Latest news with #Teitelbaum
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Blondshell's Sharp, Secret-Sharing ‘If You Asked for a Picture'
For her second album as Blondshell, L.A. singer-songwriter Sabrina Teitelbaum is figuring out how much of her life story she wants to tell the world — how much she needs to tell — and how much to hide away for herself. On her acclaimed 2023 self-titled debut, she was really letting it all hang out, in searing confessional indie-rock. But on If You Asked For a Picture, Teitelbaum's more ambivalent, more questioning, reckoning with her painful past, from childhood misery to dysfunctional young-adult romance. These are the songs of an artist who wants to figure out who she is by singing about it. Teitelbaum takes her album title from the Mary Oliver poem 'Dogfish,' with the key line, 'I wanted the past to go away, I wanted to leave it, like another country.' That's her approach in these songs — she sorts through her secrets and memories, wondering how much of her damage to take with her into the future and how much to leave behind. As she laments in 'What's Fair,' 'I didn't grow up/And it spilled over/Now I'm left open/When I'm in love.' More from Rolling Stone How Blondshell Tapped Into an Even Deeper Feeling for Her Second LP Being in Your Twenties Can Be a Mindf-ck. Blondshell Wrote a Song About it Blondshell Showcases Rolling Stones-Inspired Single 'T&A' on 'Kimmel' She sets the tone with 'T&A,' as she finds herself stuck with yet another worthless man-boy lover, recalling, 'I said if you stop drinking maybe I could find you attractive/Maybe I could let you have it/And it happened.' She can't even tell her sister she's still with this guy — 'she knows about that fight, remember?' — but she can't let go of him either. She winds up asking herself, over and over, 'Letting him in, why don't the good ones love me?' The album flows in a mellow folk-rock groove, close to the Cranberries or Sheryl Crow or (for you really deep Nineties pop connoisseurs) early Duncan Shiek. She combines her moody-blue guitar and spiky lyrics — shimmeringly pretty on the surface, but with a bite. With producer Yves Rothman, she piles on the vocal overdubs, inspired by her love for the Beach Boys. She digs deep into adolescent identity crises in 'Event of a Fire,' singing candidly about body image and social anxiety, with piercing lines like 'Part of me still sits at home in a panic over 15 pounds.' In tough family songs like 'What's Fair' and '23's a Baby,' she goes into mother/daughter tension with anger that cuts both ways; she takes her share of the blame, admitting, 'I said something when I was ten that I take back.' Like her debut, If You Asked For a Picture has a rogue's gallery of disposable menfolk — when Teitelbaum sings 'You're a thumbtack in my side,' that's the closest she gets to an upbeat love song. The standout tunes come when she gets nasty, as in 'Toy,' with its New Order-style guitar hook, where she compares the relationship to a Wendy's (she doesn't mean it as a compliment), and the slow-burning 'Man,' where she admits, 'I needed the world from just one man.' That Mary Oliver poem has the lines, 'If you asked for a picture I would have to draw a smile/Under the perfectly round eyes and above the chin/Which was rough/As a thousand sharpened nails.' That sums up the album — Teitelbaum might be willing to show the world a smile, but there's no mistaking the sharp edges behind it. Best of Rolling Stone The 50 Greatest Eminem Songs All 274 of Taylor Swift's Songs, Ranked The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
New York Times
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
How Blondshell Became an Alt-Rock Supernova
With songs about addiction and sobriety, praise kink, friend breakups, familial strife, body dysmorphia and, as she put it, 'choosing to be in relationships with bad dudes,' Sabrina Teitelbaum has quickly earned a reputation for putting it all out there. But for a while, the singer and songwriter who records as Blondshell kept her career ambitions under wraps. A born-and-raised New Yorker, Teitelbaum, 28, spent her high school years stomping around downtown Manhattan, singing original songs at open mic nights under a slew of aliases. Her musical life was 'kind of private,' she said, waxing nostalgic during a walk along the High Line on a brisk but sunny March afternoon. 'I didn't really talk to people in my family about it. I didn't talk to my friends about it.' In town from her current home in Los Angeles, and braced for the elements in a zipped black anorak and Saint Laurent shades, Teitelbaum flew under the radar amid throngs of tourists in Chelsea. Her era of performing anonymously, however, at venues like Pianos and the erstwhile incubator Sidewalk Cafe, is over. In 2022, her first single as Blondshell generated buzz that hearkened back to an earlier, blog-fueled era of indie-rock, and her subsequent self-titled debut earned fans and spots on many critics' 2023 year-end lists for its grungy rock and frank, self-implicating lyricism. Now, on the cusp of releasing her second album, 'If You Asked for a Picture,' on Friday, Teitelbaum is working out just how much more of herself to reveal to her growing audience. 'All the things I was saying in the songs were things that I didn't feel comfortable saying to people in conversation,' she said. 'And I think that's kind of still the case.' Teitelbaum's music leans heavily on '90s alternative aesthetics and her lyrics can be impressionistic or straightforwardly narrative, but they're consistently ruptured by off-kilter imagery or flashes of deadpan humor. This is part of the singer's balancing act: She counters the weight of her material with wryness; the bluster of vintage rock (she loves a guitar solo) with unguarded intimacy. Teitelbaum grew up in Midtown at the tail end of the early 2000s rock boom and was granted a long leash to explore. She fondly recalled listening to bands like Vampire Weekend and the National and getting her fake ID confiscated at the Hell's Kitchen venue Terminal 5. Her father, to whom she credits her education in classic rock, is the former chief executive of the e-cigarette giant NJOY. Her mother, who Teitelbaum has said was absent during her childhood, was the daughter of the hedge fund mogul Randall Smith. (She died in 2018, and Teitelbaum deflected questions about their relationship.) Mothers and daughters are a recurring motif on 'If You Asked for a Picture,' though. They're at the center of 'What's Fair,' a sweet-and-salty assessment of familiar maternal faults ('You'd want me to be famous so you could live by proxy / You always had a reason to comment on my body'); and '23's a Baby,' a cheeky reckoning with the knowledge that parenthood does not confer maturity. The album's emotional centerpiece is 'Event of a Fire,' an imagistic slow burner packed with childhood vignettes and oblique references to generational trauma. While she avoids specifics, Teitelbaum says this subject matter isn't so distant from the themes of her first record, which dealt more with fraught romantic relationships. 'Even if you're not explicitly talking about being a kid and being in dysfunction, I think it's inherently there,' she said — nodding to attachment theory, and how bonds with our parents become templates for relationships throughout our lives. For Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney, '23's a Baby' exemplifies the strength of Teitelbaum's songcraft in both its gravity and its stickiness. 'It's not very common for songwriters to be willing to go that personal or that raw,' she said in an interview. 'That's a really strong craft, to be able to write about motherhood and parenting, and the consequences of it, and the relationship that you have that lasts a lifetime. And she also made it a really catchy song.' Teitelbaum's formal education in songwriting came from the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music, which she attended for two years before dropping out because of her aversion to the school's core curriculum requirements ('I was taking oceanography,' she noted dryly). While enrolled, she adopted the artist name Baum and recorded booming, brooding electro-pop in the vein of Halsey or Bishop Briggs. Colored with sass and a pop feminist perspective ('Don't call me Barbie / Does it look like I own a thing in pink,' went one song, with an added expletive), the tracks garnered modest attention online before Teitelbaum retired the project around 2019. In hindsight, that body of work reflected Teitelbaum's strong songwriting point of view, but a weaker sonic one. 'Production-wise, I was just working with people I was hanging out with,' she recalled, 'and felt more willing to chase what I thought other people thought was cool.' Around that time, she was also doing rounds of what she termed 'music speed dating,' meeting with a revolving door of collaborators for one-off writing sessions. For a while, nothing was clicking. But it was on one fateful 'date' that she met Yves Rothman, who has gone on to produce both of her records. Rothman got his start making bruising music with the Midwest punk band Living Things, and is a collaborator of the experimental artist Yves Tumor. He's also worked closely with a handful of singer-songwriters in addition to Teitelbaum — including Aly & AJ and Stella Rose — who straddle rock and pop. Rothman shepherded Teitelbaum's rebrand, helping to realign her sound in a way that more authentically reflected her taste — retaining the dark tint of her Baum output, but grounding it in grungy live instruments instead of synths. Applied to 'Olympus,' a bleak song about destructive love that ultimately became Blondshell's debut single, that treatment gave Teitelbaum's caustic writing an edge it had previously lacked. She sings the final version like she's dragging around a ball and chain. When she first played Rothman the song, 'That's when he said, 'We need to make an album,'' she recalled. Since she became Blondshell, Teitelbaum has frequently been likened to female rock luminaries of an earlier generation — particularly Courtney Love, Dolores O'Riordan and Liz Phair, who took her on tour. While apt, such comparisons feel overly eager to situate the young singer in a sort of feminist matriarchal lineage. The press materials for 'If You Asked for a Picture' cite a different set of sonic references (Red Hot Chili Peppers, Queens of the Stone Age) that suggest a desire to complicate gendered readings of her music. 'T&A,' the album's sardonic and wrenching lead single, which Teitelbaum performed on 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!' in a suit, was loosely inspired by 'Little T&A' by the Rolling Stones — the archetypal dude band. (Though perhaps this is itself a subtle nod to Phair, whose own 'Exile in Guyville' responded to the Stones' 'Exile on Main St.') 'I think, in some ways, talking about female musicians through the lens of feminism has been a way to minimize the complexity of them as musicians,' said Teitelbaum, choosing her words carefully, and then hedging: 'It can be.' She's similarly ambivalent about calling her — admittedly confessional — songwriting 'vulnerable,' a word that minimizes her agency in the process. Laser-focused and assertive in conversation, she rebutted a characterization of her songs as 'insecure,' in reference to their themes of body dysmorphia: 'For me, it's a form of security or confidence to be able to talk about things that feel shameful,' she said. Her posture was understandably defensive: Public-facing Sabrina was protecting songwriter Sabrina, so she could save all her sensitivity for her craft. She has yet to hold back a song for fear of overexposure, she said. The singer-songwriter Samia, who got to know Teitelbaum when she was still going by Baum, also pointed to the confidence behind her friend's confessions. 'I think it's brave to speak so plainly and trust that people will understand the context,' she said in an interview, adding that Teitelbaum had 'encouraged me to make some riskier decisions.' Teitelbaum has built and rebuilt her confidence over time. She recalled her first night opening for Phair in 2023, after a string of her own headlining shows: 'We soundchecked, and the pace was so much faster than I was used to,' she said. 'I remember talking to my band after, and being like, 'I was so comfortable before, and now I feel like the new person in the room.'' The experience was motivating, not discouraging: 'I was like, 'I'm going to get better.'' With another big tour on the horizon, Teitelbaum is eager to continue growing as a performer — but not to give too much of herself away. 'I don't have to have some story going from this section of the show to that section. I don't have to come up with banter,' she said. Not everything 'has to be 'tee-hee,'' she's realized. A number of years ago, Teitelbaum set a goal for herself to book the Fonda, a famed theater on Hollywood Boulevard. In her next run of shows, she'll check it off her bucket list. But her favorite place to tour is on the East Coast, and hometown crowds are particularly special. Being back in New York is 'emotionally charged,' she said, as opposed to Los Angeles, which can feel 'monotonous.' She's contemplating a move back home. (Another reason: A true New Yorker, she never learned to drive.) In the meantime, Teitelbaum's visit stirred something. She brought up Sharon Van Etten's music video for her song 'Seventeen,' in which the singer visits personal landmarks around New York, shadowed by a teenage look-alike. The video captures the potent intersections of place and memory — the junctures where past and present selves collide. Teitelbaum wondered aloud if she was being corny. She wasn't; this was the stuff of great songs yet to be written.
Boston Globe
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
In an extraordinary move, MFA to return prized African art to wealthy donor and close gallery
Advertisement That has put the MFA, which owns just a handful of the exhibited objects but had been promised the rest, in a difficult position. It has been seeking to broker an ethical ownership agreement for a collection it does not yet own, perhaps transferring title to the royal court in exchange for a long-term loan of the objects. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'It's really not appropriate for us to bring them into the collection,' said Victoria Reed, the museum's senior curator for provenance. 'But that means that we do not own them, and therefore we don't have control over them.' The tortuous negotiations seemingly dissipated last week when donor Robert Owen Lehman asked the museum to give him back the disputed bronzes, an extraordinary move that will require the MFA to close its Advertisement Portuguese Soldier from the 16th century. Lane Turner/Globe Staff 'We're all sad in contemplating this outcome,' said MFA director and chief executive Matthew Teitelbaum. 'There's no moment of celebration or resolution that feels fully satisfying.' Teitelbaum, who described the return as a 'mutual agreement,' said the museum found itself in unusual circumstances. He added that Lehman, whose eponymous foundation recently lost 'We were trying to get to a point where the court could assume ownership, and we could ensure display,' said Teitelbaum, who added the museum had been negotiating with the royal palace. 'We were making some progress, but without any certainty of outcome.' Lehman, an award-winning filmmaker and banking heir, did not respond to a request for comment. A woman who answered the phone at a number under Lehman's listing said she was 'quite certain he has no comment.' Lehman originally brokered the promised gift of 30-odd objects in 2012 with then-director Malcolm Rogers. They structured the gift so that individual Bronzes, which date from the 16th century on, would formally enter the museum's collection on a staggered timetable. Today, the MFA has clear title to five of the artworks, which it will retain for the time being. It plans to return the 29 other Bronzes to Lehman once staffers have deinstalled the gallery, which is set to close on April 28th. The museum will also return two objects from Sierra Leone that were part of the initial pledge. Reed said that although it's not the outcome the museum had hoped for, it also simplifies the MFA's path ahead. Advertisement 'What was a very complicated situation has now become far less complicated,' she said. 'It positions us now to talk about the five objects that we own, and look towards a resolution that is more in alignment with our stated principles and institutional values.' This relief plaque showing two officials with raised swords, c. 1530‑1570, is among the works already donated to the MFA. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Benin Kingdom -- as opposed to the modern country of Benin, which borders Nigeria -- was a powerful West African force in the 19th Century. But after a group of British officials was killed during a trade dispute in 1897, Britain launched a so-called punitive expedition. Using boats and early machine guns, soldiers slaughtered untold numbers before sacking the royal palace and looting thousands of Bronzes, virtuosic works that eventually spread to an estimated 160 museums. The MFA's collection of the bronzes has always posed a problem for the museum. Less than a month after it announced the gift in 2012, Nigeria's National Commission for Museums and Monuments demanded the museum return the works. 'We have every right in the world to own these beautiful pieces,' Rogers told the Globe at the time. Separately, Rogers approached the royal court, where the oba, or king, authorized the MFA's installation. The oba, who died in 2016, dispatched emissaries to attend the gallery's 2013 opening, though he did not weigh in on the museum's long-term ownership of the Bronzes. Rogers, who retired from the MFA in 2015, did not respond to an interview request. The current oba, Ewuare II, has been outspoken about the Bronzes' return, and in recent years numerous museums, including the Smithsonian Institution, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and some German institutions have moved to repatriate the looted objects. Advertisement Those efforts have been complicated by the question of where in Nigeria the restituted objects should go. Museums had negotiated for years with the Nigerian National Commission for Museums and Monuments. But Nigeria sowed confusion in 2023, when it formally recognized the oba as 'There is no more ambiguity,' Commission head Olugbile Holloway told Reuters in February. 'The Oba has given the NCMM the blessing.' Commemorative head of an Oba, from the late 16th century. The MFA will close its Benin Kingdom Gallery on April 28. Lane Turner/Globe Staff Teitelbaum said that although the MFA has been in conversation with the royal court, the Nigerians have never submitted a renewed ownership claim. 'We initiated the conversations with the court in response to the international context,' he said. Teitelbaum added that the museum 'paused' Lehman's promised gift in 2021 -- indefinitely tabling the formal acquisition of more Bronzes -- though it continued to exhibit them in the dedicated gallery. Kelly Hays, who directs the MFA's Gifts of Art program, said it's exceedingly rare for a donor and the museum to amend or rescind a pledge. 'They are legally binding enforceable pledges, and we take that seriously,' said Hays, who estimated that fewer than 10 pledges have been altered over the years. 'This one has the appearance of being unusual just because of the circumstances, the nature of the collection, and the fact that it's been on view in a gallery.' Teitelbaum said the museum will offer free admission Thursday so visitors can see the Bronzes one last time. In June, the museum plans to display the five Bronzes in its collection. (It will also display one on loan from Lehman, a commemorative head that left the Kingdom before the 1897 attack.) Advertisement 'We are going to tell the story of objects we have with commitment and with a real sense of pride,' said Teitelbaum, 'but there is no doubt there is a loss.' Malcolm Gay can be reached at
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Unlike with many other states, no action on ‘aid in dying' bills in Missouri
The Missouri Capitol in Jefferson City (Jason Hancock/Missouri Independent). Marilyn Teitelbaum was determined to have as much fun as she could before taking medication to end her life. Some of the first signs Teitelbaum had ALS appeared during a vacation to Mexico in 2022. She and her husband, Steven, had taken their grandsons on a trip to Cancun when they noticed Marilyn's foot was dragging, an early sign of her impending nerve degeneration. The average patient dies within a few years of diagnosis. What starts as muscle weakness advances to total incapacitation. 'Marilyn didn't want to do that or have the family experience it, so the day that she was diagnosed, she said to the physician that she is not going to go to the end with this,' said Steven Teitelbaum, who has worked as a medical researcher and professor at Washington University in St. Louis for more than 50 years. Rather than live out the fatal disease, which leads to permanent paralysis, Teitelbaum took another trip, this time to Colorado — one of 10 states, plus Washington, D.C., where physician-assisted dying is legal. Under the laws, physicians can prescribe life-ending medication to terminally ill patients who request it. Before establishing residency in Colorado, the couple rented an ocean-front house in Hawaii for a week, and the family flew out to join. The grandsons took surfing lessons and played soccer. They took a helicopter tour. They had parties and events where Marilyn gave away her jewelry. 'She was very gracious,' Teitelbaum said. 'There was no weeping or feeling sorry for herself or anything like that. It was: How much can I enjoy my family, and particularly my grandchildren and children?' In Colorado, where she had family, the couple hosted celebrations. A nephew who plays the trumpet brought his band to play for her. But by the time she took the lethal medication nine months after her diagnosis, Marilyn Teitelbaum's disease had advanced rapidly. Quickly losing muscle function and no longer able to stand on her own, she chose to take the medication two weeks ahead of schedule. 'It's a gracious way to go, actually. And when Marilyn did die, she could die with grace,' Teitelbaum said. On Jan. 26, 2023, she woke up and had breakfast. About a half dozen of her closest relatives gathered around her. A nephew played the guitar. 'And it was just going to sleep,' her husband said. Missouri is one of at least 25 states this year where lawmakers are considering legislation related to physician-assisted dying, a practice controversial enough that there's debate over what to call it. Proponents prefer 'medical aid in dying,' while opponents insist 'physician-assisted suicide' is more forthright. The American Medical Association takes a stance against physician-assisted suicide as 'fundamentally incompatible with the physician's role as healer,' difficult or impossible to control, and posing serious societal risks, the group's website said. A 2024 Gallup poll found 66% of Americans believe doctors should 'be allowed by law to assist the patient to commit suicide' when a terminally ill patient in severe pain requests it. New Mexico, the most recent state to legalize physician-assisted suicide, did so in 2021. Delaware's Democratic governor vetoed a bill to legalize assisted dying in 2024, and in 2023, Republican Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo similarly vetoed a legalization bill. Lawmakers in 18 states are considering legislation to legalize physician-assisted suicide. As in a number of other states, Missouri's 'Marilyn Teitelbaum Death with Dignity Act' has languished without a committee hearing. 'We were unable to secure a Republican sponsor for it,' said Rep. Ian Mackey, D-St. Louis, who introduced the bill this year and last. 'Until we can do that, it's not going to get any traction.' Strong political will exists in Illinois, Delaware and New York to move legislation legalizing assisted dying forward, said Elizabeth Armijo, national director of legislative advocacy at Compassion & Choices. New York lawmakers are taking up the issue again for the 10th consecutive session. Two identical bills are in health committees in their respective chambers. A 2024 YouGov poll found 64% of New Yorkers support passing the legislation, and another 8% are leaning toward supporting it. The bill is gaining sponsors in the state's House and Senate quickly, with those in favor of the bill vying for Gov. Kathy Hochul's support. Between the two bills, 90 lawmakers have signed on as sponsors 'and that number is continuing to grow,' said Corinne Carey of Compassion & Choices. 'I am more hopeful than ever that this will be the year the legislature finally passes the bill.' In the Illinois General Assembly, two bills are progressing, but face opposition from pro-life advocates and medical professionals. 'This can be an emotional issue, and many fallacies circle medical aid in dying,' said Illinois state Sen. Linda Holmes, who co-sponsored one of the measures, said during a Senate executive committee hearing. 'I encourage those with misgivings to read the legislation in full to see its criteria and the safeguards that would protect patients, medical professionals, and relatives.' Last year in Delaware, outgoing Gov. John Carney vetoed a bill to legalize the practice after it had passed the state's Senate by one vote. A similar measure this year passed the Delaware House and a Senate committee, and now awaits approval from the full Senate. 'So many of these efforts get incredibly close, and then they're disappointing. They're so disappointing for our terminally ill advocates who don't have the luxury of having one more session,' Armijo said. 'They don't have the luxury of waiting for another legislative session and so often they really die waiting.' Bills introduced in states where the practice is legal would amend aspects of the law including waiting time or who qualifies to prescribe the medication. Opponents say the efforts remove safeguards while proponents argue these improve access. Two bills — one in New Jersey and another in Washington — would, for qualifying patients, waive the wait period between the patient's first and second required request for the medication. Bills in Oregon and Vermont would allow certified licensed nurse practitioners and physician assistants, in addition to physicians, to prescribe the medication. A measure in California would remove the Jan. 1, 2031, sunset on the state's law. In Montana, a 2009 state Supreme Court ruling permitted the practice; a bill to codify its legality died in March. A competing measure that would make it illegal for doctors to prescribe the medications passed the state Senate but was defeated on the House floor April 9. 'This bill reinforces that life is valuable and should be protected,' said the bill's sponsor, Montana state Sen. Carl Glimm, during a March 19 hearing in the House Judiciary Committee. As a pathologist, death is a common part of Steven Teitelbaum's life. With physician-assisted dying, he said it's crucial that no one making the decision is encouraged by others to do it. 'If that's not dealt with, then the other side has a very compelling argument,' he said. Assisted-dying laws in the United States follow the basic criteria of the initial Oregon legalization bill. Geoff Sugerman, who helped write Oregon's Death with Dignity Act, echoed Teitelbaum's concern. 'It's something that always has to be driven by the patient. The patient is the one who really has to initiate that conversation,' said Sugerman, who now works as the national policy advisor for Death with Dignity, an advocacy group. Jessica Rodgers grew up in Oregon, the first state to legalize assisted dying in 1997, when the debate over the issue began making headlines. Oregon doctors who supported the law publicly advocated for it. Rogers was 12 when her mother was given six months to live after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Her mother met the qualifications for assisted dying. With her father working two jobs, Rodgers took care of her mother. She remembers one of the doctors in her mother's oncology practice was an outspoken advocate for the bill that would become Oregon's Death with Dignity Act. 'As her primary caregiver, it changed how I viewed her doctor's appointments, because I felt as though I needed to protect her from her doctor, and I never wanted her to be alone with her doctor,' Rodgers said. Her mother lived for three and a half years, long enough to hold her first grandchild, Rodgers said. Now a social worker who specializes in gerontology, Rodgers has spent the last two decades advocating against physician-assisted suicide. Today she works as the coalitions director at Patients Rights Action Fund. She fears legalizing assisted death creates a lower standard of care for people who are terminally ill. The American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, an industry group, takes a neutral stance on assisted dying, but echoes similar concerns over the practice's effect on 'the perceived or actual integrity of the medical profession,' according to its website. About 22% of Americans – 74 million people – live in jurisdictions where assisted dying is legal. Between 1998 and 2020, just 5,329 people died using physician-assisted death in the United States. That's according to a 2022 study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society . Each state collects data differently making it difficult to analyze trends, according to the study's author, Elissa Kozlov, an assistant professor at Rutgers University. Reporters Maya Burney of Belmont University, Aditi Thube of Boston University and Emma Schwichtenberg of the University of Washington contributed to this story. This story originally appeared in the Columbia Missourian. It can be republished in print or online.
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Borough president backs disputed One45 Harlem project, with option to double affordable units
The controversial One45 for Harlem project, which could bring two towers with nearly 1,000 new apartments to East Harlem, secured the backing of Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine on Tuesday — a symbolic but significant endorsement that bodes well for its success down the line. Levine and the developer, Bruce Teitelbaum, have struck a tentative deal as part of the rezoning process that could help the project get over the finish line nearly three years after an initial attempt to secure approval spectacularly imploded, causing a political firestorm. The fact that local Councilmember Yusef Salaam, whose support will essentially make or break the project, has been involved in the negotiations also suggests One45 could be closer to winning favor in the all-important final City Council vote. The proposed One45 for Harlem development would include a pair of 34-story towers at 145th St. and Lenox Ave. with 968 apartments, including 291 designated affordable, plus a commercial building. The borough president is recommending the project move ahead but with a number of conditions attached, including increasing the size of a planned community space and requiring the use of union construction workers. But the most significant stipulation is the unusual inclusion of a memorandum of understanding. Signed by both Levine and Teitelbaum, the MOU includes the possibility of an alternative plan that would involve Teitelbaum building the first tower but selling a parcel of the land to a nonprofit affordable housing developer that would construct the second tower as 100% affordable in coordination with the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development. HPD spokesperson Fernando Aquino confirmed the agency was been 'in active conversations' with the prospective developer 'We would welcome the opportunity to invest in more affordable housing in the community and are working to define the tools/resources we have available to make it happen,' Aquino said. The so-called 'Enhanced Affordability Plan Development' could boost the total number of new 'affordable' units up to 591 — but it's far from a done deal. 'Nothing is guaranteed until a sale occurs, but there's active negotiations underway' to sell the parcel, Levine said, adding that they're making 'good progress.' The project itself still needs to successfully pass the city's land use review process. The next step is review by the City Planning Commission. Levine, who is running for city comptroller, voted against the original One45 project three years ago, citing concerns around affordability and describing that version as 'unacceptable' at the time. 'There was just no constituency for this project three years ago, and now there really is,' he told The News. 'Adding hundreds of affordable units is just an incredibly valuable addition to the housing landscape, that's what we need. We need to both fight to help longtime residents stay in their homes, and we have a parallel fight to create new affordable homes for people who don't have them. And I'm all in on both fights, and leaving this site as a truck depot doesn't help anybody.' Levine's endorsement comes as little surprise given his vocal pro-development stance amid the ongoing housing crisis. While the beep's backing is symbolic, not binding, it's a positive sign for the development team that comes just two weeks after the local community board rejected the proposal in a 19-10 advisory vote with 5 abstentions. 'This is not an affordable housing plan, it's a gentrification plan,' said Delsenia Glover, second vice chairperson of the board, who voted against it. She echoed longstanding criticisms from Harlemites who have expressed concern about the project's size, affordability levels and potential to displace locals. The borough president's support is also One45's first formal vote of confidence since a previous iteration of the plan infamously fell apart in 2022. The local councilmember at the time, Kristin Richardson Jordan, pushed for One45 to be fully affordable, leading Teitelbaum to withdraw the proposal and turn the lot into a truck depot in a move widely viewed as spiteful. Richardson Jordan dropped her reelection bid in the fallout, opening the path for Salaam to take her place. He has expressed more openness to Teitelbaum's plans and worked 'shoulder to shoulder' with Levine in securing the memorandum of understanding, according to the beep. Salaam's office did not respond to a request for comment. Salaam's collaboration indicates the new iteration of One45 could be poised to succeed where its predecessor failed, namely in securing the support of the local councilmember, who traditionally dictates whether or not a rezoning passes the City Council thanks to the unofficial practice of member deference. Levine struck a hopeful tone as One45 works its way through the city's rezoning process, which will continue to play out over the next few months. 'This is really night and day from three years ago, that's why I'm very optimistic,' he said. For his part, Teitelbaum said he was 'certainly' more optimistic this time around, though largely kept mum when asked about the ongoing negotiations. 'The project speaks for itself,' he told The News. 'We'll let the process play out.'
