DJ Kool Herc celebrates at 1520 Sedgwick Ave.
BY Daniel Beekman
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
The birthplace of hip-hop has a new lease on life.
The Bronx apartment building where DJ Kool Herc emceed the world’s first hip-hop party was sold at foreclosure auction last Monday to a reputable investment group backed by the city.
Workforce Housing Advisors has vowed to fix up 1520 Sedgwick Ave. in Morris Heights, keep it affordable and build an arts and culture center in the recreation room where Herc famously pioneered the “break beat.”
The graying deejay returned to 1520 Sedgwick Ave. last Thursday with John Crotty and John Fitzgerald of Workforce to reopen the rec room and celebrate.
The room was locked and used for storage under the old landlord Mark Karasick, who bought the 102-unit building in 2008 and then went bust.
Now tenant power, government pressure and music history have saved the Bronx landmark.
“Hip-hop can solve a lot of problems,” said Herc, surveying the rec room with a nostalgic smile. “It all started right here.”
Part of the middle-income Mitchell-Lama housing program when Herc lived there, in the 1970s, 1520 Sedgwick Ave. left the program in 2008 when it was sold to Karasick.
Karasick planned to flip the building for a profit, said Dina Levy of the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, an advocacy group. But he fell behind on his $7 million mortgage instead and let the high-rise deteriorate.
“The hallways were dirty and the garbage piled up,” said longtime tenant Gloria Robinson, 53. “The elevators kept breaking down. It was a mess.”
Robinson and other tenants called on Herc and his sister, Cindy Campbell, for help. Herc and Campbell threw organized the 1973 “back to school” jam that ignited a music revolution. The Campbells left Sedgwick Ave. in 1977, but never forgot the building.
“We still feel that connection,” said Campbell. “We have friends here and we want the building to remain affordable.”
Under pressure from Rep. Jose Serrano (D-Bronx) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Sovereign Bank agreed in 2010 to sell the debt on the building to Workforce for $6.2 million, with the NYCcity Housing Development Corp. issuing the group a $5.6 million loan.
Workforce has enlisted Boston-based WinnResidential to manage the building and secured $3 million in City Council funds to make repairs, plus federal cash via President Obama’s Neighborhood Stabilization Program.
“The building should have never left the Mitchell-Lama system,” said Marc Jahr, HDC president. “But it did, so we had to recapture it as affordable housing.”
The building was found eligible in 2007 for the National Register of Historic Places, but Karasick turned down the designation. Now Workforce could approve it; 1520 Sedgwick Ave. is already a stop on hip-hop history bus tours.
The group wants to renovate the rec room and revive the building’s creative spirit.
“The past is really important,” said Crotty, a Workforce partner. "But we also need to bring forward the youth of today.”
Workforce is weighing subsidy programs for the building, with the goal of keeping rents down.
“We will never increase the amount of affordable housing in the city if we build housing but lose the units we already have,” said City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. “We need to fight to preserve every unit out there.”
News of the sale was music to Mary Fountain’s ears. Despite three years of stress, the longtime tenant is proud to call the birthplace of hip-hop home.
“We got what we prayed for,” she said. “We wanted to stay.”
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
The Birthplace of Hip Hop Starts a new Journey
For Birthplace of Hip-Hop, New Life
By ALICE SPERI NY TIMES 11/08/2011
After a long struggle, ownership of a Bronx building known as the birthplace of hip-hop, which had fallen into neglect and foreclosure, was taken over on Monday by a group that specializes in preserving working-class housing.
The building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Morris Heights neighborhood was, in the early 1970s, the home of D.J. Kool Herc, whose community room parties were pivotal to the early development of hip-hop.
But in recent years, the 102-unit complex had become a symbol for aggressive investment practices and property neglect, so much so that Senator Charles E. Schumer recently called it “the birthplace of predatory equity.”
It was sold in 2008 before the real estate bubble burst to a real estate group that defaulted on the building’s mortgage within two years. The building fell into disrepair and foreclosure.
On Monday, Workforce Housing Advisors, a group focused on salvaging working-class housing in buildings that have been overleveraged, became the building’s owner. In 2010, it bought the building’s mortgage for $6.2 million, with help from the city, and because no bidders came forward on Monday, it will keep the building. A bid of at least $7.9 million at the auction would have been required for another party to take control.
Several residents, accompanied by an advocacy group that supported them through a long struggle, were at State Supreme Court in the Bronx on Monday and broke into cheers and “hallelujahs” when the auctioneer announced that no bidders had registered.
Geraldine Davis, 72, a resident of the building for 37 years, hugged her neighbors and dried a few tears. “I always thought positive,” she said. “We prayed so hard and worked so much to save this building.”
In the last few years, residents watched the building change from the well-maintained, working-class haven it was under the state’s Mitchell-Lama program for middle-income housing, to a roach-infested building with malfunctioning water and heating systems, as well as a closed community room, said Ms. Davis and Gloria Robinson, the president of the Sedgwick tenants’ association.
“When I moved here it was like a hotel. It was beautiful. Now it’s down to nothing,” Ms. Davis said, recalling the days when her son and D.J. Kool Herc, who was born Clive Campbell, were doing “their rapping thing” in the building’s community room. “But where should we go? We stay here and fight. I’m going to stay here till the bricks come loose.”
During the auction, members of the tenants’ association sat silently, holding their hands to their mouths, nervous that a last-minute buyer would outbid them.
Dina Levy, director of organizing and policy at the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, a tenant advocacy group, said the building had been a victim of “predatory investment” as the real estate market boomed.
“Today is a big victory and a day to celebrate,” Ms. Levy said. “But the hope is that this will be helpful for other buildings that are still deep in the struggle.”
Ms. Levy and Workforce Housing Advisors, which bought the mortgage with the help of a $5.6 million loan from the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, hope the deal can be a model to preserve and rescue affordable-housing buildings across New York.
“Overleveraging has a disastrous impact on the city,” said John Crotty, a partner at Workforce Housing Advisors. “Some companies paid more than the buildings could ever sustain, and when things went badly, they started running the properties to the ground.”
Mr. Crotty said his group was planning to renovate the building and work with tenants to recognize its importance. The group’s investors are more interested in steady, secure returns than making money quickly, he said.
“I’ve never seen a business model that is successful while constantly fighting with residents,” he said. “This is their home, and we respect that. We are in this for the long term.”
Some money for renovations will be provided by the city’s housing department and the Housing Development Corporation, which released a joint statement on Monday after the auction. “In working to recapture affordable housing from overzealous speculators, we are acting affirmatively to preserve the diversity of our city over the long term,” the statement said.
Because of its hip-hop reputation, the building in 2007 was deemed eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, though its owner declined to do so because that would put restrictions on its maintenance. The new owner plans to pursue a listing.
Representative José E. Serrano, who had lobbied with building residents in a failed attempt to buy the building in 2007, said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the auction.
“The new owners have committed to preserving the building as affordable housing, and to engage in efforts to better recognize the building’s historic status as the birthplace of hip-hop,” he said. “If taken, all of these steps will help revitalize and properly recognize this historic location.”
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