The calls, Monxo Lopez says, come almost every week.
The phone number is usually one he doesn't recognize, and as soon as the voice on the other end asks whether he's the owner of 271 Alexander Avenue, he knows what they want.
"No, I'm not interested in selling," he says. Would he be willing to talk for a few minutes? "No," he says. Does he have a price in mind? "No." The conversations last less than a minute, he says, and they end when he tells the callers not to try him again.
Lopez, an assistant adjunct professor at Hunter College, bought his home in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx 12 years ago, in part to escape the same economic forces now creeping up on him. After "eating a lot of ramen noodles and spaghetti" for two years, he and his wife saved enough money to buy an apartment in Fort Greene in 2000. But as rents skyrocketed and demographics shifted, the bars and restaurants they liked closed, and their friends in the neighborhood started getting priced out. In 2004, they decided to leave, too.
Mott Haven, with its diverse mix of African Americans, Mexicans, West Africans, Dominicans and his fellow Puerto Ricans, seemed to Lopez to possess the vibrancy and cultural diversity that Fort Greene was losing. Today, he says, it's the ideal place to raise his young daughter, and he has no desire to live anywhere else.
But gentrification has followed him to Mott Haven, and the neighborhood is changing quickly. According to a report from NYU's Furman Center, average rents in Mott Haven and nearby Hunts Point, where nearly half of residents live below the poverty line, rose by 28 percent between 1990 and 2010-2014. NeighborhoodX, a real estate analytics startup, found that between 2013 and this past August, median rents for one-bedroom apartments in Mott Haven jumped 47 percent, from $1,200 to $1,700—the biggest increase of any neighborhood in the borough. Last spring, Mott Haven resident Harry Bubbins painted a warning on a mural at the corner of Brook Avenue and East 140th Street: "Coming Soon ... Bushwick (If We Let It.)"
"This is like a little village, in a sense, in the middle of the big city, and the thought of losing some of my neighbors to speculation is unbearable to me," Lopez said.
Historic buildings along Alexander Avenue. (Scott Heins / Gothamist)
The Mott Haven Historic District, which comprises a stretch of Alexander Avenue between East 137th Street and East 141st Street where Lopez and his neighbors live, is a small area with limited housing stock. It's bookended by two churches, to the south by St. Jerome's Roman Catholic Church, and to the north by Tercera Iglesia Bautista. In between lies the 40th Precinct police station, the Mott Haven branch of the New York Public Library and rows of homes built mostly in the the late-19th century. In designating the district in 1969, the city's Landmark Preservation Commission praised Alexander Avenue as "an airy, dignified thoroughfare" and called the district "a happy oasis that recalls the elegant character which this neighborhood once had."
As home prices have surged in upper Manhattan, Mott Haven, just a short hop across the Harlem River, has become the next logical hotspot for prospective buyers. And Alexander Avenue, with its consistent concentration of historic architecture and transportation accessibility, is a particularly attractive location, explained Todd Stevens, a broker with Douglas Elliman Real Estate.
Stevens sold his first home in Mott Haven 11 years ago. Just off Alexander Avenue at 429 E 139th Street, the building went for $405,000. He's sold three more houses in the neighborhood since. Homes on Alexander can now command nearly $800,000, but Stevens said they should be worth even more, given that prices just a few subway stops away in Harlem can be twice that figure. (The trend is turning that way; 295 Alexander Avenue is currently listed for $1.2 million.) Homes are rarely publicly listed for sale in the area, Stevens said, which is why he's taken to mailing homeowners directly on behalf of prospective buyers.
"It's generally someone who lives in Harlem or Washington Heights who finds themselves comfortable to buy in Mott Haven," he said. "And the other person, second to that, would be someone from Brooklyn, someone who's used to the transformation of a neighborhood."
After three recent rounds of mailings to hundreds of homes, he said, he was able to find two off-market homeowners interested in selling. Owners in Mott Haven, he said, have been in their homes for decades, he said, and getting them to sell is "like pulling teeth." Lopez received one of Stevens's mailers this month on behalf of a buyer in Harlem willing, according to the letter, to pay up to $700,000. He won't be responding.
"I don't see this as an investment. I see it as my house," Lopez said.
Gentrification may not threaten to displace Lopez and his fellow homeowners in the district, but it's already changing their surroundings. Last year, Pinnacle Real Estate Ventures rehabbed 287, 289 and 308 Alexander and rented units—all three bedrooms—at market rate, Pinnacle's Josh Dardashtian said, for between $2450 and $2600 a month. A few blocks outside of the historic district, at JCAL Development Group's newly built 136 Alexander, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments are also being rented at market rate. And across the street, at 131-135 Alexander, JCAL is currently constructing two more market-rate rental buildings.
William Bollinger, one of JCAL's three principals, said his group is investing in Mott Haven and Port Morris "not only because we believe in the area but because we love this area." He said he thinks JCAL is "adding opportunity in the area" and that its investments, mostly new buildings on previously vacant lots, don't contribute to "direct displacement."
But JCAL's projects are clearly targeted at newcomers. The "About" page of its website explains that the firm's investments are part of a "larger planning effort that is transforming this emerging area into a niche market for young urban professionals looking for the opportunity to live in an upcoming neighborhood at rents well below comparable areas in other boroughs."
"I heard one of those buildings is going to have a gym, a pool. That's great, but if it means I can't afford to buy anything in my neighborhood, then I don't want it," said Ivette Gonzalez, who lives at 269 Alexander Avenue.
Rendering of planned development at 2401 Third Avenue from CityRealty on Vimeo.
Gonzalez, 53, was born in Puerto Rico and moved to the Bronx with her parents when she was six months old. They lived with family members at first, and then found a two-bedroom apartment in the Mitchel Houses at 138th Street and Alexander Avenue. When she was six, her father bought the house at 269 Alexander. He raised chickens and roosters there for a time, and planted two fruit trees in the backyard. The apple tree still bears fruit.
"I love that house. It means unity and family and surviving. I lived through the late '60s, the '70s, the '80s in that house, and I saw the struggle," she said. "I believed we weren't that affected, because we had the police precinct right there. Even though crime was happening all around us, we were kind of guarded from all that. Only when we traveled to different parts of the neighborhood would we see how horrible it was for other people."
Over the years, Gonzalez said, her uncle, her sister and brother-in-law, her mother's aunt and a host of cousins moved in and out of the house. In 2005, her parents moved to Florida and she bought the house from them. When Gonzalez moved in two years later with her son, she was pleased to discover that there was a new art gallery in the area and new restaurants. "It's nice to have nice things," she said.
She was even more excited when, through her next door neighbor, Lopez, she met Mychal Johnson, Corrine Kohut Johnson and other members of the neighborhood advocacy group South Bronx Unite. She was, she said, "ecstatic" to find that a new generation of professionals was working to "improve the neighborhood for what it is." But she worries that "there are some people that just want to take advantage" and she's been the recipient of the same sort of letters in her mailbox that Lopez has been getting.
Some of the most dramatic changes to Mott Haven have been the brainchild of Keith Rubenstein, the founder and principal of the real estate investment firm Somerset Partners. Earlier this month, Rubenstein opened an Italian restaurant, La Grata, on the ground floor of 136 Alexander. La Grata is just one of a slew of new eateries near the waterfront, including chef Douglas Rodriguez's Asian fusion restaurant Ceetay, Charlie's Bar and Kitchen, Milk Burger and Filtered Coffee, another Rubenstein venture.
There's more to come from Rubenstein, who drew criticism last year for erecting a billboard by the Third Avenue Bridge and Bruckner Boulevard that appeared to re-name the South Bronx the "Piano District," and for subsequently hosting a star-studded party in the area that made light of the neighborhood's history of violence and neglect. He's currently working to transform a 16,000-square-foot warehouse on Bruckner into a food hall and beer garden. The space, which he's calling Bruckner Market, is just steps away from the Clock Tower building, where one-bedroom apartments have gone for more than $2,000 a month.
Rubenstein's largest planned project on the waterfront, however, is a group of six market-rate towers at two locations on the banks of the Harlem River. Plans for the first three towers, at 2401 Third Avenue, were approved this summer.
Jess Castro moved to Mott Haven from Fort Greene in 2008, and now pays $1,248 a month for a renovated rent stabilized two-bedroom at 311 Alexander that she's shared with her young daughter since 2012. Castro, a dancer who is originally from L.A., said she's enjoyed the new dining options and new interest in Mott Haven, but worries that the change could kick out "the people that have built this neighborhood" and that increased investment could eventually prevent her from realizing her dream of opening up a dance studio and performance space.
Monxo Lopez examines a ConEd service termination note at 349 East 140th Street, where local activists hope to open a community center. (Scott Heins / Gothamist)
"I feel this pressure to find something now before the prices go all the way up and someone like me isn't able to open something in a neighborhood that before was actually affordable," she said.
When she first arrived in Mott Haven, most of the people she saw on the street looked like the young men and women of color who live in her building. But these days, she said, "I walk out of the train and I see new faces, faces that are races and nationalities that were never there three years ago, two years ago, even a year ago."
One of those new faces is Jake Thomas, a Florida native who moved to Mott Haven nearly four years ago. Thomas lives with two roommates in a three-bedroom apartment at 287 Alexander—one of the buildings recently redone by Pinnacle Real Estate. He initially started coming to Mott Haven to visit friends and decided to move there, in part to be close to the Bronx Academy of Letters, where he teaches eighth grade. Thomas is an enthusiastic community activist in Mott Haven, but, he admits, "as a white middle class professional renting in the neighborhood, I'm a gentrifier."
At his apartment, Thomas frequently hosts meetings of the Mott Haven-Port Morris Community Land Trust, a non-profit formed by members of South Bronx Unite, Friends of Brook Park and other local groups that is working to help community members co-own and operate land in the area. The organization's signature idea, currently, is a proposal to to acquire an abandoned, 28,000-square-foot rehab center at 349 E. 140th Street, just steps away from Alexander Avenue, and turn into a permanent home for more than 20 South Bronx community organizations, including the music education group UpBeat NYC.
While Lopez acknowledges that gentrification is bound to continue in Mott Haven—"I have to be a realist about it," he said—efforts like this one, he believes, show that the people in his community want to improve the neighborhood on their own terms.
On a recent evening, Lopez joined dozens of his neighbors in front of the building 349 E. 140th Street for a rally organized by South Bronx Unite and other groups. It was billed as a "spiritual reclaiming," and as those assembled placed their hands on the side of the building, it looked at once like a gesture of ownership and an embrace.
"Yes, people need affordable housing, yes people need jobs, but at the same time there are needs to be met—in culture, the arts, health—that are fundamental for the health and the survival of our vibrant community. So that's what we're proposing here," Lopez said.
"These are values that reflect what the identity of this community is," Lopez said.
Jordan G. Teicher is a journalist and critic based in New York City. He's been published by Slate, NPR, the New Republic and Wired, among other publications.
