Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY – Hasidic and Spanish Communities Unit Against A Common Enemy

Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY – The Hasidic and Spanish communities of south Williamsburg are often rivals over the neighborhood’s housing stock, but they cooperate when it comes to keeping out a common enemy: on South 8th Street between Bedford and Berry.
In the middle of that residential block, developer Michael Zazza has plans to tear down two of the oldest buildings in Williamsburg and put up a 20-story luxury condo in their place. “This is not going to be Jewish,” complained Ms. Cohen, who lives in an eight-story affordable apartment building down the block. “It’s going to be a new trend: Yuppies. They’re going to take over the neighborhood.”
Cohen was joined by over a dozen other orthodox Jews, the Four Borough Neighborhood Preservation Alliance (4BNA), Queens Councilman Tony Avella, and a few members of the local Spanish community to call on New York City to landmark 118 South 8th Street, an 1840s building which served as a social hall in the 19th century for Democrats, Republicans, Suffragettes, philosophers, healers, and teetotalers alike.”This building represents the identity of this community,” argued retired firefighter Serafin Flores. “This is an important symbol which might be destroyed.”

When Flores was asked about the local rivalry between the two ethnic groups, he said, “We are competing for housing, let’s be honest. But on this, yes, we are united.”
Rabbi E. Katz quickly jumped in to agree to disagree and to just plain agree. “We have a problem,” he explained. “Everybody needs housing, but now we are united.”