soleri
Apr 11, 2007, 10:30 PM
First Suburb’ Gets a Taste of Disorder
By PETER APPLEBOM
The New York Times
NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y.
In the annals of the American suburbs, you could devote a whole chapter to New Rochelle. It’s where Norman Rockwell lived and worked for decades, where Rob Petrie stumbled over that ottoman at the start of “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” a place that so defined what the Brookings Institution, in a report last year, called “America’s First Suburbs” that it made it onto the study’s first page.
Chances are the chaotic scene that broke out here Sunday night, when 200 police officers in riot gear were called from across Westchester County to deal with more than 1,000 unruly teenagers ejected from a local entertainment complex, won’t rate as much more than a footnote to the tale. But as the first suburbs, the inner-ring suburbs that are home to a fifth of the nation’s population, consider their second acts, what’s happening in New Rochelle now could be every bit as meaningful as what went on before.
Can you have suburban life and a 40-story Trump Plaza high-rise poking its way incongruously toward the heavens above Westchester, like Yao Ming at a birthday party for toddlers? Exactly how much urban street life do Rob and Laura want? It’s the story of life, not just here, but in White Plains and Yonkers and Stamford, all places at the forefront of redefining what suburbs are supposed to be.
Whatever that redefinition turns out to be, it’s a safe bet the idea was not what happened Sunday night at New Roc City, a fortresslike entertainment center with high-tech bowling, glow-in-the dark miniature golf, an 18-screen multiplex and other diversions. What set things off is still a little murky — one theory is that the center is especially crowded on Easter — but it is clear that hundreds of teenagers from New York took the train north to New Rochelle and showed up in such numbers that they couldn’t all fit in. Fits of ill temper ensued, then fights, gunshots and confrontations with officers on the streets outside. A 15-year-old Bronx youth was stabbed in the chest, two robberies were reported and six people were arrested.
This would be a bad night anyplace but was particularly so in New Rochelle, which is in the middle of a construction boom that will add 2,000 new housing units in and near downtown — most of them decidedly upscale. Bird’s-eye views of street melees are not prime selling points.
That said, New Roc has been around since 1999 with no major incidents, so it’s hard to see one incident doing much damage. Instead, it’s more likely to be a speed bump on a voyage that’s still taking shape. So Mayor Noam Bramson, 37, sounds like a guy selling not just a new downtown but a new way of thinking about suburban life.
New Rochelle boomed with the first generation of suburbs (think “Ragtime,” written by E.L. Doctorow, who lived there), peaked around World War II, began a decline in the 1950s that hit bottom in the 1990s, and now is in the middle of what Mr. Bramson called “the most dramatic physical and economic transformation in our modern history.”
THAT means two things. First is a huge bet on upscale residential housing in a downtown that’s still pretty shabby. Second is a view that suburban need not mean low density, that New Rochelle can maintain its neighborhoods of lovely Tudors on rolling lawns but might have to lose the Rob Petrie-era sense that suburban life and urban life are worlds apart.
“I think what we’re seeing is a changed perception of how our urban planning has to unfold and also a willingness, I think, to dispense with the illusion that places like New Rochelle are villages,” Mayor Bramson said. “Instead, we need to embrace and accept in the heart of our downtown urban density and scale.”
This, in fact, is pretty much the remedy being embraced by other suburban cities, some far down the path (Stamford), some barely out of the gate (Yonkers). It beats accepting decline, but there’s no guarantee it works. LeRoy W. Mitchell, an accounting professor at Iona College in New Rochelle, said that thus far there had been no indication that development was doing anything to lower taxes or that the tax incentives used to lure development were providing much in the way of economic benefit to current residents. Instead, he said, the growth is jamming downtown streets not prepared to handle it.
The consensus is that New Rochelle is probably getting it right by trying to define a new urban-suburban hybrid and that impossibly high Manhattan prices and an aging population of folks ready to ditch the empty nest for a suburban Trump aerie make the time right. But it will take a while, and maybe a few more bad nights, to figure out how much life there is in this new niche that’s not the city and not the burbs of myth and fable but something in between.
E-mail: peappl@nytimes.com
By PETER APPLEBOM
The New York Times
NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y.
In the annals of the American suburbs, you could devote a whole chapter to New Rochelle. It’s where Norman Rockwell lived and worked for decades, where Rob Petrie stumbled over that ottoman at the start of “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” a place that so defined what the Brookings Institution, in a report last year, called “America’s First Suburbs” that it made it onto the study’s first page.
Chances are the chaotic scene that broke out here Sunday night, when 200 police officers in riot gear were called from across Westchester County to deal with more than 1,000 unruly teenagers ejected from a local entertainment complex, won’t rate as much more than a footnote to the tale. But as the first suburbs, the inner-ring suburbs that are home to a fifth of the nation’s population, consider their second acts, what’s happening in New Rochelle now could be every bit as meaningful as what went on before.
Can you have suburban life and a 40-story Trump Plaza high-rise poking its way incongruously toward the heavens above Westchester, like Yao Ming at a birthday party for toddlers? Exactly how much urban street life do Rob and Laura want? It’s the story of life, not just here, but in White Plains and Yonkers and Stamford, all places at the forefront of redefining what suburbs are supposed to be.
Whatever that redefinition turns out to be, it’s a safe bet the idea was not what happened Sunday night at New Roc City, a fortresslike entertainment center with high-tech bowling, glow-in-the dark miniature golf, an 18-screen multiplex and other diversions. What set things off is still a little murky — one theory is that the center is especially crowded on Easter — but it is clear that hundreds of teenagers from New York took the train north to New Rochelle and showed up in such numbers that they couldn’t all fit in. Fits of ill temper ensued, then fights, gunshots and confrontations with officers on the streets outside. A 15-year-old Bronx youth was stabbed in the chest, two robberies were reported and six people were arrested.
This would be a bad night anyplace but was particularly so in New Rochelle, which is in the middle of a construction boom that will add 2,000 new housing units in and near downtown — most of them decidedly upscale. Bird’s-eye views of street melees are not prime selling points.
That said, New Roc has been around since 1999 with no major incidents, so it’s hard to see one incident doing much damage. Instead, it’s more likely to be a speed bump on a voyage that’s still taking shape. So Mayor Noam Bramson, 37, sounds like a guy selling not just a new downtown but a new way of thinking about suburban life.
New Rochelle boomed with the first generation of suburbs (think “Ragtime,” written by E.L. Doctorow, who lived there), peaked around World War II, began a decline in the 1950s that hit bottom in the 1990s, and now is in the middle of what Mr. Bramson called “the most dramatic physical and economic transformation in our modern history.”
THAT means two things. First is a huge bet on upscale residential housing in a downtown that’s still pretty shabby. Second is a view that suburban need not mean low density, that New Rochelle can maintain its neighborhoods of lovely Tudors on rolling lawns but might have to lose the Rob Petrie-era sense that suburban life and urban life are worlds apart.
“I think what we’re seeing is a changed perception of how our urban planning has to unfold and also a willingness, I think, to dispense with the illusion that places like New Rochelle are villages,” Mayor Bramson said. “Instead, we need to embrace and accept in the heart of our downtown urban density and scale.”
This, in fact, is pretty much the remedy being embraced by other suburban cities, some far down the path (Stamford), some barely out of the gate (Yonkers). It beats accepting decline, but there’s no guarantee it works. LeRoy W. Mitchell, an accounting professor at Iona College in New Rochelle, said that thus far there had been no indication that development was doing anything to lower taxes or that the tax incentives used to lure development were providing much in the way of economic benefit to current residents. Instead, he said, the growth is jamming downtown streets not prepared to handle it.
The consensus is that New Rochelle is probably getting it right by trying to define a new urban-suburban hybrid and that impossibly high Manhattan prices and an aging population of folks ready to ditch the empty nest for a suburban Trump aerie make the time right. But it will take a while, and maybe a few more bad nights, to figure out how much life there is in this new niche that’s not the city and not the burbs of myth and fable but something in between.
E-mail: peappl@nytimes.com