Longtime West Harlem resident and neighborhood organizer Victor Edwards will serve as the new chair of Community Board 9, succeeding two-term chair Barry Weinberg, CC ’12. Edwards, formerly CB9 first vice chair, will lead his first public general assembly meeting on Sept. 21.

Yusef Salaam, first-time candidate and falsely-imprisoned member of the “Exonerated Five,” on Tuesday declared a resounding victory in the Democratic primary for Central Harlem’s City Council District 9.

Columbia is in the beginning stages of converting 611 W. 112th Street, formerly the historic hotel The Maranamay, into the University’s newest undergraduate residence hall, according to a January memo from the Office of Government and Community Affairs and Facilities and Operations obtained by Spectator.

Columbia holds five “vacant or underutilized” properties prime for inclusive housing development, according to a “Housing Manhattanites” report that Borough President Mark Levine released on Tuesday.

Rep. Adriano Espaillat, who represents Harlem, northern Manhattan, and the northwestern Bronx in the U.S. House of Representatives held the annual State of the District address at the Forum on Sunday. At the event—attended by city and state officials, local leaders, and constituents of District 13—Espaillat highlighted his congressional victories and recommitted to his “transformational regional projects” for the upcoming year.

Tenants of 550 W. 125th St., a residential tower within the Grant Houses complex, were alerted this month that the building’s gas service—used primarily for cooking—would be shut off until further notice due to “unavoidable circumstances.” On Wednesday night, three weeks after the outage began, New York City Housing Authority officials, local politicians, and tenant leaders gathered in the building’s lobby to update residents on the outstanding outage.