Can new and old business thrive in Harlem? (MAS)

Gentrification has taken hold in every corner of the city over the past decade or two, but few places have felt it as acutely as Harlem. Demographics, tastes and prices are all shifting and skewing, for better and worse, often all at once. Last week at Harlem's Studio Museum, a confab of the neighborhood's business owners and power brokers came together to try and figure out what comes next for their community.

Hosted by the Harlem Park to Park Initiative, a self-styled community improvement association and business alliance, the conference brought together city officials, real estate developers and noted executives from the dining, hospitality and entertainment worlds. Among them were the CEO of the country’s largest African-American real estate development company, R. Donahue Peebles, and Tren’ness Woods Black, the third-generation owner of Sylvia’s Restaurant.

They had come together to imagine, and to strategize, a future for Harlem as the city's new chic location. It’s a tantalizing identity, one that has often been talked about but never quite achieved, for the historic neighborhood.

The conference, by chance, was held in some of the same rooms currently housing the "Expanding the Walls" exhibition, a collection of new photographs by Harlem-area teenagers mixed with historic shots from the James VanDerZee archive like Dinner Party w/ Boxer Harry Willis. The photos were a startling reminder of the area's cultural bonds both past and present—bonds that many of the speakers, for various reasons, hoped would endure.

“Harlem has a niche appeal. It’s the center of culture,” said Ilya Braz, vice president of GFI Capital Resources, the group behind the boutique Ace and Nomad hotels (both downtown).  “If you just focus on music like jazz and blues, and art and all the things surrounding that. If you create that in a hotel, you create a certain vibe. That’s what attracts people to a neighborhood. They’ll hear from their friends, ‘Hey I was at this spot the other day, and it was really fun. The ambiance was there. It was happening.’ That’s what will drive the demand. Especially among the young people.”

Whenever the renaissance of a neighborhood is discussed, there seem to be unavoidable comparisons to the transformations of Williamsburg and the Lower East Side, transformations that changed those communities from tight-knit residential districts into vibrant nightlife destinations. Each has its own advantages, though balancing them can be a serious challenge. It’s a comparison that carries with it a certain amount of hope and envy, as well as warning.

Tren’ness Woods Black of Sylvia's wondered if growing nightlife in the area was not in conflict, or at odds, with the resurgence of residential development in Harlem.

“It’s not a conflict, but it’s a challenge,” responded Robert Bookman, senior partner at the Pesetsky and Bookman law firm and a registered NYC lobbyist. “It’s a challenge that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. When done properly, hospitality will add vibrancy and will drastically increase value to an area, including real-estate value.” He then went on to reference Soho as an example of just this kind of resurgence, an area where the rise in real estate value has been undeniable, though, some would argue, so too has the accompanying decline in cultural and artistic identity over the last 30 years.

R. Donahue Peebles closed out the event with a well-versed keynote about the trials and tribulations of his many years in real estate markets like Miami, Las Vegas and Washington, D.C. It was a speech that also marked New York and Harlem as the next big opportunity in commercial development, noting, “My business is real estate, and I believe that Harlem is now poised to provide a platform for a new generation of black and female entrepreneurs. I’m convinced that there’s a great opportunity to build transformational projects here.”

The Observer asked Mr. Peebles about Harlem’s ability to avoid the pitfalls experienced by other transformed neighborhoods in the city as it moved into its own now-promised renaissance. “I think you have long-term property owners and long-term business owners here, and it’s got a cultural history,” he said. “You look at areas like Tribeca and Soho, they didn’t have the same kind of deep cultural story.” It’s a history that he hopes he and others can support and do justice, adding, “That’s one of the reasons why I was speaking here today. To try and encourage and excite entrepreneurs as to what can happen here. I think people coming to Harlem are definitely coming for a different vibe.”

Full a full review of the mayor's big speech, click here.

In any case, the new law allows small businesses to write off the first $500,000 they spend on new equipment purchases. Some new businesses will face no capital gains taxes on long-term investments in their companies.

The White House says the Small Business Administration will extend existing loan provisions to provide $680 million in new financing to 1,300 small businesses that are waiting for loans. It will also allow the SBA to expand the size of the loans it makes and implements a small business lending fund that will give $30 billion in capital to small banks in the hopes that they'll expand small business lending.

Democrats hope the law will create somewhere in the neighborhood of half a million jobs. It'll be hard to tell whether the law will achieve that goal, because we don't have access to an alternate universe where the law never was signed. But with any luck the economy will improve somewhat, regardless!

There were 335 bankruptcy filings in New York City, in comparison to 104 in the same period last year.

Experts quoted in the article attributed the sharp spike to -- surprise, surprise -- the wretched economy, in particular, to the lack of credit that would normally be used to help buoy a business in rough times:

Jose Luis Sampedro’s Barrera Construction & Development Corp. is one of the 335 businesses filing for bankruptcy this year. His 15-year-old firm has been hobbled by non-payments from two subcontractors and skyrocketing costs.

"I’m still trying to survive,” Mr. Sampedro said. “I have to struggle for this company.”