Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Harlem real estate
The heart of Harlem is being reshaped - some say gutted - in a blitz of big-money real-estate deals, starting with nearly a dozen small shops getting squeezed out to make way for retail and office development. "Harlem will be gone," lamented Lanise Benjamin, whose 90-year-old grandfather's legendary music shop, Bobby's Happy House, is being evicted from Frederick Douglass Boulevard. "To tear this building down would essentially be to tear Harlem apart."