ARLEM IS A HOT SPOT for big businesses. Market research shows that Harlem residents have more spending power than retailers thought, stimulating large corporations to set up shop in the community.

The Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone (UMEZ), a government body that provides loans to businesses in poor urban communities, is assisting the latest addition to Harlem's corporate landscape — a shopping center called Harlem USA. UMEZ gave an $11.2 million loan to Harlem USA, hoping the shopping center would create jobs to fill the community’s high unemployment rate. Harlem USA, whose tenants include Old Navy, HMV Records, and Disney, plans to be fully open by June, 2000.

But some of Harlem's local stores, (aka" mom and pops") don’t think it's fair to give government assistance to Harlem USA. Scared of competition, locally owned businesses are upset that such a large chunk of UMEZ funds are going to shops owned by outside corporations. They say the money, intended to help the community, is winding up in the hands of outsiders.

Harlem activist Al Sharpton, recently in the news for protesting the Amadou Diallo decision—the case of the unarmed black man gunned down by New York City police officers—says it is not right to give government assistance to big businesses new to Harlem. "Local stores are already outweighed," says Sharpton, "now you handcuff them and tie their legs and tell them to compete."

But studies by the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City, a nonprofit urban research center, show that Harlem residents crave shopping facilities like Harlem USA, and feel deprived of the large discount stores available in other parts of the city and suburbs. "They used to have to drive to Westchester and New Jersey to shop," says Drew Greenwald, developer of Harlem USA. "People in Harlem want these stores."

LEARN MORE about the FUNDING for Harlem USA

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