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Bedford Stuyvesant: Where It All Started

In 1966, New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy went on a tour of the struggling Brooklyn neighborhood known as Bedford Stuyvesant. Around the time of his visit, the community had undergone a massive demographic shift—from 75 percent white in 1940 to 85 percent African American and Latino in 1960.

The consequences of the white, middle-class exodus were harrowing. Properties were being abandoned and fewer local residents owned what was left. Real estate speculators rented substandard rooms to incoming African Americans at extortionate rates. And the quality of public services—garbage collection, health care, schools, and others—plummeted.

Senator Kennedy saw evidence of all this on his tour, and he was determined to act. He turned to the neighborhood itself. Despite its troubles, Bedford Stuyvesant maintained a robust network of community groups, which had organized themselves under the umbrella Central Brooklyn Coordinating Council (CBCC).

Kennedy was impressed by the depth of community involvement he had seen and resolved to use the neighborhood to test a new federally supported model for developing communities. Along with fellow New York Senator Jacob Javits, he introduced legislation in 1967 that offered financial support to the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation (BSRC), which was to become the nation’s first community development corporation (CDC).

BSRC’s numerous accomplishments include the creation of a home-mortgage pool, which in 1967 attracted private and public investment exceeding $65 million; the opening in 1975 of Restoration Plaza, a complex located along Fulton Street that today houses a 214-seat theater and an outdoor amphitheatre, along with various retail establishments; and the development of more than 3,000 units of housing and the refurbishment of thousands of others. Restoration Plaza also houses a professional art gallery, the Skylight Gallery.

Over the years, BSRC has had to cope with its share of setbacks, such as cuts in federal funding and the loss of vital support staff in 1983 as a result of cuts in funding for the Community Services Administration, the vehicle that had been used since 1967 to funnel federal funding to BSRC and other pioneer CDCs.

But the nation’s pilot CDC has shown a remarkable ability to adapt. Under the leadership of Colvin W. Grannum since 2001, it continues to live up to its credo—in RFK’s words—of “combining the best of community action with the best of private enterprise.”

Today, 2,000 CDCs nationwide follow the historic example of the BSRC, including about 50 in New York receiving Living Cities funds through the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and The Enterprise Foundation.