CB9

Struggling business owners discussed ways to rebrand Manhattanville, including proposals for a name change, in order to help address the economic pains faced by businesses on the campus’ 12th Avenue border at a meeting on Tuesday.

Residents and city officials heavily scrutinized Columbia’s plan to erect a 34-story high-rise on the former McDonald’s site at a Community Board 9 meeting last Thursday.

The West Harlem Development Corporation invested $2 million this summer to develop 169 affordable housing units in Harlem, the first substantial investment made of the $10 million in funding received from Columbia five years ago.

Community members of Morningside Heights and surrounding neighborhoods ranked housing as one of their biggest neighborhood concerns for the following fiscal year at a public hearing on Monday.

Francia Fernandez emerges from the underlit, green-tiled foyer of the Grant Houses public housing complex on Broadway as a subway train rumbles overhead. In a baby pink headband and grey sweatpants, she is stepping out just to run some errands. We converse outside the building, her dyed-blond ponytail swishing, the cadence of her Spanish musical. Although she currently holds a cleaning job, she is seeking new employment. I point to the Columbia Employment Information Center, the boxy one-story building directly next door, and Fernandez tells me she has never heard of it. She seems surprised. “Do they have cleaning work?” she inquires, knitting her eyebrows. I nod. “Okay, I’m going to go tomorrow and apply for a cleaning job at Columbia,” Fernandez replies with determination, as if she has already marked it into her calendar. As we part ways and she walks to the 125th Street subway station to continue her day, Fernandez passes within arm’s length of the CEIC’s all-glass exterior.

It's 6:30 on a Friday, and it's already dark outside. Six people sit around a long table—not a bad turnout for a muggy day like today. They have gathered at the West Harlem Skills Training Center, a little black awning on the corner of 134th and Amsterdam, for a workshop about obtaining street vendor permits.

Despite pressure from local politicians to implement traffic-calming measures along a stretch of Morningside Avenue, Community Board 10 leaders said at a meeting last Thursday that they want a revised plan from the Department of Transportation before continuing discussions.

In the seemingly perpetual squabble over the future of Saint John the Divine, it is not difficult to conjure up doomsday scenarios. In one scenario, the cathedral, which ranks among the largest Christian churches in the world and is a regular stop on walking tours of Morningside Heights, crawls helplessly into the insatiable maw of neighborhood development and gentrification, dwarfed by towering developments as the side chapels are transformed into luxury condominiums. In another world, a money-starved cathedral, having lost the income it would have generated from the controversial apartment complex developers are building on its north side, collapses into insolvency and robs the neighborhood of one of its most precious historical treasures.