Story originally from democratandchronicle.com and Democrat and Chronicle
A City Street Reborn
Little by little, one agency with a vision is turning blighted Clifford Avenue around and sparking other redevelopment.
By Lara Becker Liu
Staff Writer
JAMIE GERMANO staff photographer
Socorro Rodriguez helps 2-year-olds Queizaliz Rodriguez, center, and Elisandra Cornia recently in the toddler room of the new day care center at the Ibero Family Center that was built next to the former Edison Tech site. A single, grass-roots organization has quietly been reclaiming northeast Rochester’s Clifford Avenue by infusing it with about $11 million. [Day in Photos]
(December 24, 2003) — Clifford Avenue, with its boarded-up houses and frequent crime, is no stranger to blight. But there appear to be signs of a gradual rebirth on this northeast Rochester street.
A sprawling family center at 777 Clifford Ave. A cluster of newly constructed single-family homes next door. A six-bedroom house for the developmentally disabled across the street.
And that’s just one block. New development — about $6 million worth so far — has cropped up on Clifford from Conkey Avenue all the way to North Street. It includes housing units, an habilitation facility for the developmentally disabled and a freshly renovated charter school stuffed to the gills with students.
Surprisingly, Clifford Avenue’s redevelopment has been brought about almost entirely by a single, nonprofit, grass-roots organization.
Staffed by only six people, plus an additional part-time worker, the Ibero-American Development Corp. has garnered financial support from more than 50 sources, most of them private; overseen dozens of construction projects; as it nurtures a vision — originally belonging to its parent organization, the Ibero-American Action League — of a rebuilt, reclaimed Clifford Avenue.
Its efforts have led to dramatic change on an urban strip once pocked with many more vacant lots and houses than it harbors now. The family center, and the new homes around it, for example, filled in a 4.5-acre footprint left by the former Edison Technical and Industrial High School, some 14 years after it was torn down.
What’s more, Ibero’s development has apparently sparked other development — most notably, the forthcoming Project Turnaround on Maria Street, where the city has acquired and torn down a number of dilapidated houses, and where 20 new houses are expected to be built in the near future by a consortium of contractors.
“You wouldn’t be able to sell those houses if this area wasn’t in the shape it’s in now,” said Julio Vasquez, executive director of Ibero-American Action League.
Much remains to be done. The street frequently comes up in police reports as the site of violent crimes, including a Nov. 22 shootout between police and a man driving a car wanted in connection with a robbery.
And its deteriorating housing stock continues to fall prey to neglect and vacancy. Ibero often struggles to keep ahead of the tide of boarded-up houses, said development corporation Executive Director Betty Dwyer.
But Vasquez believes that change takes place “little by little, street by street.” Only incrementally can Ibero “help to rebuild the whole neighborhood,” he said.
Right now, Ibero is focusing its efforts on rebuilding a property near the intersection of Clifford and Conkey, where the organization’s center for the developmentally disabled is already up and running. In the old warehouse next door to that building, Ibero plans to develop a new senior center, and across from that, 30 units of housing for low-income seniors.
The project will be Ibero’s most ambitious yet.
“When you get a little determination and persistence,” Dwyer said, “it’s amazing what you can do.”
Focused from the start
The Ibero-American Development Corp. was incorporated in 1987, primarily to develop both affordable housing for Latinos and buildings in which the Ibero-American Action League could provide its vast array of services.
The development corporation’s first major task was to find a bigger, better space for the league’s day-care facility, originally at 938 Clifford Ave.
It would find that space, eventually, next to what is now known as Edison Place, the 4.5-acre parcel once occupied by Edison Tech. Working with the city, Ibero divided up the land to include room for 25 new, single-family houses, which would be developed by First Federal Savings & Loan Association of Rochester (now HSBC), and a family center and eight units of affordable housing for the elderly, which would be developed by Ibero.
Then began the hunt for financing — “a monstrous task,” Dwyer recalled, that took four years and required the assistance of 49 funding sources.
In the end, Ibero would build the family center — which opened in 1998 — with only $1.8 million, a relatively modest sum, according to Dwyer, for a building of its size and function. Within the family center’s 16,400 square feet are the new day care, universal prekindergarten classes, a senior community center and an emergency services center, which provides food, transportation, counseling and employment services for the needy and the new in town.
“It’s clean and safe,” said Ivette Flores, 42, who came to the family center one recent weekday with several family members in search of emergency assistance. In fact, she said in Spanish, Clifford Avenue on the whole is cleaner and safer as a result of Ibero’s development projects. “It’s better than before,” she said. “It’s nice.”
At roughly the same time that Ibero was building the family center and senior housing units, the agency also developed two vacant houses nearby into residential units for the developmentally disabled.
The projects “really transformed that whole area,” Dwyer said. “We began to realize we could get a critical mass going.”
Birth of charter school
Like a rolling snowball, Ibero’s vision for a redeveloped Clifford Avenue began to take on ever-larger dimensions — and the organization next turned itsattention to the hulking building at 938 Clifford Ave.
The building, erected in 1905, had at one point housed Ibero-American Action League’s offices. But in 1999, when it looked as though the league would be granted permission to open its own charter school, the development corporation began eyeing the building as a potential site for a school.
On the plus side, the league already owned the building, Dwyer said. But that “was the only advantage. It was in rough shape. It needed new everything.”
And there would be little time. The league received approval from the state to open the charter school in September 2000; by the time the development corporation had financing in place, it was June.
But Ibero, and the construction company it contracted with, DiMarco Constructors, pulled it off. The revamped building got new mechanicals, a working elevator and a touched-up tin ceiling on the third floor. The third floor, completed in a separate phase, boasts a stage, seating area and music room.
In addition, Ibero was able to accommodate specific requests from the school’s principal, Miriam Vasquez, who asked that bathrooms be located within classrooms, so that kids wouldn’t have to walk unsupervised through the halls, and that there be a space large enough to handle an all-school assembly.
“It was great that they were able to accommodate our needs,” principal Vasquez said. “As a result, the classrooms are a little smaller. But given the fact that they were able to have the school ready for us on time, it’s a small price to pay.”
Parents, too, she said, are pleased. “We get comments all the time about how pleasant it is,” she said.
The Eugenio Maria de Hostos Charter School is now filled with students in kindergarten through fifth grade. But Ibero likely will be faced with the task of finding room for still more, when the school tacks on a sixth grade next year. The organization is currently considering temporary locations, since the building cannot be expanded.
“I like it,” said Craig Young, 40, of Rochester, whose sons, 8-year-old Christopher and 7-year-old Cortaz attend the school. “I know it’s a work in progress. But it’s safe. It’s neat. It’s clean. And it seems to be very well-maintained. Being that the building was never set up to be a school, I think they’ve done wonders with the place.”
Revitalizing wasted space
Meanwhile, the development corporation is gearing up for a $5.4 million project on Clifford, near the intersection of Conkey. Already, the organization has revamped a former construction company office there to house the facility for the developmentally disabled, where clients partake in various skill-building activities, from working on computers to cooking.
On the rubble-strewn parcels surrounding the facility, Ibero plans to build a senior center (to give more room to the seniors who have flocked in overwhelming numbers to the family center) and 30 units of housing for low-income seniors.
The $2.5 million housing project will be financed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which will also subsidize maintenance costs, Dwyer said.
The project encompasses about four nearly barren acres alongside railroad tracks between Clifford Avenue and Avenue A, where illegal activity, from drug-dealing to prostitution to firearm-testing, is purported to have taken place.
“It was one of the most problematic properties on Clifford Avenue,” Dwyer said. “In a very low-income neighborhood, (it was) quite a neglected property — and of a good size. We (felt) it was a crucial piece of land on Clifford Avenue that needed to be upgraded and revitalized and contribute to the community, rather than create a major problem.”
The area is now a “planned development district,” laid out to include several buildings and parking.
This project — known as the Buena Vista project — is likely to be a crowning achievement among Ibero’s developments, by virtue of its breadth and cost, Dwyer said. It’s also likely to be seen as further proof of Ibero’s acumen for playing “the development game … for making the deals,” said Thomas Argust, the city’s retired commissioner of community development.
The hope is that those deals will continue to serve Ibero — and ultimately, the neighborhood — well.
“I call it like an octopus,” said Felicita Mitrano, 71, coordinator of Ibero’s senior program. “It seems like Clifford Avenue belongs to Ibero.”
LBECKER@DemocratandChronicle.com
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