When workers were tearing down the now closed (union shop) Gristede's to start building a 37-story yuppie condo building on 100th and B-Way today, the builing collapsed on 10 people and burined 5, including a 7 month old baby. Everyone's alive, but I definitely agree with the folks who are opposed to what the Extell corporation wants to do to this area, which is an economically and ethnically diverse area with a large Latino community centered in part in the series of housing projects to the east, between Amsterdam and Manhattan Ave.
It's sad that the Gristede's is gone, but it's clear that Extell's condo - and the subcontractor they've hired to demolish the Gristede's, aren't safe or right for this neighborhood. The upper west side has had more than enough stripmallification, let alone gentrification, for the past forty years and the next, thank you very much. Folks who want to "develop" the neighborhood should be thinking about how to make housing and food affordable, and stregnthen community organizations, not build more condos, CVSDuaneReadeRiteAids, or CommerceChaseBanksOfAmericas.
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