Carlos Aguila calls his new neighborhood the city’s “greatest place for a new retail store in 30 years.” The “whole Upper West Side” is moving there, he says, so he’s setting up shop before big-name competitors arrive.
Aguila is opening a branch of his health food store, Karrot, in Harlem. Taking a look at the area’s recent transformation, his effusive description is not surprising. Even by recent standards, the blocks around Aguila’s new store on 117th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard are rapidly transforming. “Come in a few years and you will say, ‘This is Harlem? There used to be poor people here,'” Aguila said on a walk around the neighborhood.
The new retail isn’t just confined to food stores residential real estate offices are also moving in. Three big Manhattan real estate players appear to agree with Aguila’s assessment of the Frederick Douglass Boulevardécorridor, an area of southern Harlem being redeveloped at a rapid pace.
By summer, Warburg, Corcoran and Douglas Elliman will all have Frederick Douglass Boulevard offices within a three block stretch. Warburg opened a 2,500-square-foot office in October on Frederick Douglass and 120th Street. Corcoran is renovating a 1,900-square-foot storefront across the street and plans to open June 1. Douglas Elliman plans to open its 1,300-square-foot office at 117th Street, next door to Karrot, by July 1. The three offices have desks for between 15 to 20 agents.
Brokers predict they’ll be busy. “The more that are there, the more traffic that will be generated,” said Christopher Halliburton, executive vice president of Warburg Realty Harlem.
“We think it’s an absolutely great location, primarily because we are in a development corridor,” said Sandy Wilson, managing director of Corcoran Harlem.
Elliman’s director of sales Gary Cannata, who will manage the Harlem office, agreed. “We’ve looked at the corridor and the new rentals and condominiums there and we thought having a position in that lower part of Harlem was a smart move,” he said.
Beyond brokerages, an 8,000-square-foot Rite Aid opened in February. Its manager, Genaro Marmol, said the store is “surpassing goals,” although he declined to provide specifics. North of the drug store is a new UPS store and a wine store, Harlem Vintage.
Solange Godi, 36, an immigrant from the Ivory Coast, moved her hair-braiding salon to Frederick Douglass this year. She pays $2,500 a month for a storefront, down $500 a month from her previous spot on 126th Street and Madison Avenue. Retail rents are typically around $40 a square foot, according to Elliman, which also has a retail division, although some pending deals may range from $60 to $75 per square foot.
Driving retail demand are the new and renovated apartment buildings lining Frederick Douglass, with 600 new units in the works on or near the boulevard, according to Edwin Marshall, the Department of City Planning’s team leader for Upper Manhattan. That’s on top of the 530 units created since 2003. All this is quite a shift for a stretch of Harlem that, three decades ago, was a testament to failed urban renewal dreams. Huge lots were cleared for major redevelopment that never came. Federal funds disappeared, and the land lay fallow. This happened in other neighborhoods, but Frederick Douglass between 116th and 122nd Street was hit particularly hard.
In the late 1990s, the Manhattan Borough President’s office and other groups got worried that the surging market could create out-of-scale buildings because zoning regulations had no height limits. The population was growing in West Harlem below 124th Street, creating a need for new housing. The 2000 census showed a 17 percent population jump, compared with 8 percent in Central Harlem and 3.3 percent for all of Manhattan.
While the neighborhood is known for tree-lined streets with six- to eight-story row houses, the existing zoning, in place since 1961, encouraged supersized public housing-style buildings.
A change was in order, and the rezoning passed by the City Planning Department preserved the brownstone blocks but called for buildings between nine and 10 stories on the avenues, including Frederick Douglass, to encourage new housing construction. The rezoning plan, which affected 44 blocks, was passed in October 2003, and development took off.
One urban renewal site, a full-block bounded by 118th and 119th streets and Manhattan Avenue and Frederick Douglass, now has two new developments, with a third planned. Brownstone Lane, marketed by Corcoran, includes 48 apartments at 309 West 118th Street. Eight-story apartment buildings are planned on the avenue sides, one of which is under construction.
Gentrification fears pop quickly to mind in Harlem these days as market rents in the corridor reach $1,800 for a two bedroom. To counter this, projects with city subsidies include some portion of low- or moderately priced housing, anywhere from 10 to 100 percent. Buildings with public subsidies also must set aside 50 percent of new units for Harlem residents.
The new development is a mix of for-sale and rentals. Harlem Horizon, for example, is under construction on 115th and Frederick Douglass, with occupancy expected in the fall. Twelve of the 15 condominiums have sold, with prices ranging from the mid $400,000s to mid to high $800,000s, according to Corcoran.
This development bodes well for Aguila, who held a grand opening for Karrot on May 18. Aguila, a former Bank of America vice president, knows the risks and rewards of opening up in gentrifying neighborhoods. He has two other stores in Clinton Hill and one in Washington Heights. “See any bodegas?” Aguila asked during the tour as he looked at a new apartment building near his store. “When they get up in the morning and they want a piece of bread, where are they going to go?”