The North Shore Renaissance
With a 21st century, post-industrial development driving rezoning on the North Shore in motion, however, Staten Islander’s grapple with their own relationships with the neglected, negated, and divided borough while bracing for the inevitably of change within this story.
By Emmet White
As the ferry bobbles back and forth through the converging New Jersey and New York Upper Bay waters, an off duty, monochromatically dressed firefighter’s radio crackles on and off and a young mother rocks her stroller back and forth. The rest murmur, barely audible. Like a sedated mob on and pedestrian Olympic sprinters off, Staten Island only moves fast for the ferry.
The Island’s pace is about to change. Fenced off, empty lots to shining motorcycle dealers to fast food chains with faded signage, the corridor of Bay Street destined for rezoning remains industrial in a postindustrial world. Initially zoned for manufacturing purposes in 1961, traverse down Bay Street today and you will find Americana eateries and a newly installed, clean windowed Urbys Housing development across the street from a blinding neon pink text advertising Dominican Hair Stylists and the warehouse style Western Beef supermarket. After its approval over the summer, the Bay Street Corridor Rezoning Neighborhood Plan was described by North Shore City Councilwoman Debi Rose as the “Renaissance that we have talked about for years.”
And while ferry-goers and apartment hopeful Islanders expressed their livelihood dependent desires at Community Board meetings, external forces have placed themselves within an earshot of change for just as long. Brazenly taglined “Silicon Island?: Staten Island (yes, Staten Island) wants to be next tech hub”, Thornton Mcenery, writing for Crain’s Business Journal, follows the small but invested group of business reporters that have groomed Staten Island since 2014. Tracing back to the previous decade, Real Estate Weekly predicted the emergence of NoSho, playing on the abbreviated and glorified fashion lined Downtown Manhattan neighborhood bound by Houston Street and the geographical locale of the North Shore. A waterway away from Downtown Manhattan and with proximity to the greater Tri-State area, the North Shore was touted as a Williamsburg social scene visa via a San Francisco style tech boom, these descriptors being notably of developer literature and of some interest but ultimately little use to those on the North Shore.
Destiny Small and Imani Ebank-17 year North Shore Staten Island residents who, respectively, attend Susan E. Wagner High School and Concord High School-grew up watching the North Shore evolve and believe some updates are long overdue. Seated under the overhang covered, mural slathered bus stop at Barrett Triangle, Ms. Small opens a nearly empty, dark blue handheld tin of lip balm, applies one fingerful to her lips and pauses. “When you come here, there is nothing to do,” she says of the Island, “We have laser tag and Fly High, but we be bored!” Gentrification, as Ms. Ebank put it, is an unnecessarily “big word” and assumes an air of negativity, noting that during this renaissance everyone’s welcome on the Island.
In order to retain born Staten Islander’s like Ms. Small and Ms. Ebank, Stapleton resident and recurring North Shore City Council challenger Kamillah Hanks believes listening is key. Standing up and speaking at Staten Island’s Community Board 1 meeting in November of 2019, Ms. Hanks urged the board to be considering Staten Island’s youth, that day’s plea on behalf of her self-founded organization YouthBuild. “We have to be bold and imaginative when dealing with our young people,” Hanks said, and YouthBuild has materialized this. Through YouthBuild’s Pathways to Graduation partnership, students are provided with an academic path to a high school diploma in addition to learning construction skills and receiving mentoring and counseling at once. “No two YouthBuild programs are exactly alike,” their website reads, “Staten Island programs vary in scope, focus and duration, according to community needs, funding, and partnerships.”
Hanks’ legacy emphasizes the importance of youth, for the future but also in the present, and her City Council campaigns have followed, the Bay Street rezoning being a central factor in her vision for the North Shore. Speaking with CityLimits in 2017 during her previous City Council run, Hanks opposed the initial inception of the Bay Street Rezoning: “I do think that residents want these projects, but right now they feel that their quality of life, their neighborhood, their district is moving away from them and the needs they have always had.” 4 years later, Hanks’ speaks less critically of the Bay Street rezoning, a now moving target for the North Shore, while maintaining the importance of affordable, apartment style housing and “responsible development”.
The rezoning plans, according to Mayor DeBlasio’s June 2019 press release and as a part of Housing New York Plan, will include 2,600 new homes-450 permanently affordable homes through Mandatory Inclusionary Housing and 850 affordable homes on city-owned sites- two new schools which will add 1,776 school seats to the North Shore, and a revitalization n of the now defunct George Cromwell Recreation Center complete with playgrounds and swimming pools. If any given New York neighborhood is in flux-an inherent bug of living in a city with more than 8 million people-Staten Island’s rate of change is simmering, nearly at a boil.
Unlike Manhattan’s 11 plus story high-rises or Queens’ sprawling blocks of multi-family homes, Staten Island abounds with available space. Developers are flocking to the Island’s North Shore. With easy access to the St. George Ferry Terminal and the Staten Island Ferry heading to Lower Manhattan, Staten Island Railway, and 16 bus lines, these developers hope to capitalize on a potential influx of young professionals seeking cheaper living.
Bay Street sits in a spot ripe for development, both in the eyes of profiteering developers and those searching for a future on Staten Island. Snaking from the ferry terminal and ending abruptly at the Staten Island Expressway, Bay Street is level with the Upper Bay waters to the East and stares up at the elevated West end, simply referred to as The Hills. With the exception of 1 Edgewater Plaza and 35A Bay Street, the former a 7 story office building built in 1929 and the latter a 16 story apartment complex started in 2016, the tallest structure is the 11 foot overhead Staten Island Railroad tracks and stations, the rusting metal clunking and groaning along. Two story, double family homes and single story, single family homes are the precedent for the Bay Street corridor, with business along this face of the street emulating this pattern. Parking is prevalent and expected, a facet of a borough where each grocery store has a parking lot and the ferry has an arrival and departure lane. Characteristically, the leftover look of an industrial Bay Street is nearing completion, a finality that will be replaced to the chagrin of some and the hopeful housing of many.
While the construction of more housing on the North Shore may be necessary, there is not a consensus among residents. Celeste Holmes, a present member of the Youth Services committee of Staten Island Community Board 1 on November 12th, expressed concern over the density of the six, 19-foot-wide row houses being subdivided from 26–36 Scribner Avenue degrading the neighborhoods Victorian character. Hanane Dbajat, a 20-year North Shore resident and staffer for New York Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis, prefers to see the change in a positive light. “When I moved to Staten Island, half of my block was a dirt road,” she said, sitting in the aftermath of a sparse Community Board 1 general meeting, “Everyone’s now coming here.” And this isn’t hyperbole, data from NYU’s Furman Center showing nearly 14,000 new residents on the North Shore between 2000 and 2017. However, Ms. Dbajat noted that while you cannot beat the space and price of Staten Island, she is wary of the developer’s intentions for the borough, “It’s profit, profit, profit, but to what degree?”
2 years into the rezoning plan and change is stalled, though not at the fault of any one developer or agency. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, construction as well as new blueprints and proposals have been mostly halted. 35A Bay Street, also known as Lighthouse Point, and the developers behind it have filed for bankruptcy “Lighthouse Point includes plans for residential and commercial space, as well as a hotel,” Amanda Farinacci of NY1 writes, “But there are no timelines for when any of those developments will be completed.” Before ground is broken on the Northwest Shore, radioactivity leftover from the World War II era Manhattan Project near Port Richmond and the Bayonne Bridge must be addressed by the federal government , according to President of the Port Richmond Civic Association Beryl Thurman. Thurman notes that, “Con Edison’s North Shore parking lot, once the site of a power plant, is a big problem as is the MTA bus depot and the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey’s encroachment on precious wetlands in the name of port expansion.” “When I talk to [government officials], I say to them, ‘I need you to help my people. My people are the people of the North Shore,” Thurman said in an interview with Waterfront Alliance, “ ‘They’re my people — and we need your help.’ ”
Hope may be on the horizon, however, in the form of 36 acres of 100% affordable housing. According to documents filed in December of 2020 from the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development, a decommissioned naval base in Stapleton is the proposed site of the 36 acre development as a part of the Bay Street corridor rezoning. “The launch of this RFP is a significant step toward ensuring that people of all income levels can call the North Shore home,” said City Council member Deborah Rose in an interview with Yimby,“Waterfront housing in Stapleton will be eventually complemented by the necessary infrastructure including open space, recreation amenities, and a new school, all part of the Bay Street Corridor rezoning blueprint that I negotiated last year with extensive community input.”
Longevity is another factor that will affect where and how developers will build. According to the City Planner’s flood risk chart, the North Shore of Staten showed the highest risk of flood damage. A model, life-size black and white speckled cow stood in the back of the Snug Harbor Cultural Center, an American Flag strewn behind the board members, while Jorge Ventura of the NYC Department of City Planning-Staten Island emphasized the importance of “better design controls for all building types and for businesses to retrofit [flood resiliency]” as development ramps up on Staten’s North Shore
Change almost always requires a level of coping but, in the case of older Staten Islanders, this attempt at coping comes in the form of desired parking spots and a rebuking of plans for a homeless shelter at 44 Victory Boulevard in Tompkinsville. For the youngest generation of Staten Islanders, like Ms. Small and Ms. Ebank, this change necessitates riding a rerouted bus due to construction and invokes fantasies of leaving the Island for Atlanta, Georgia. From the early stages of this rezoning plan, Councilwoman Rose has noted that this reconstruction “will not be fully realized for decades.” Staten Island is decidedly unique and often at the whims of preconceived notions of Staten Island, these unfounded stereotypes including: conservatism, republicanism, public service members, accents, and a dislike of reporters because of the initial two named stereotypes and a lack of reporting on Staten Island. Even more decidedly removed from this misconception is the North Shore of Staten Island, a world apart from its Verrazzano crossing neighbors. “Sometimes people look at Staten Island and they think of us as this white Republican borough where everyone makes $70,000 a year or more and that’s just not the case,” said Kelly Villar of the Staten Island Urban Center in an interview with The City, and she’s right. The North Shore shares its woes with the rest of New York City, ones of rampant injustice and of State sanctioned abandonment, just as the growth of community is built upon, and can only be continued upon, a collective care, love, and timelessness within. Nonetheless, the North Shore is quintessential New York-brash and gritty-and, in being that, naturally adaptable. It’s no longer a matter of when they will have to adapt, but how and how much.
