NYC Sentinel

Mart 125, on 125th Street between Frederick Douglass and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevards, which has been abandoned for almost a decade. Photo: Spencer Bailey

By Spencer Bailey

Documentary filmmaker Rachelle Gardner grew up off Amsterdam Avenue, near Columbia University. As a child and teenager, she explored the city, often shopping on 125th Street with friends.

These trips usually included a stop at Mart 125 – or “the mart,” as locals called it. Opened in 1986, in a two-story building between Frederick Douglass and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevards, Mart 125 was an indoor flea market run by the city government – a small-business bazaar on Harlem’s main thoroughfare, a place where entrepreneurs could start their own shops.

For Gardner – and many other locals, she said – Mart 125 provided a home for commerce, culture and intellect. Inside, people from across the African diaspora, along with Caribbean and black American vendors, sold their wares. The first floor, with stalls full of books, CDs, hair and skincare products, clothing and a slew of other goods, attracted shoppers. Upstairs, a food court brought in hungry lunch-hour visitors.

Due to poor management, however, the mart quickly deteriorated. The roof leaked. Air-conditioning didn’t work. Occasionally, water would stop running. According to Lionel McIntyre, director of the Urban Technical Assistance Program at Columbia University, oftentimes vendors didn’t pay rent. For the city, it became not only an eyesore but also a metaphor for the many economic problems plaguing the area. All of which explains why, in 2001, the city decided to shut it down.

“The mart was a hell of an experiment in trying to formalize the street vendors under one roof, to create a space,” said McIntyre. “It was a compromise to the vendors to leave the sidewalk. I think, looking back, there were always going to be problems.”

Gardner captures such problems in “Mart 125: The American Dream,” a 75-minute, nine-year work-in-progress documentary film that she began screening this year, in hopes of securing the last funds to finish the project.

For the building that housed the mart, abandoned for nearly a decade, there are also plans afoot. The National Jazz Museum in Harlem and ImageNation, a black and Latino film and music organization, announced this year that they will redevelop it for a mixed-use space, home to a gallery, cinema and performance hall.

The current home of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem on East 126th Street. Photo: Spencer Bailey

“It’ll be a shot in the arm for culture and tourism and also economic development on 125th Street,” said Loren Schoenberg, 51, the executive director of the museum during an interview at the museum’s second-floor office on East 126th Street.

The redevelopment plans – organized by the city’s Economic Development Corporation, Department of Cultural Affairs and the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, and which still require a finalized proposal to developers – will begin by the end of the year or early 2010, Schoenberg said. He added that the building’s projected finish date is 2013 and said part of the deal made by the Economic Development Corporation will also include an adjacent affordable-housing project.

For the jazz museum, moving to the new building, which has about 10,000 square feet of floor space, would provide a big boost to its current several-thousand-per-year visitorship. “If we can attract all these people here, imagine if we were across the street from the Apollo Theater,” said Schoenberg. “It would just be exponential.”

Some longtime residents disagree with the museum’s redevelopment plans, however, and think Mart 125 should be renovated and reopened as a market.

Sade Tyler, a Nigerian immigrant who runs Sade Skincare Inc. on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, had a stall in the mart for 15 years. While Tyler believes the jazz museum is good for the community, she said, “To me, it’s not necessary to have another museum. To give vendors a place to work shows them the government is behind them and that’s what’s important.”

Other local merchants, like street vendor Zenola Smalls, 51, maintain a more optimistic view about the jazz museum’s new home. “A jazz museum would be an excellent idea, because this is the heart and soul of Harlem and jazz. And there’s very little of jazz in New York, let alone America,” said Smalls, who wore a “Harlem – just ask the locals” pin on a purple fleece jacket.

The storefront of Sade Skincare Inc., which had a stall in Mart 125 for 15 years. Photo: Spencer Bailey

Many vendors, especially those who once worked in Mart 125, know it’s difficult for a public market to work. Tyler said that of everyone she knew vending in Mart 125, she’s the only one with her own storefront today – and one of three still in business. The other two, she said, both sell jewelry via online Web sites. Still, Tyler contends that a public market, with the proper management, could work on 125th Street.

The only public market in the area today is the open-air Malcolm Shabbazz Harlem Market on 116th Street – a “dead zone,” Tyler said – where mostly African and Caribbean immigrants sell Kente cloth goods, leather bags and belts, jewelry, hats and T-shirts to tourists. Opened in 1994, the market was founded with support from the Alliance for Neighborhood Commerce, Home Ownership and Revitalization, a project designed by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to increase home ownership and local commercial development.

Gardner, too, speaks fondly about the jazz museum moving into Mart 125’s old space. However, she wonders what the city is going to do “to cultivate, to help, to develop public markets.”

In the future, Gardner said, she hopes there will be a compromise – that is, a new market development on 125th Street, along with the jazz museum. As for her film project, Gardner said, the quest to raise the funds to finish it will continue. And now, with the jazz museum’s redevelopment plans well underway, she’ll have to revise its ending.