Now, the M.L. Wilson Boys and Girls Club has plans for the graffiti-strewn building—plans that include demolition. But not everyone in the community is on board with that idea.
The club is planning a development that includes a large Boys and Girls Club facility, a school, 90 units of affordable housing and a commercial space which might be a U.S. post office. The development will include a 13-story residential tower.
The $79 million project is being financed through a combination of tax-exempt bonds, low-income tax credits, capital grants and loans from organizations like the Harlem Community Development Corporation, which lent $100,000 to the Boys and Girls Club in the fall of 2009.
"This is a great project that will benefit the entire community. We are faced with a 50 percent graduation rate. We need facilities like this to help our children and families," said Shirley Lewis, Boys and Girls Club of Harlem Chairwoman. " This project allows us to have a positive impact on even more people in many different ways."
But the 1986 document that deeded P.S. 186 from the city to the M.L. Wilson Boys and Girls Club of Harlem for $215,000 stipulated that 85 percent of the usable floor area be devoted to non-profit use.
Depending on how one defines "non-profit use," the club's current plan might not satisfy the 85 percent requirement. Complicating matters is the fact that the 1986 deal said that the 85 percent deed restriction disappears if M.L. Wilson sells the property after 25 years. The 25-year anniversary of the deed restriction is January 13, 2011, before the current project's planned groundbreaking.
That's why some opponents of the project worry that the community is not going to benefit.
"Our feeling is that the deed restriction was put there to make sure this building would remain a community asset even it were sold. If this clause expires, we lose that assurance," explained Walter South, chair of Community Board 9's landmarks and preservation committee. South says he will hire an attorney to explore ways to extend the deed restriction.
Lewis dismisses concerns that the proposed development might not be community friendly, and says there are no plans to sell. "We have no agenda other than what we are planning now. Our vision is to build a community asset," Lewis said. "We want families to live in the affordable housing and send their kids to the school and have the children participate in the Boys and Girls Club activities. We want the commercial space to be something for the community, too."
Lewis says the Boys and Girls Club of Harlem has four clubhouses, including M.L. Wilson, and that they serve over 2,000 children every year. The hope is that the planned 25,000-square-foot Boys and Girls Club will increase the organization's capacity.
Benjamin Warnke of Alembic Development—a company that works exclusively with non-profit organizations and is the development partner for the P.S. 186 project— says critics of the project need not worry about the development becoming a high-end, luxury fortress, even with the deed restriction expiring.
