>And you make restoring the (non-profit) Apollo
>Theater sound like an ominous plot, rather than Harlem getting a fair share
>of development dollars that usually just go to for-profit rich folks.
It was a plot - whether it was ominous or not is for readers to decide. But the point was to get white people used to going to Harlem, which would then be followed by their moving there. I'm not making this up. Read Neil Smith's essay.
And the people who made money on the Apollo weren't non-profit Harlemites - there were the politically wired Harlem elite, like Percy Sutton. Vast amounts of public money went into that project in the late 1980s/early 1990s, but none of it trickled down.
Years ago, I heard Neil give a talk at the Socialist Scholars Conference about his Harlem research. He recalled interviewing the director of the Harlem Urban Development Corp. at the State Office Building in Harlem (another public project that was part of the gentrification scheme). His language was all about how he was surrounded by a jungle that they were going to subdue and civilize.
Oh, and the HUDC collapsed in, yes, scandal in 1995: <http://nysl.nysed.gov/uhtbin/cgisirsi/Mar5hdM8w2/410032/523/13881>.
Doug
<http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F00B10FD3B5C0C738FDDA80994DA404482>
Mr. Rangel had other troubles, too. In 1995, for example, the newly elected Republican administration of Mr. Pataki dissolved the Harlem Urban Development Corporation, a huge setback for Mr. Rangel, who was a major force in the organization during its 23-year life.
The administration said the agency had not produced a single major commercial project despite having received $100 million to help rebuild Harlem. It also described the agency as a place with little oversight and controls as well as one where state money changed hands freely with little regard for contracting procedures or documentation.
At the time, Mr. Rangel said he had no day-to-day involvement in the agency. But many Democrats describe that moment as a turning point anyway. ''That agency was a big patronage mill,'' said one New York Democratic operative. ''By closing it down, Pataki reduced Charlie's influence almost immediately.''
There was more bad news to come. In 1999, Mr. Rangel agreed to step down as chairman of the Apollo Theater after the state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, filed a lawsuit against Mr. Rangel and five other Apollo directors. In the lawsuit, the board members were accused of failing to collect $4.4 million owed to the theater by the Inner City Theater Group, a company controlled by Percy E. Sutton, the former Manhattan borough president and one of Mr. Rangel's closest allies.