Trucks, large and small, have a new place to park in Harlem.

At a site where the developer offered to bring needed housing and a green energy district, vehicles were rolling in and sitting idle on Wednesday morning.

“This is not right, this is revenge,” said Iesha Sekou, founder and CEO of Street Corner Resources.


What You Need To Know

  • Developer Bruce Teitelbaum opened a truck depot at a Harlem site where his massive development project couldn't get traction

  • Harlem One45 never got rezoning support from local City Councilmember Kristin Richardson Jordan, who demanded a larger share of low-income apartments

  • Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine is asking for new negotiations to revive the housing project

  • Richardson Jordan is being challenged in this year's Council elections by two Harlem assembly members

For years, developer Bruce Teitelbaum negotiated with community members like Sekou and elected officials to develop a corner of 145th Street and Lenox Avenue, offering over 400 units of affordable housing, jobs, a museum and community space in two massive towers that would also include more than 400 market-rate apartments.

But his Harlem One45 project never got the needed rezoning approval.

“He said, ‘oh, you know I really care about the community, I wanna help the Blacks,’ well, the Blacks are here. I’m Black, I’m right here, breathing this. Those kids that are in those buildings breathing the fumes from these trucks,” Sekou said.

Last May, Teitelbaum withdrew the proposal after being unable to get the support of the local City Councilmember Kristin Richardson Jordan. She feared more gentrification and demanded a larger number of apartments for low-income Harlemites.

“We are one of the only places with a Black plurality,” she said in an interview last year.

Now, Teitelbaum says he’s developing the site with this truck depot, and possibly a self-storage facility and a small market-rate or luxury building, which wouldn’t need the City Council’s green light.

“I don’t think reasonable people could expect us to do nothing and sit here and wait. So what we are doing today is what we could have done years ago, but we didn’t do,” Teitelbaum said.

A few days ago, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine asked parties to go back to the negotiating table.

“We must do better. That site should have housing,” he said.

Richardson Jordan said that it was on the developer to meet the minimum requirements set by her office and added: “this developer needs to fall in line with everyone else in honoring new standards set to keep Harlem, Harlem.”

“There are laws that govern the development of affordable housing in New York. Not only did we follow the law, but we exceeded what we were required to do by double,” Teitelbaum said.

The councilmember has faced criticism from fellow Democrats, including Harlem Assemblymembers Al Taylor and Inez Dickens, who are now running to unseat her in this year’s City Council elections.