UPTOWNflavor

Harlem’s movin’ on up
BY JENNIFER MASCIA
DAILY NEWS WRITER
Sunday, July 31st, 2005

Inside the new Citarella on 125th St. and Amsterdam Ave., freshly hydrated endive, creamy lobster salad and slick pieces of Chilean sea bass stacked atop mountains of chopped ice wait to fill empty shopping carts.

Across the street stands the Ulysses S. Grant public housing complex.

This is not, some Harlem residents and Citarella employees admit, a natural location for a gourmet store that made its name in Manhattan’s wealthiest neighborhoods.

But since Starbucks, MAC and the Body Shop have all made the successful transition to 125th St., it looks more and more like the upper West Side is moving to Harlem.

“A friend said to me, ‘Finally, Harlem is turning into the wonderful, beautiful place we dreamed it would be,’” said Harlem historian Michael Henry Adams. “I welcome the change, but Harlem residents are getting pushed out.”

The arrival of Citarella on 125th St. is emblematic of a sea change in Harlem, which is witnessing a development spurt. Fifteen-foot-high plywood walls, the universal sign of new development, shield large swaths of Harlem’s main artery from view. These additions to the area join Bill Clinton, who famously maintains an office on 125th St.; the Harlem USA Mall, which opened in 2000 and houses the nine-screen Magic Johnson Theaters; Fairway, which came to the Hudson River waterfront in 1996, and Starbucks, kingmaker of many a gentrifying neighborhood, which opened in 1999 on a lot once slated for a 99-cent store.
The 208-room Harlem Park Marriot Hotel, at Park Ave. and 125th St., is scheduled to open late next year.

Adams worries that longtime Harlem residents may soon find themselves priced out of the neighborhood they saw through the worst of times.

It’s been nearly 20 years since the first Harlem house hit the $500,000 mark, Adams recalled. Current real estate listings show several condos selling in the $800,000 range, and townhouses top $1.5 million.

“Harlem has become an extremely hot market for people who can no longer afford the exorbitant market” below 96th St., said Greg Mire, certified luxury property specialist at Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy. “As prices continue to rise, people are continuing to move further and further north. Eventually, this will expand to the Bronx.”

So did Citarella come to 125th St. anticipating the impending tsunami of gentrification, or to serve the residents already there?
“Harlem is a great neighborhood to tap into,” Citarella spokeswoman Yusi Gonzalez said.

But while Trinity and Brearley moms jockey for position at the fresh fish counter at the W. 75th St. Citarella, this Citarella sits nearly empty.

“This isn’t the market for healthy food,” said Mark Bones, assistant district manager of Harlem’s Community Board 10. “Is it a coincidence that there’s a fried chicken shop on every other corner?”

Ola Elegba, a maintenance worker from Ulysses S. Grant Houses, said he knew why Citarella would open in a neighborhood that doesn’t seem to be clamoring for quail eggs and chevre.
He said, “It’s because the white people are living here now.”

Source: New York Daily News