddar,” gets a call from his girlfriend who has just finished a session at the gym. “She is coming over,” he says. In need of privacy, they end up on the roof of his building in the General Ulysses S. Grant Houses on 125th Street.

Fifteen minutes later, a police officer is standing next to the two teenagers. At housing complexes like Grant, Manhattanville and now at St. Nicholas Houses, someone is always watching.

St. Nicholas Houses has begun installing 160 surveillance cameras throughout the project, following Manhattanville, which set up 96 last year. Privately sponsored, these cameras aren’t monitored by the police, like the “video interactive patrol enhancement response” (VIPER) cameras at Grant Houses.

Councilwoman Inez Dickens secured the $2.5 million funding for the Manhattanville and St. Nicholas systems. St. Nicholas received the bulk of that and the system should be operational by November, says Heidi Morales of the New York City Department of Housing.

The VIPER cameras at Grant Houses, remotely connected to Police Station Six, are in demand with Harlem public housing managers.

“They all want it,” says Detective John Ramos who works with the VIPER team at Police Station Area Six. But he says, “it’s very expensive. When you get the VIPER program, somebody has to monitor those cameras.” He acknowledges that St. Nicholas Houses needs a VIPER unit, but there is no money.

With VIPER cameras, police at local stations in what are known as “VIPER rooms” are watching. When they see a crime committed, a squad car heads for the project, usually within minutes. The VIPER video footage then serves as evidence in court. With a closed-circuit system, as at Manhattanville and now St. Nicholas, it’s up to the buildings’ management to find someone to monitor the cameras.

Still, residents at St. Nicholas sound happy about the new cameras and say they have seen improvements already. Vera Robinson, a St. Nicholas resident for more than 50 years, says she and other residents are upset with neighbors who keep urinating in the elevator. “I’m 69 years old. If I can make it upstairs they can make it to where they are going,” she says. Since cameras were installed in the elevators, the nuisance has stopped.

Manhattanville Manager Kamilla Kusiec says that after Grant Housing received the VIPER unit, “criminal activities migrated to Manhattanville”, which was forced to get its own surveillance system. “Ideally everyone in the city would like VIPER cameras,” explains Kusiec. who now watches the cameras in her spare time. Since installing the cameras, crime in Manhattanville and Grant housing projects has decreased by 17 percent, according to Ramos’s internal statistics.

The 32nd Precinct police report, which includes St. Nicholas, shows that overall, crime has risen nearly 5 percent since last year, though it remains 28 percent below the level of 10 years ago.

The cameras have drawn criticism from outside the projects, however. A 2008 University of Southern California study, “Measuring the Effects of Video Surveillance on Crime,” shows that while such cameras help apprehend criminals, their presence doesn’t stop crime. Conducted at several Los Angeles locations, including the housing project Jordan Downs, the study found that “cameras used in conjunction with larger crime-reduction strategies should be viewed as one tactical element, not a strategy in-and-of themselves.”

The American Civil Liberties Union has published several reports arguing that video surveillance hasn’t proved effective and violates individuals’ right to privacy. Communications director Jennifer Carnig explained its position. “It’s essential, when the government engages in surveillance, that it acknowledges that there are privacy risks and takes steps to reduce the harm,” she wrote in an e-mail. The ACLU wants police to consider residents’ privacy and to place cameras where they don’t intrude on people’s lives.

As for communication between Cheddar and his girlfriend, he’ll have trouble arranging private conversations at Harlem housing projects. He was lucky the officer was in a good mood that day and only reported him to his family. He now lives under the close surveillance of Grant’s VIPER unit and his mother.

Columbia University's proposed expansion into Manhattanville. (Graphic by Lisa Waananen)

By The Uptowner Staff

Note: this story was updated on Dec. 4, 2009.

Harlem was rocked by a state court decision today forbidding Columbia University’s use of eminent domain to obtain land for its planned $6.28 billion campus expansion. The ruling overturned last year’s decision green lighting the property takeover, which would transform 17 acres of warehouses into tree-lined promenades, high-rise dormitories and glass-walled science facilities.

“I personally was surprised because this was depicted as Goliath, being Empire State Development Corporation and Columbia, against David,” said Patricia Jones, chair of Community Board 9. “How often does David win?” Community Board 9 has been vocal in its opposition against Columbia’s expansion plans.

Columbia aimed to extend its campus into a section bordered roughly by Broadway, Riverside Drive, 129th and 133rd Streets, adding up to 6.8 million square feet of new facilities in 16 buildings. It has spent the past several years buying land in Upper Manhattan from dozens of property owners. A few are still holding their ground.

Jose McKinney, 46, lives in a building at 133rd and Broadway. He’s been there since 1999, and said he’s not against the expansion because some landlords can’t pay taxes or take care of their buildings and plan to leave anyway. “If you don’t take care of your neighborhood, someone will come in and take care of it for you,” McKinney said. However, he didn’t like the idea of evicting businesses that don’t want to leave.

Yoisha Salazar, 37, a manager at Floridita, a restaurant at 126th and Broadway in the swath of land Columbia wanted, was relieved by the news. “I’m happy because we’re not going to lose our jobs,” she said.

Ramon Diaz, Floridita’s owner, said, “What I think the Appellate Division did was make themselves look good, throw a bone at the little guy.” Diaz, who has only five years left before he pays off his mortgage, said he thinks a higher Court of Appeals will eventually overturn the decision.

“Columbia is not a party in this litigation and the ESDC has issued a statement of its intent to appeal this matter,” wrote Victoria Benitez, senior public affairs officer at Columbia.

December has been a fateful month for Columbia University in each of the past few years. On Dec. 20, 2007, the New York City Council voted to rezone the planned expansion area from light manufacturing to mixed use, clearing the way for Columbia to proceed with the project. And one week before Christmas last year, the state approved eminent domain. A resounding victory for the university, the declaration was met by instant retaliation from a few Manhattanville property owners’ lawyers.

Nick Sprayregen, who owns several properties in the area, has been battling Columbia’s uptown conquest for years. His business is one of the petitioners in the case against the university, and he has declared the issue a “crusade,” going as far as accusing the university and New York State of collusion. “I feel unbelievable,” Sprayregen told The New York Times today. A call from The Uptowner to Sprayregen was not immediately returned.

According to ESDC, the expansion project is financed entirely by Columbia. It would create 14,000 construction jobs and 6,000 university jobs. The court decision today is not catastrophic to construction plans. The university owns 61 buildings in the zone and can build around the 6 buildings it doesn’t own.

The planned Jerome L. Greene Science Center, for example, is on land Columbia already owns.  “It will continue to move forward,” Benitez said.

Benitez said that site demolition and other pre-construction work has already been initiated. “This new academic building will focus on research that will unlock the mysteries of the human brain and lead to cures for neurodegenerative diseases,” she explained.

An owner of a nearby gas station was “practically in tears” as he rushed over to tell Diaz the news of the decision, Diaz said. “It’s been a very long process,” he said, “and people are tired.” Meetings that used to bring in 150 people now bring 40 or 50 people. More and more people have moved out or been evicted, but Diaz says he still has faith.

Reporting contributed by Sarah Butrymowicz, Cecile Dehesdin, Andrew Keshner, Tim Kiladze, Nate Rawlings, Shane Snow, Joshua Tapper and Lisa Waananen

Antonio Bruno’s Covo, huge by Manhattan standards, is ViVa’s anchor eatery. (Photo by Sonal Shah)

Whipping up from the Hudson River, wind funnels through the cross streets between 125th and 138th Streets. Up on the Henry Hudson Parkway, traffic inches toward the George Washington Bridge. On the other side of 12th Avenue, which disappears under a stone bridge, Riverside Park rises out of a steep embankment. A handful of restaurants nestle in this unlikely spot, under the spidery arches of Riverside Bridge.

ViVa, or Viaduct Valley, is the latest contender for Manhattan’s next big entertainment district. Yet, despite several successful launches, scattered news references to the “new Meatpacking District” and a few celebrity sightings, Harlem’s waterfront restaurants still face many obstacles.

“It’s like a hidden valley,” said Fernando Mateo, an entrepreneur and activist whose wife, Stella, co-owns Talay, one of ViVa’s uptown upstarts. “This place is so beautiful but so uninhabited. We’re still waiting for a Christopher Columbus who can come and discover us.”

ViVa’s earliest pioneer was the 35,000 square foot Fairway Market, sprawling across several blocks around 132nd Street. Fairway, which opened in 1995 in an area that some people considered unsafe, remained the sole draw for years. “You couldn’t walk down here,” Mateo said. “You would run from one block to the other.”

The area’s three most visible restaurants – Talay, Covo Trattoria and Body Bar & Grill –operate in an old meatpacking warehouse at the end of 135th Street. Building owner Peter Skyllas originally considered relocating his plumbing business there. The neighborhood “was infested with drug dealers,” Skyllas said. “You couldn’t come within 10 feet because of the stench of garbage.”

In late 2004, however, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, fired up its grills on 131st Street, just opposite Fairway. Dinosaur’s popularity made Skyllas reassess his property’s value. He knew that the Parks Department was developing the nearby Harlem Piers waterfront and that – eventually – Columbia University would expand into the area with its Manhattanville Campus.

“My whole idea was to bring the Meatpacking District to Harlem,” Skyllas said, acknowledging that urban planners have been talking about developing the 12th Avenue waterfront for at least 20 years.

Skyllas recruited Antonio Bruno, owner of the Morningside Heights restaurants Max Soha and Max Caffé, whose Italian menu he thought would make a good “anchor” for the area. Bruno needed a little more convincing. “When I first saw this place in 2004, I ran away,” he recalled at his airy, wood-oven-warmed restaurant Covo.

Skyllas found two other groups of tenants to open Talay, a Thai-Latin restaurant and lounge, and Body, a large restaurant and nightclub. As construction began on Skyllas’ warehouse, restaurateurs Hamlet Peralta and Max Piña opened Hudson River Café, just north of Fairway. Meanwhile, Skyllas successfully petitioned the city for permit parking, a sidewalk and a green island in front of his building.

In June 2008, just after Talay, Body and Covo opened, the Harlem Piers park opened. Further development seemed imminent and property prices rose. Warburg Realty, which managed Skyllas’ property in 2006, listed an asking price of about $85 per square foot per month on its web site – double what the realtor listed for the previous year. Still, ViVa rents were reasonable compared to similar locations along Broadway, which had no waterfront access.

Now shuttered and stripped of signage, Body Bar & Grill once hosted Shaquille O’Neill’s birthday party. (Photo by Sonal Shah)

As various owners, diners and critics recount, ViVa’s restaurant row enjoyed early success. Body caught on with well-heeled Harlemites and partygoers from further afield, who lined up outside on weekends. Shaquille O’Neill celebrated his birthday there and several cast members of “Harlem Heights,” Black Entertainment Television’s reality show about young, black professionals, counted Body among their favorite Harlem hangouts. Cast member Brooke Crittendon, Kanye West’s ex-girlfriend, wrote on the show’s web site that Body “could possibly be the crunkest club in the city right now.”

The splash didn’t last long. Body regulars were surprised to find the club’s signage stripped in late August. Sam Benjamin, who organizes a black/Latino social networking group, arrived at the club for a September event and found it closed. Body’s owners, Rigo Herasme and Joe Robles, had given him no warning, he said.

The owners did not respond to calls, but earlier this year, Body’s chief financial officer, Felix Parache, said he departed after a “falling out” with the owners. “I’m guessing these people invested $1.5 million or more to fix the place and believe in my dream,” Skyllas said. “Running a restaurant is a difficult job. I personally wouldn’t get into it.”

The current economic climate makes running a new venue difficult. The trade magazine Nation’s Restaurant News runs an online Restaurant Index; it plummeted between September 2008 and March 2009 and remains 30 percent below mid-2008 levels. Skyllas estimated that restaurant earnings, including tips, have fallen by as much as 60 percent. Bruno confirmed that the area had faced difficulties, though Covo makes more money than his Morningside Heights eateries.

Mateo acknowledged that ViVa is “definitely not coming up roses. Anyone who tells you that they’re making so much profit – it’s just not true. We’re barely breaking even.” Still, he remains optimistic.

Getting foot traffic is still the area’s biggest challenge. The restaurateurs want to dedicate the traffic island to Muhammad Ali, to include “a big statue – then it becomes a tourist attraction to bring people down,” Mateo said.

Though Harlem’s facelift continues, catering to the community’s changing clientele has proved a tricky business. In early September, Talay shut down briefly to turn its downstairs section into Pancho Gringo, a Mexican restaurant with a more “familiar” menu. But Body remains closed.

Visitors may be reluctant to walk from the 135th Street Subway station through Riverside Park. “There’s still that myth about Harlem – that it’s dangerous and people are scared to come down,” Mateo said.