The quote-unquote real Cotton Club may have closed in 1940, but a modern version of the Harlem jazz spot has been operating (without those pesky Prohibition laws) for the past 31 years at 125th Street and Twelfth Avenue. That puts the tourist hot spot in the path of Columbia's Manhattanville expansion plan, and the club's owner?who refuses to sell and instead wants to pass the club down to his grandchildren?fires back at the university with some incendiary words in the Village Voice. He calls Columbia "crazy," and then there's this little bit:
When the school first approached Beatty, he says, its officials told him they were afraid he would sell out to a strip joint. "My theory," says Beatty, "is Columbia doesn't want any black folks in Harlem. But what Columbia doesn't understand is that 85 percent of my business is white."The Manhattanville expansion is shaping up to be quite the politically-charged eminent domain battle, wouldn't you say?
· Clubbed to Death [VV]
· Columbia Manhattanville Expansion Morning After [Curbed]
· Columbia's Manhattanville Project React-o-Matic [Curbed]
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