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The Greatest Real Estate Turnaround Ever

Published on CNNMoney.com: November 9, 2009
By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writer

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com)—Charlotte Street was an apocalyptic nightmare version of urban life.

Weed-choked, junk-filled lots flanked the three-block stretch. Burned out tenement buildings punctuated the sky, and abandoned cars littered the landscape.

"Charlotte Street was burning," says Genevieve Brooks, a former resident...

By 1974, tired of the small scale efforts, a host of neighborhood volunteers formed a group they called the Mid-Bronx Desperadoes to lobby for improvements throughout the community.

"There was a tremendous amount of community action," says former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer. "That was the secret ingredient. The community refused to give up. They needed allies. They needed people who took the decline of the South Bronx as personally as they did."

One of those people was urban planner Ed Logue, who was hired in 1978 to run a city agency called the South Bronx Development Office. The city was trying to erase the shame of its worst slums, and to do that Logue knew he would need the assistance of local organizations. The Desperadoes, headed by Brooks, were ready to step into the breach...

So she and Logue focused on convincing the Local Initiatives Support Corp., a newly launched nonprofit that had a $10 million grant from the Ford Foundation to assist burgeoning neighborhood revivals.

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