Japanese Companies May Join in Big Harlem Waterfront Development Plan

A group of Japanese businesses hoping to ease trade friction with the United States is considering joining a $400-million development project along the Hudson River in Harlem.

“Their technicians already have been here. A delegation is coming here, possibly next month, to start negotiations,” said Donald Cogsville, president of the state-run Harlem Urban Development Corp.

The HUDC’s proposal includes housing, theaters, a retail and entertainment complex and a pedestrian mall to revitalize the Harlem waterfront, a rundown area now occupied by old meatpacking warehouses.

“It gives us the opportunity in Harlem to provide a substantial number of jobs and business opportunities. We could be talking 2,000 jobs,” Cogsville said.

“One of the clear areas for us to provide jobs through will be tourism and cultural exchange. We want to develop these facilities so they will attract people into our community,” he said.

Masatoshi Furusawa, chairman of Japan’s International Cultural Exchange Assn., confirmed that Konan, a developer, has started research on the housing proposal together with an unidentified Japanese partner.

HUDC members also met Dec. 9 in Japan with officials from 33 companies, including major housing, construction and steel concerns, Furusawa said in Tokyo.

“I think it is about the time the Japanese do something for the sake of minorities in the U.S., like black people in Harlem, in view of increasing trade frictions with the United States,” Furusawa said. “I don’t know if redeveloping Harlem would ease American criticism against Japan, but something has to be done.

“I think the companies involved in this project are not planning their business in terms of how much they can make, but how much they can get away with losing,” he added. “I don’t think they are aiming for a big profit from the development project.”

Cogsville said the Japanese investors want American businesses to support the project as well, but HUDC has had few nibbles so far.

The project, dubbed Harlem on the Hudson, calls for 400 units of mixed-income housing over a site the Metropolitan Transportation Authority wants to use as a bus depot. The two agencies are negotiating.

In other renovated or new buildings, there also might be two theaters, one of them dedicated to cultural exchange; rehearsal space and a visual arts center, and a pedestrian mall featuring restaurants, boutiques, movies, teaching facilities and clubs offering ethnic music.

The Fashion Institute of Technology is working with HUDC to develop possible fashion-related industry there, Cogsville said.

The complex would allow the public direct riverfront access from beneath the ornate archways of a Riverside Drive viaduct--a rare and lucrative notion in Manhattan.