A little positivity and perhaps a way out of the hopelessness of the urban forgotten
Star Power, Still Shining 40 Years On
RESTORATION PLAZA, the rambling headquarters of the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, takes up several buildings, including one that was once an abandoned milk-bottling plant, on a full square block south of Fulton Street. It has a gallery featuring work by local artists and a 200-seat theater where just last week actors were rehearsing for a new production. It has classrooms for job training and tax-preparation classes and, along one stretch of the property, subsidized apartment buildings that the organization built in the 1970s.
But what really makes Colvin Grannum, the group’s president, light up is the organic food aisle at the supermarket that leases space on yet another corner of the property. The aisle is long, and the nearby meat and produce sections are spacious. Even so, someone untrained in the history of Bedford-Stuyvesant might suggest that, while it is a nice supermarket, it is still just a supermarket. To that, Mr. Grannum takes polite exception.
“What’s the big deal?” he asked rhetorically, peering down a row of canned foods. “The big deal is that for a very long time, people who moved into a community like this, they had no place to shop. This brings stability to the community. It’s a big difference to people if every weekend they go out of the community to shop, as opposed to staying and seeing their neighbors.”
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The supermarket, the theater, the gallery and all the rest are part of the wide-ranging approach that the Restoration Corporation has taken to improving the neighborhood since the organization was founded in 1967. It arose, amid poverty and riots, out of a visit to Bedford-Stuyvesant by Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who was challenged by neighborhood activists to go beyond speeches and help produce something tangible.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/01/nyregion/thecity/01disp.html?_r=0