Northattan

Dear Northattan readers, viewers and listeners:

Thank you for checking out our website and engaging with us. For the next couple of months, the Northattan team will be posting only occasional multimedia updates and stories. We will then return in earnest this fall. We hope you will continue to check back with us to “see what’s up” in Northattan for our periodic coverage and for full coverage in fall.

Thank you, Northattan

Buffered bike lanes on First Avenue would be swapped with parking lanes and converted into fully protected curbside bike routes. Photo by Milos Balac/Northattan.

East Harlem resident Diego Gerena-Quinones stood before a packed community meeting in the Red Theater at Harlem Prep Charter School on 123rd Street one evening earlier this month.

Gerena-Quinones was giving personal testimony in favor of a controversial proposal to extend protected bike lanes on First and Second Avenues, from 96th to 125th streets.

“We’ve been hearing a lot of facts and statistics, which is great, they tell a story,” he said. “I’m going to do something a little bit different. I’m going to tell a personal story.”

On Gerena-Quinones’ mind was the injury summary for First Avenue just presented by New York City Department of Transportation’s Joshua Benson. From 2006 and 2010, 579 people were injured in traffic-related accidents along the stretch of road between 96th and 125th streets alone.

“I was one of those 580-something people that was struck by a vehicle,” said Gerena-Quinones.“I think it would be great to have these protected bike lanes. I know that I personally would have benefited from it.”

His message was a powerful one. After his accident this year, in which a car struck his bike on First Avenue and sent him flying over the hood, he spent six hours in the hospital in a neck brace. Months later, he is still undergoing physical therapy for the spinal injury he suffered.

But as dramatic as his story is, it does not persuade everyone in East Harlem — particularly those who own businesses on First and Second avenues. In their view, the city Transportation Department’s bike lane plan would serve only a handful of cyclists, while increasing traffic congestion, diminishing air quality and — most important for the area’s restaurants, bodegas and other retailers — hindering deliveries to local businesses.

“We’re not prepared to sacrifice our lives for the sake of a few,” said Erik Mayor, owner of the Milkburger restaurant on Second Avenue at 106th Street. Mayor told the community meeting that converting one of the current car lanes on Second Avenue to a bike lane would drastically reduce available parking, on a street already congested with double parkers.

Community Board 11 asked the city’s Transportation Department to build protective bike lanes in East Harlem two years ago. The board, together with department, held a series of public meetings to inform local residents and businesses of their plans. But not everybody got the message.

A slew of local residents and business people have come forward claiming they were not informed of the bike lane proposals, and have accused the Transportation Department of a lack of transparency. Their disquiet led to the community board’s withdrawing support for the bike lanes at its meeting in November.

Board officials subsequently decided to bring transportation officials and locals together for an extraordinary meeting at Harlem Prep Charter School in early December.

New York City has built bike lanes on city streets  at rapid rate since 1997. Fifteen years ago, the city had just 119 miles of bike lanes, marked with paint on city roads. As of July 2009, this had grown to a 561-mile network of off-street paths, traffic-protected lanes, on-street lanes with buffer zones and shared lanes marked by chevrons.

By 2030, that network could more than triple in size, if Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan gets her way.

While early development of the bike lane network met little opposition, new expansions in East Harlem and elsewhere are encountering more resistance.

A 2010 report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Transportation,“ Cycling in New York,” states that the number of New Yorkers traveling to work by bike has more than doubled since 1990. And, in gentrifying neighborhoods such as Brooklyn, it has quadrupled. The report says this is largely a result of the city transportation department’s effort to expand and improve cycling facilities.

But while numbers of cyclists have increased, the same report says that the number biking to work is still minuscule. It put the citywide figure around 0.6 percent for 2008 — just under 25,000 cyclists. Erik Mayor contends the only cyclists he sees when he looks out the window from his Second Avenue restaurant are couriers.

At the East Harlem community meeting 13-year-long resident Pablo Guzman questioned the prioritization of bike lanes given the community’s dire need for education and health funds. Gasps rippled across the school hall when the cost of the project was revealed at $300,000 per mile — around $840,000 for the 2.8-mile East Harlem project. As 80 percent of this is federally funded, the city would foot a bill of around $168,000.

Joseph Ferris, a spokesman for the bicycle advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, said that taking the federal grant into account, the real city investment in bike lanes since 2006 has been about $1.6 million, “virtual drops in the bucket” compared to spending on other transportation infrastructure.

“Traffic crashes cost New York City $4.29 billion in 2009, according to the NYC DOT’s Pedestrian Safety Study and Action Plan,” said Ferris in an email. “Bike lanes have proven to drastically reduce the number of crashes.”

Downtown from East Harlem, city figures for First Avenue between Houston and 34th Streets show a 37 percent drop in traffic accidents following the introduction of protected bike lanes. And, for the same distance on Second Avenue, a decrease of 11 percent was recorded.

According to the Transportation Department’s Pedestrian Safety Study and Action Plan, released in August 2010, traffic accidents resulting in pedestrian fatalities is one of the primary causes of death among children between 5 and 14, and among adults over 45.

Local Mount Sinai pediatrician Dr. Kevin Chatham-Stephens told the community meeting at Harlem Prep that he supported bike lanes for that very reason. In a sobering statement, the young physician said that on top of these bleak statistics, black children are 50 percent more likely to die in traffic than white children.

City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito sees the pedestrian islands built alongside bike lanes as integral part of her office’s “Aging Improvement District” plan. On wide avenues the islands provide additional rest stops for elderly citizens.

Proponents at the community meeting offered a laundry list of reasons why the bike lanes should be built, ranging from helping reduce obesity, to the possible reduction of smog and other pollution, which can contribute to asthma and other respiratory diseases.

Community Board Chairman Matthew Washington supports the bike lanes, but is growing weary of the debate. Speaking on the eve of the community meeting, he said opponents weren’t paying attention before.

“I’m just really looking forward to us as a community board getting beyond this issue so we can focus on more important issues,” he said, “like the 16 percent unemployment rate in our community or the 43,000 people on public assistance.”

“Hit by a fist or something hard, beaten, or slammed against something” was the language used to describe what nearly a quarter of American women experienced by the hand of an “intimate partner” last year.

That’s according to a new government report, released Dec. 14, based on a random sample of 9,000 female respondents. The 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, carried out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also found that nearly one in five women had experienced rape or attempted rape.

In New York City, a network of organizations works to assist women in these troubling situations. One of them, the Violence Intervention Program (VIP), is based in East Harlem – and its employees understand that domestic violence is a problem afflicting all levels of society.

“I’ll tell you a story,” says Cecilia Gaston, the VIP’s executive director. “A 20-year marriage to a multinational businessman, college degree, very sophisticated, domestic violence – that’s me. I’m a survivor myself, although I’ve never been poor, I’m privileged, I speak five languages, I’m a U.S. citizen. Domestic violence happens across the board.”

The Violence Intervention Program is headquartered in East Harlem. Photo by Frederick Bernas/Northattan.

Gaston is sitting in a small kitchen at VIP headquarters in El Barrio, where the organization was founded in 1984. The building is deliberately inconspicuous, and its address is kept secret so “clients can stay safe” when they visit for counseling or information sessions.

One of several small rooms is decorated colorfully and scattered with toys. Supporting children whose parents are in abusive relationships is an important part of the VIP mission: “I work with them to try and express feelings, to verbalize the trauma,” explains youth counselor Lidia Flores. “We recently started mixed groups with mothers and children, which is very helpful. Sometimes the mother cannot see from the child’s view, or they have trouble expressing feelings at home and being able to spend time together. The mother might be dealing with many different things and feeling guilty she can’t provide.”

For the most needy victims, VIP offers a way out. Secret accommodation facilities in Manhattan, the Bronx and Queens provide emergency shelter for up to 135 days, or a transitional apartment for as long as two years. “When a woman chooses shelter, it’s usually a last resort,” says Gaston. “You have to give up your job, and you cannot not tell anyone where you are – not even your family.” This is to ensure that abusive partners have no way of tracking women down.

At a time when the demand for support services is rising, the fact that so much of the organization’s work is hidden means that reaching out is a very delicate task. Word of mouth is key. “A lot of people don’t know about us – especially recent immigrants who live in their enclave with friends and family,” says Valerie Leon, the community education and outreach coordinator. Gaston adds, “They come from countries where these services do not exist, so they don’t in any way assume that help is available.”

On a wider cultural level, Leon says her promotional efforts often hit a wall of social taboos about domestic violence in Latino communities. “There’s a lot of victim-blaming: People think she must like it, she deserved it, that kind of thing,” she explains. “A lot of folks make light of it like a joke – saying men get abused, and all that. Our presence might not change someone’s relationship, but at least we’re raising awareness, which is the first part of prevention.”

VIP representatives regularly visit local hotspots where women gather, such as Head Start Centers, to deliver presentations. “One of the best tools we have is other survivors,” says Leon, who is assisted by four “promotoras,” or promoters, who themselves came through the organization’s rehabilitation program. Gaston adds: “In Latin America, the community health educator is a model that works very well. It’s not me coming with my college degree and my suit to tell somebody what to do – it’s a neighbor, and they’re very successful.”

Guadalupe Perez is one of the volunteer “promotoras.” She endured an abusive relationship for 12 years before VIP helped her get out by providing therapy, legal support and shelter. Today, the memories live on: “For a long time I carried a lot of pain and anger,” Perez recalls.

“When I started talking to my therapist, I fell down. I felt without energy, and someone had to help me go outside because I wasn’t able to walk. I remember they gave me cold water, they put me on a couch to rest, because I felt terrible. I compare myself in the past to a zombie.”

Perez says her children implored her to end the relationship, and she now takes pride in using her personal experience to help others. “If I touch a lady with my history, I know this lady will change her life if she takes therapy and decides to leave an abusive relationship and start a new life,” she says. “It could save a family – the lady and her children too. And the children will not repeat the same cycle in the future.”

The “promotoras” distribute pamphlets and specially designed nail files that advertise the VIP’s 24/7 hotline, which receives some 14,000 calls every year. “It’s something a woman can keep in her purse that doesn’t raise a lot of attention – a card or brochure is obvious, you see,” says Gaston.

The VIP website provides another pathway to the organization's variety of help services. Photo by Frederick Bernas/Northattan.

The phone number acts as a vital point of first contact: Around 1,000 women per year are then provided with further services. VIP is staffed by 38 full-time employees, assisted by part-timers and volunteers. The organization supplements federal funding with grants from the New York Women’s Foundation and other partners, and recently made $31,000 with a private fundraising event.

Gaston has worked with authorities at state and national level on the issue of domestic violence, which she says is linked closely to immigration and deportation. She says the federal Secure Communities program, first piloted by the Bush administration in 2008, is a “deadly” threat to Hispanics in New York. Under the policy, police officers submit fingerprints of all arrestees to a national database that is shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). If a violation is suspected, ICE can issue its own detention orders that lead to federal custody – and potential deportation.

“Police are acting as immigration officers,” says Gaston. “That means no one is going to call the police if it brings them into a community where there are people at risk of being picked up by immigration.” In domestic violence cases, she says this could lead to a fear of reporting perpetrators for the sake of avoiding any contact with the law.

“It’s a major undermining of community policing and the relationship between the community and the people supposed to be protecting them,” Gaston continues. She’s met with NYPD officials to discuss the issue: “We concluded that officers require an enormous amount of training,” she says. “In theory there are policies and protocols, but they’re not being followed – like something as simple as conducting a proper investigation at the site where the incident occurs and arresting the right person.”

On the other hand, domestic violence advocates have had their own policy “czar” at the White House since June 2009, when Lynn Rosenthal was appointed as special adviser on violence against women. And vice president Joe Biden was one of the original proponents of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, which Gaston cites as “a critical piece of legislation” because it provides a legal framework and a funding stream for non-governmental organizations. An updated version of VAWA was tabled for a third congressional reauthorization in November this year.

Memorial for Aaron Kobe Collins in front of Wilson Houses, East Harlem. Photo by Mayeta Clark/Northattan.

“I couldn’t see his face, but I know that’s the one who did it.”

David Collins was going through his brother’s belongings trying to find his phone. It wasn’t on him when he found him wounded in the burned-out stairwell right next to their apartment on the 16th floor of the Woodrow Wilson Houses in East Harlem on that Monday night. “If I can find it, maybe I can find the killer,” he said.

Collins was in the bathroom when he heard the front door close. Shortly afterwards he heard gunshots. He ran out of the family apartment in his robe and into the dark stairwell to investigate. Collins recounted seeing a man in a hoodie and skullcap coming down the stairs. “What happened?” he asked. “I don’t know,” the hooded man replied.

Collins went inside to put on some clothes. He asked his mother who’d gone out the front door. “Kobe,” she said referring to her younger son. Kobe, 28, had been asleep shortly before his family heard the gunshots that killed him.

Collins ran back outside and up a flight of steps. When he rounded the corner he saw his younger brother slumped on the stairs. He tried CPR, but was unable to help him.

“My brother was a good dude,” said Collins. “He just loved everybody, anybody. Everybody was in the hall trying to save him.”

Police said they were called to the Wilson Houses shortly before 9 p.m. on Dec. 12, where they found Aaron Kobe Collins shot in the torso. Although he was rushed to Metropolitan Hospital by emergency services, he was pronounced dead on arrival.

“He was a loving brother and a good father,” said his sister Lasheika Collins. “Anything I needed or my kids wanted, he’d get it for us. He always looked out for his family, looked after our mother.”

Kobe was in fact battling the courts for custody of his son, who had been removed from his mother, Kobe’s ex-girlfriend, and placed in a foster home.

Lasheika Collins said she thinks her brother knew his killer, and that more than one person may have been involved. She believes the person who set up the killing is also from the Wilson Houses complex.

Sean Collins, another of the victim’s siblings, said he believes the killer was motivated by jealousy. “He was high on something, looking for nice things,” he said, flashing his own jewelry. Collins said his brother was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Lasheika Collins also said her family was thinking of suing the Housing Authority, which is responsible for their building. The walls and lights in the stairwell where Kobe Collins was murdered were blackened by a fire up to the 20th floor over a month ago, the family said. Furthermore, Lasheika Collins said that the lack of security cameras and a broken panel on the front door of the building meant that anybody could walk in at any time without hindrance or fear of detection.

Lasheika Collins said she asked the assistant manager of Wilson Houses to fix the stairwell and front door the day after her brother was murdered, but that her request was met with ambivalence. “He took his last breath on that staircase,” she said, shaking her head.

A statement from the New York City Housing Authority said that the maintenance staff planned to repaint the walls and repair the missing glass panel in the building’s front door this week. It also said the city has set aside $43 million to install cameras and improve security at several housing developments across the city, including Wilson Houses, with work scheduled to begin in 2012.

The Collins family has lived in the apartment on the 16th floor of Wilson Houses since Kobe Collins was 4. He had a learning disability, and while he was unable to do paid work in adulthood, he was fond of basketball and drawing, filling notebooks with stark, graffiti-style sketches.

Kobe Collins’ death brings to 14 the number of murders in East Harlem this year, down from 18 last year. David Collins and his sister Lasheika said that too many of those deaths have occurred near their home. “Over here’s just bad, period,” she said.

Outside their city housing block on East 105th Street, an impromptu memorial reminds residents of the violent death of their 28-year-old neighbor.

Residents slowed as they approached the entrance to the building on December 15. A flattened cardboard box had been taped next to the door. Some wrote personal messages:

“RIP KOBE. Lost but never forgotten.”
“We will dearly miss you.”
“That drink was for my G.”
“RIP Kobe Ima keep them pullups scrappy S.I.P”

Green and white candles with “R.I.P. Kobe” in black marker burned at the foot of the impromptu memorial, next to empty bottles of malt liquor.

“Never bothered nobody,” said James Cromartie, a handyman for the building, who remembered meeting Collins when he did repairs on his family’s apartment. “He was a quiet kid. Kept to himself.”

Another resident Deshawn Stevenson, 15, recalled Collins working out on the basketball courts each day.

Detectives from the New York Police Department’s 23rd Precinct were unable to comment, other than to say the investigation was continuing.

“They hit my best friend,” said David Collins. “Make sure you put in that article we loved him.”

Sugar Hill Mennonite Mission church on St. Nicholas Avenue. Photo by Allison Gaito/Northattan.

“They must think something of this space because it’s on the subway map at the 145th Street station,” said Dalen Ratzlaff as he stood in the fellowship hall on the basement level of a renovated Harlem row house. Women in long, simple dresses and devotional caps served up casseroles and mashed potatoes as a line of Mennonites made their way down the buffet table.

On Sundays, the Mennonites of the Sugar Hill Mission worship for an hour and a half. After that, they serve lunch to the 20 or so men and women who come to pray with them in a small, dimly lit hall – their church of sorts. Then, the day of rest is spent doing the Lord’s work.

“We tell the gospel story and we help our neighbors,” said Ed Warkentin, the leader of the mission. “We just kind of spread the love.”

As Mennonites, the descendants of Anabaptists, they hold that baptism can be given only to adult believers. The Warkentins follow a particularly conservative branch of Mennonite known as the Church of God in Christ. They shun war, technology like radio and television and end formal schooling once children reach their teenage years.

Warkentin and his wife, Yvette, left Alabama and arrived at the Sugar Hill Mission in the spring, taking over for a couple that had led the mission for three years. Easily mistaken as Amish, with her plain dress and his fluffy beard, their simple lifestyle seems out of place in the hustle and bustle of a traditionally African American neighborhood in Harlem.

Though their tradition is an outlier in a group of about a half-dozen other far more liberal sects of Mennonite in New York City, the Warkentins have had to adapt to the modern metropolis they live in. They use subways and buses to get around. Equipped with walkie-talkies in case of trouble, a few of the mission’s visiting Mennonites even drive a van to pick up a blind man who joins them for Sunday worship. They have a telephone, a computer and use the Internet for business purposes. Warkentin said the good that comes from the exceptions they make outweigh following the faith to the letter. “We don’t live by laws. We live in the liberty of the spirit,” said Warkentin. “We can do anything we want to, but what we want to do is controlled because we want to live in Christ.

In Sugar Hill, churches take up a lot of real estate, with a house of worship on nearly every block. Warkentin said he knew a traditional Mennonite church was a tough sell. “A lot of them don’t know what’s here. A lot of them walk straight on by and never look.” No matter, Warkentin said there are still people out there looking for their brand of faith. Faith isn’t geographically sensitive for Warkentin and he said that’s reason enough for the Mennonites to continue spreading their message in Sugar Hill. “The thing is is that there are things in the Scripture that probably were for a time relevant, but we can still make applications for our times because we’re still made out of the same cursed dirt. It all comes from the earth,” said Warkentin.

No matter how unlikely the mission’s presence in the neighborhood, the leaders of local churches think that after 23 years in Sugar Hill, the Mennonites have found a fit among all the others. “This is a city, everybody jams in,” said pastor George Ramsudh of the Mount Zion Lutheran church, just a few blocks away on the corner of 145^th Street and Convent Avenue. “Each one of these entities has its own objective, its own uniqueness. Yeah, we’re clustered together. We’re competing, it appears. But at the back of all that we have our own goals.”

A fellow Mennonite, Don Toews said the goal is not to establish a huge Mennonite congregation in a place like New York City, but to illuminate the faith for someone looking for it. “Our goal is to hold up a light and so if somebody responds, fine. If not, we still did our part, we held up the light. It’s God’s light,” he said.

A Colorado businessman who sells oil field equipment, Toews was in the city visiting his 20-year-old son Carson. Along with two other young men, Carson Toews volunteers with the Warkentins at soup kitchens in the Bowery, in the children’s oncology unit of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and with humanitarian groups like Habitat for Humanity. Other days are spent helping the random stranger who shows up on the doorstep of the mission, like one man who needed help tracking down the name of his birth mother and with the assistance of a church-filtered Internet search engine, a name and address were found.

But most of the energy of the mission goes into small pamphlets containing Bible verses and inspirational messages, passed out at subway stations or in front of the mission on St. Nicholas Avenue.

“We sit down on the steps a lot and just smile,” said Warkentin. “Someone said if you sit and look at the New York City people’s faces, they all look like they had a fight and lost. That’s kind of the way they go around, kind of glum, and so we spread smiles.”

Since their arrival seven months ago, the Warkentins say they’ve seen the congregation grow to about 20 regular worshippers and diversify, counting Indians, African-Americans and even a Jewish man as congregants. Even with that, the church’s size hasn’t made it any easier in spreading the faith. “It takes a while to get through that New York crust, that protection shell we tend to have,” said Warkentin.

But with patience, it’s a challenge Warkentin’s wife, Yvette, said they are willing to take on. “Jesus said go out into all the world. He didn’t say bypass Harlem.”

Hunter's state-of-the-art new building opened in East Harlem last summer. Photo by Ben Teitelbaum/Northattan.

Good fences make good neighbors, some say, but if a school of social work is moving into town, the set of expectations might be a little different.

Hunter College’s School of Social Work is nearly a full semester into its residency in East Harlem, and Dean Jacqueline Mondros hopes to establish a reputation as “great neighbors.”

“I would like it to be said that we came into this neighborhood in a respectful way as collaborative partners and that we helped them to make this neighborhood stronger,” said Mondros.

Although the school is not hiding in its mansion – a $135 million state-of-the-art building on Third Avenue between 118^th and 119^th streets –- it is still figuring out its public face.

Through a field placement program mandatory for all 1,100 students, the recently renamed Lois V. and Samuel J. Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College does have over 100 students interning at East Harlem-based organizations, twice the amount from last year, and the administration plans to increase the number.

Still, the true impact of those agencies, not to mention their interns, is tough to quantify, and the Hunter-East Harlem relationship engenders mixed feelings.

The school has “done a lot to make it seem like it’s reaching out to the community, but I don’t know,” said Master of Social Work student Will Engelhardt. “Most people feel like Hunter hasn’t done much.”

Student Cynthia Rodriguez, whose field placement concerns Hunter’s community outreach, said that while the administration is clearly committed to East Harlem, the school’s plan of action is “vague” and “ambiguous.”

Nevertheless, Hunter is not merely standing idly by, and three other MSW students are now playing a somewhat unofficial role in examining the Hunter-East Harlem relationship and offering suggestions to shape that plan.

“What feedback we’re trying to give them is really what’s going on in relation to how they think they’re doing and how they’re really doing in the community,” said Meredith Marin, who is working with Gabby Macklin and Breiny Scheinert.

The trio is currently researching an assignment on “exploring community needs.” As the only group covering East Harlem, their project “has a particular relevance that extends beyond just an assignment,” Marin said.

Their exercise in community assessment, which has video and print components, has been turning heads. According to Marin, both State Assemblyman Robert Rodriguez and Mondros have personally asked for copies.

When the school announced several years ago that it was moving uptown from East 79^th Street – a decision triggered by financial implications and the desire to improve its physical space – Hunter realized that it was thrusting itself into an already roiling discussion of gentrification and social responsibility.

Unsurprisingly, public officials have said all the right things.

Former New York Gov. David Paterson said that the move would give the school “the opportunity to engage with a vibrant, diverse and growing population in need of the vast array of services Hunter offers.”

State Sen. Jose M. Serrano echoed those sentiments: “Having their main facility in East Harlem will be a great addition to the neighborhood. The services they offer will undoubtedly bring much-needed resources into our community.”

Hunter, at least rhetorically, has also taken on the challenge of becoming an agent for “positive social change,” in the words of longtime professor Terry Mizrahi.

On the school’s website, Hunter touts the “unparalleled opportunity for the School to ‘live its mission’” to “seek and encourage social work talent for and from the least advantaged.” In East Harlem, where almost half the residents don’t graduate from high school and the unemployment rate is around 17 percent, the school has found a neighborhood with real need.

Although the facility itself inspires passers-by to slow down and peer curiously into the large glass windows, Hunter’s presence is not widely recognized. “I had noticed it one day, but I didn’t really know it was there,” said Laura Dara, who lives just a few blocks away.

Yet Marin has discovered that “Hunter’s done a lot more so far for the community than people really know about.”

For one, the school has opened its doors for public events. Hunter hosted a youth summit last summer, and Mondros, who was recently honored by an East Harlem consortium of human service agencies, said that in January the school plans to hold a “community meeting so we have community people telling us what they would like to see us do.”

Marin and Mondros stress that the school is not charting a course without input from East Harlem. “They’re focusing on partnerships a lot. That’s been a really primary theme,” said Marin. “They’re very vigilant about working with what’s already here in the community.”

Even so, there are questions whether Hunter can make a significant difference in East Harlem without its students truly embedding into the neighborhood. “There are almost no students that live in East Harlem,” said Marin, and Queens-based Cynthia Rodriguez admitted that they were “in and out of the 116^th Street subway stop.”

Local business owners also said they haven’t seen much benefit from the addition of Hunter. “Same for my business,” said Peter Dei, the owner of a 99-cent store across the street. “No change. No different. All the same.” And Faris Ali, who works at nearby Super Delicious Deli Food Inc. said that his rent increased when construction of the school began, but business was only starting to improve.

Another point of contention is the response of East Harlemites to Hunter’s aspirations. Until Hunter proves itself, residents may view the school with a wary eye. “The residents are kind of jaded. They’re kind of like, ‘Oh yeah? What’re you going to do for us?’” said Marin.

Next week Hunter will at least answer that question for 100 East Harlem children, as the school is donating 100 books in support of primary education. That’s just one way Hunter is trying to become a great neighbor.

“I want this to be the best place in the country,” said the former No. 1 tennis player in the world, John McEnroe, standing on a courtside balcony at his academy on Randall’s Island. “My aim is to bring tennis back to the forefront, to bring the buzz back. I’d like someone to make it and be the best player in the world, like I was.”

John McEnroe teaching a student at his academy on Randall's Island. Photo by Frederick Bernas/Northattan.

Opened in 2009, the facility boasts 20 courts -– 15 of which lie under temporary “bubble” roof structures that can be removed for outdoor play in the summer. The Sportime Corp. invested $18 million in the project before McEnroe became a partner and opened the John McEnroe Tennis Academy. But now trouble could be brewing as the company plans to expand into a nearby parking lot, building nine additional courts at an estimated cost of $7 million.

On Dec. 5, a small but noisy group of protesters accused McEnroe of “stealing public land” outside a fundraiser for “The Nation” magazine, where the sporting legend was a keynote speaker. They cited concerns about high prices and the resulting difficulties for community access, as well as a perceived lack of outreach by McEnroe’s academy into local schools.

“The parking lot is an open space that’s used by the public,” said Marina Ortiz, a community organizer who took part in the demonstration. “First and foremost, it’s city land and it should not be turned over to a private enterprise with rates that are not affordable to children and people in East Harlem and the South Bronx.”

Hourly prices for court rental vary from $40 to $105 depending on time of day and level of membership, which starts at $71 per month, with a joining fee of $500. Ben Schlansky, the chief legal officer for Sportime, said these rates are competitive by city standards and added that “50 percent of courts are reserved for parks permit holders from May 1 until Columbus Day.” That means anyone who holds a New York City public tennis permit can use the facilities at no extra cost.

Schlansky said a lack of transportation makes it hard for many public permit holders and locals to reach the island, and that Sportime and the McEnroe Academy were committed to widening outreach. “We already work with public schools to offer free community programs through the Randall’s Island Sport Foundation,” he said. “We’ve also discussed designating one of our employees to act as a liaison with the community, so we can branch out and establish more contacts.”

Mark McEnroe, a younger brother of John who is the academy’s general manager, described two such partnerships, with the DREAM Charter School in East Harlem and the Hyde Leadership Charter School in the South Bronx. “We also met Geoffrey Canada from the Harlem Children’s Zone and basically offered to take kids from schools in his purview and train them,” McEnroe said. “We haven’t been successful in making that happen, but not really because of lack of effort -– you’d be surprised how difficult it is to get schools to give you their kids to train for free.”

Sportime wants to convert this parking lot into nine new tennis courts. Photo by Frederick Bernas/Northattan

Sportime will submit its formal expansion bid to the city’s land use review procedure in the new year. Informational meetings have already been held with subgroups of Community Board 11, including the Parks and Recreation Committee. “We went there to listen, gather all the questions together, and get the board members the information they need to make an informed decision,” Schlansky said.

Frances Mastrota, who chairs the Parks and Recreation group, is taking a cautious approach. “I want to improve the land that right now is not worthy of a parking lot,” she said, “but I have to be sure that I get full value for what I’m giving.

“We hope to have a rain garden and we’re asking for lighting,” Mastrota continued. She added that the board would like to see greater equality in the way tennis scholarships are allocated: “We’d like to see scholarships that aren’t openly competitive, so children who have never held a racket in their hand can compete and then perhaps be offered one.”

Mastrota, who moved to East Harlem in 1959, says the community “felt robbed” when the tennis center originally opened without going through city land review procedures. “Parks activists were livid and frustrated by the inability to fight back,” she said. “We have been burned and the scars remain. There is a lack of trust in their word.”

Sportime’s current expansion plan includes a garden in an adjacent parking lot, as well as 45 new trees, but it recently drew criticism from elected officials that led to the postponement of a city hearing. On Dec. 15, DNAInfo.com reported that Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Comptroller John Liu and East Harlem Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito all aired concerns about the tennis center pricing out locals.

“Based on what I’ve heard so far, it seems that Sportime’s current facility at Randall’s Island has not fully engaged with the local community,” DNAInfo quoted Mark-Viverito as saying. A spokesman for Scott Stringer said the borough president was concerned that Sportime had not been “sufficiently transparent with information about the existing 20 tennis courts and the extent to which they can be made more accessible to the surrounding community and general public.”

John McEnroe was adamant that part of his personal mission is promoting broader access to the sport he loves, and the expansion would aid that: “It’s an expensive game, and I’d like to make tennis available to every kid,” he said. “It would be nice to make it more affordable to as many people as possible – that would be my goal.

“Hopefully they’ll see the expansion is something that will be good for the city and good for kids, and if they decide not to do it, that’s just bad luck.”

When the New York City Department of Education last week released its updated list of 19 schools that are at risk of being shut down or phased out because of poor performance, one group of Northattan parents were relieved, because their school was no longer on it.

But for another group, the fight to keep their school open continues.

What next for Wadleigh Secondary School? Photograph: Xian Bu / northattan.com

The original list of 47 at-risk schools, released in October, included Harlem’s Frederick Douglass Academy II and the Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing and Visual Arts. While the two schools share the same building on 114th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, FDA II was not on the latest list, while Wadleigh’s middle school is among five other middle schools that may be truncated. If this happens, no additional students will be enrolled in the school, and each year a grade will be eliminated until the middle school is completely phased out.

Wadleigh was established over 100 years ago and is currently Harlem’s only Performing Arts school, with 84 students in its middle school and 446 in high school. Frederick Douglass was established in 2000 as a middle school and expanded to include a high school in 2003, when it moved into Wadleigh’s building. It currently has 132 middle schoolers and 280 high schoolers.

Since the original announcement about low performance schools, parents, educators and community leaders waged different strategies to keep their respective schools from closing. Last Monday, Wadleigh’s speakers series featured professor and community activist Cornel West. When he learned about the school’s woes, he vowed to help keep the school running. According to DNAinfo.com, West said, “I want each and every one of you to know that any service I can render to keep this school where it is, just let me know. Dialogue, negotiation or protest.”

Parents are also being vocal about their support for the school. “I have had a long-term relationship with Wadleigh,” said Annette Nanton, who has a son in the 11th grade. Two of her older children graduated from Wadleigh in 2008 and 2009 and are now in college. Although the DOE’s decision will affect only Wadleigh’s 84 middle schoolers, Nanton is also worried about the high school. “If you take middle school away from us now,” she said, “what is the future for our high school?”

Nanton finds the school “like a community” for her family. “Don’t just shut the school down,” she said. “Give more resources to support the school to get a better grade.”

Wadleigh received a “C” on the education department’s progress report card for the 2009-2010 school year and a “D” for the 2010-2011 term.

A DOE source, who was not authorized to speak publicly and so asked not to be identified, said there’s a possibility for a poorly performing school to remain open if it can show that there has been some improvement and if the community galvanizes to show its support.

Harriet Fortson, chairwoman of the education committee of the NAACP Mid-Manhattan branch, said the overall grade fails to reflect Wadleigh’s extracurricular programs and their positive impact on the children. The school “does excellent work for the kids,” said Fortson. She said that 20 to 30 Wadleigh graduates visit the school regularly to assist students with schoolwork. Its medical program offers opportunities for students to learn about health care from professionals, and the school’s cooking program provided the reception during West’s visit.

Valentina Santos, 17, a student at Wadleigh, is saddened by the possibility of the middle school’s being truncated. “We’re still trying to do some stuff so they won’t close the school,” she said.

For Frederick Douglass, the outcome was better. After the school was listed as a closing target in October and education department hearings were held in November, the Parents Association from Frederick Douglass drafted a letter “In Support Against FDA II and Wadleigh School Closures.” This letter was disseminated throughout the neighborhoods to churches, local businesses and elected officials. Before they knew their school was no longer endangered, parents from the school also met with parents from other low-performing schools in Brooklyn and the Bronx to express their dismay about the DOE’s potential plans.

Also before the announcement, Frederick Douglass principal, Osei Owusu-Afriyie, who took the job in 2010, said he hoped that the DOE would realize that his school had fallen on hard times a few years ago, but was making progress.

“We have changed our curriculum,” said Owsui-Afriyie. “We’ve increased our academic support for middle school students who come in with any significant needs in math and English Language Arts.” The principal also said the school is trying to engage more parents and students to make sure teachers are well prepared. “We’ve just connected back into the roots of the school, which is a college preparatory institution,” said Owsui-Afriyie.

It’s not clear yet why Frederick Douglass was spared, considering it received a “C” in 2009-2010 and an “F” in 2010-2011, but it’s to the relief of many parents like Carleen Jones, the PTA co-president. “We are grateful” that the school is now off the list, said Jones. She attributes the school’s failing grades to the former principal’s less-than effective management. “Everything is going in a positive way,” said Jones, who has faith in the new principal and the school’s future. “The school can have a great turnaround.”

Jones has a daughter on Frederick Douglass’ honor roll and another daughter who is a graduate and now a third-year college student on the dean’s honor list. “The school has had an impact on both of their lives,” said Jones.

Akeylah Brown, a 17-year-old senior at Frederick Douglass, said the school was doing poorly until its new principal came on board. “Our old principal did not enforce the school uniforms or the school rules,” said Brown. Its former principal, Latasha Greer, has since moved to Florida.

Elizabeth-Ann Hendrickson, whose son is in the seventh grade at Frederick Douglass and is spending his second year here, said: “My son does well. I haven’t invested the time to see exactly how the school is performing years ago as opposed to right now. But as far as right now, everything they’ve put into place works for me.”

Another hearing with the education department was held at Wadleigh on Wednesday, where parents questioned why some F-grade schools in the city are not pinpointed for closure, but the D-grade Wadleigh is. Parents also argued that some of Wadleigh’s programs, such as the tutoring program, help middle schoolers start to prepare for college.

The education department said at the hearing that it will conduct at least two more public hearings in the following two months before it makes the final decision about the future of the middle school.

Look closely at the background in TV shows and films shot in New York City and sooner or later you may learn to spot a familiar setting: the Union Theological Seminary in Morningside Heights, at 121^st Street and Broadway.

In “Gossip Girl,” the seminary’s hallways and inner garden have played a stand-in for Columbia University, where Serena Van Der Woodsen and best friend Blair Waldorf study.

That same Inner Quadrangle Garden, this time playing a private school, was where detectives in a “Law and Order” episode interviewed a piano teacher after a rape case. More recently, ABC’s new series “Pan Am” has filmed across the street from the seminary.

“It has a lot to offer in one place,” said film location scout Nick Carr of the seminary and its medieval architecture. “It has areas from church meeting halls, board rooms, cafeteria, and stage space. It also serves for, like, a British school, like Oxford, or Cambridge. We even scouted this for the medieval look for ‘The Smurfs,’” said Carr, a 2004 graduate of Columbia who studied film and has worked on movies such as “Spider-Man 3” and “War of the Worlds.”

The film industry contributes roughly $5 billion to New York City’s economy every year, according to Marybeth Ihle, press manager of the Office of Media and Entertainment in Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office. Hundreds of directors use the city and its landmarks as backdrops for dramas, comedies, TV series and documentaries every year – making New York second only to Los Angeles as a film backdrop.

“There are approximately 100,000 New Yorkers who earn their living behind the scenes in film and television production,” said Ihle.

Most film producers who want to shoot in the city check in first with the Mayor’s Office of Film, Television and Broadcast. Starting with a $300 application fee, the office can help filmmakers get permits and services to shoot on city streets, sidewalks, and city-owned properties.

“We make it pretty easy for productions to enjoy the city,” said Habibah Love, who works in the film office permits department. “Only for parking privileges, or a light generator or light stands do you need a permit. Even a lot of students film without permits. We cater to everyone,” she said.

In the case of “Gossip Girl,” early episodes were shot at a Russian Orthodox Church in east Manhattan, a setting meant to represent Serena’s high school. When Serena moved from high school to Columbia University, the show initially tried to film on Columbia’s campus. But that idea was squashed when the school decided that having film crews around for weeks at a time was too disruptive.

So “Gossip Girl” began using other nearby sites as “Columbia” backdrops, including the Union Theological Seminary’s quad, library and social halls.

Old downtown buildings and other film locations provide plenty of quintessentially New York settings for film location scouts. But the Union Theological Seminary is often high on the scouts’ list precisely because it does not look like urban New York City.

“When you go into the grounds, you have this really non-New Yorky looking campus, like you’re in a private school upstate,” said Sam Rohn, another film location scout, who has worked on “Law and Order” and other TV shows that have used the seminary as a backdrop.

The seminary is an independent graduate school of theology founded in 1836. The original building was established in downtown Manhattan. During the late 1890s, the seminary needed to expand its roots by moving to a different location. They decided to rebuild and redesign it entirely, and move to upper Manhattan. In 1908, the cornerstone for the campus was laid down on Broadway and 120^th St. Nearly 300 students currently study there for master’s or doctorate degrees in divinity, social work, arts, sacred theology and philosophy. The seminary is closely affiliated with Columbia.

The seminary’s exterior and interior architecture still preserve some of the school’s original early 20^th century structures. Film scouts look for the particular appearance of a gothic revival style found in doorways, long narrow hallways, gigantic windows, or cloisters (the rectangular open space with walkway borders, forming a quadrangle garden). Scouts have promoted use of its dorm rooms and the courtyards, which resemble those of an upper-crust private school.

Film scout Carr said the seminary has something else going for it, too. “They are film friendly and always willing to work with the directors,” he said. “We don’t like to be anywhere we’re not welcomed.”

The process of choosing a film location can take months, and according to Carr, the general cost to use a location for filming runs $5,000 to $10,000 per day in New York, though some places -– like well-known restaurants -– charge more.

Wade Bennett, director of communications and marketing at the seminary, said directors who want to film at the school negotiate contracts with Michael Orzechowski, the director of housing and campus services. Bennett referred all further questions to Orzechowski, who said he would not be available to talk about the seminary and its use by filmmakers until January.

Carr is currently working with creator David Chase, of the HBO series “The Sopranos,” and his new film “Twylight Zones,” about a group of friends in a rock band growing up in New Jersey in the 1960s. A dorm room at the seminary was used in a scene in the movie.

Carr also used the seminary backdrop for the new detective drama “Unforgettable,” about a former police detective diagnosed with hyperthymesia, a condition that allows her to remember almost everything that has ever happened to her; she uses this rarity to help solve crimes.

Another plus for the seminary is that the building, wrapped around a courtyard, is relatively isolated from neighbors who might complain about noise or other disruption.

And unlike venues that get overfilmed -– and thus are so familiar directors don’t want to shoot there any more — Union Theological Seminary’s visual diversity means it should remain popular, said film scouts Carr and Rohn.

“Sometimes directors will say ‘I want to shoot at a location no one has ever seen.’” Carr said. Though Union Theological is popular, it hides its identity well, making it seem fresh with every appearance in another film or TV series.

This article was updated Dec. 19 to correct several errors. The seminary building was built in 1908, not 1836, making it the 20th century. The last name of the director of housing and campus services was corrected to Orzechowski, and the director of communications and marketing at the seminary is Wade Bennett, not James Kempster. And the spelling of “Spider-Man 3″ was corrected.

The unusual decision to charge a 20-year-old Dominican immigrant with the crime of “self-abortion” has sent shock waves through Washington Heights, where a dead fetus was found discarded in an alleyway just after Thanksgiving.

Some, like Washington Heights resident Miguel Antonio Vasquez, support the decision. “They should throw her in jail, or worse. The baby was practically fully formed,” he said.

But others are more reluctant to judge. “We don’t know what sort of situation she might have been in,” said fruit vendor Rafael Piñero. “The only one that can judge her and that knows why she did what she did is God.”

The fetus, about six inches long with its umbilical cord still attached, was found in a bucket wrapped in a plastic bag on the 600 block of 191st Street on November 29th. Emergency responders pronounced the unborn baby girl dead on the scene, and New York City police arrested Aribely Almonte on the rarely-used charge of “self-abortion in the first degree,” a misdemeanor under New York state law for which Almonte could serve up to a year in jail if convicted.

San Miguel Alcancel is one of more than a dozen "Botanicas" in Washington Heights that carries teas capable of inducing abortion. Photo by Russ Finkelstein/Northattan.

According to The New York Times, New York State’s Division of Criminal Justice Services said Almonte’s case is only the fifth time since 1980 that self-abortion charges have been brought in the state, where abortion is illegal after the 24th week of pregnancy, unless a doctor certifies that the mother’s life is at risk.

Though the charge is rare, some in the largely Dominican neighborhood of Washington Heights say cases of self-induced abortion are probably more common than is publicly acknowledged.

New York City police have confirmed that they are trying to determine whether Almonte terminated her pregnancy by drinking an herbal tea said to induce abortion, though they couldn’t release more specific information due to the pending investigation.

Teas like the one police suspect Almonte may have used are sold over the counter at more than a dozen Dominican “botanicas” or Santeria shops in Washington Heights. One is roble, which is the Spanish word for oak. In traditional Dominican medicine a tea is made from the bark and is prescribed as a digestive aid. When taken in high enough doses, it is also capable of causing an abortion, according to Al Guervaz, a Dominican nutritionist and herbalist practicing in New York City.

“Herbal-induced abortions are not very common in New York,” said Guervaz, who said they are more common in the Dominican Republic, “where there’s a high incidence of very young women becoming pregnant.”

But women in the neighborhood do share information about which herbal medicines are capable of causing abortions, and in what doses, according to Katerine Lopez, who works at Liberty Nutrition, a natural food supplement store catering to the Dominican community in Washington Heights.

Botanicas don’t sell roble or another herb, called tua tua, as abortion agents. But they are available at $3 an ounce for other uses (tua tau is an anti-parasitic that may cause an abortion at high enough doses), so a female customer can “ask for something specific that will work, but say that you need it for another ailment,” said Lopez. “Someone I know who was thinking of having an abortion recently found information on a Mexican website that told her which herbs she would have to take,” she said.

The use of such products for clandestine, potentially dangerous home abortions might seem an anomaly in a city like New York, which has a range of resources for women seeking to have a legal abortion. But Guervaz said women who use the teas for that purpose may be unaware of other options, or unable to use them because their families would object if they knew they had gone to an abortion clinic.

“People might not know about places like Planned Parenthood if they are recent immigrants that are unfamiliar with the laws and resources available to them,” he said.

Almonte is currently staying with her father away from Washington Heights, to avoid the scrutiny of neighbors and the media. Her family has said that she will return for her Jan. 3 court appearance, when she will likely be thrust once again into the spotlight.