Painful portrait of the changing face of New York City

The unused convent at St. Margaret Mary that a Muslim group wished to buy earlier this year.

As the battle over the “Ground Zero mosque” reached a boiling point over the summer, a similar debate raged on a much more quiet patch of New York City real estate.

Though it didn’t get nearly as much attention, the way this story unfolded probably tells us more about the future of New York City than the more sensationalistic saga in downtown Manhattan.

This painful story began in the summer, but it returned to the headlines this week when the New York Archdiocese announced that still more Catholic schools and churches will be closing or consolidated.
One of the schools slated for closure was St. Margaret Mary elementary school on Staten Island.

St. Margaret Mary parish is nestled in the seaside neighborhood of Midland Beach. The streets are lined with trees, bungalows and single-family homes, located not far from a sandy stretch of beach and boardwalk which once attracted the city’s elite.

These days, St. Margaret Mary parish is a solid middle class neighborhood, filled with the cops, firefighters, teachers and other city workers you can find in many outer borough white ethnic neighborhoods.

Not surprisingly, the corner on which the church is located is named in honor of an Irish American former resident and hero of 9/11, FDNY captain Martin J. Egan.

So, it’s not exactly a surprise that many parish residents objected when the Muslim American Society struck a deal with St. Margaret Mary parish pastor Father Keith Fennesy to purchase an unused convent for almost $1 million. The proceeds from the sale would reportedly have gone to the parish itself.

June and July were filled with debates and protests focused on whether or not the Muslim American Society should be setting up a mosque and school in the neighborhood.

New York Archdiocese spokesman Joe Zwilling said local Catholics should not have objected to the deal.
“I’ve not heard anything that says this is a terrorist organization,” Zwilling was quoted as saying in the Staten Island Advance newspaper.

“So I would hate to even use a word like that when that word only serves to inflame people’s emotions.”
Still, this wasn’t merely bigotry or lingering 9/11 anger. The Muslim American Society did have questionable links to groups which support violence.

Locals also grumbled that the deal was struck without community input. In the end, the deal was nullified.
Fast forward to this week, when it was announced that St. Margaret Mary elementary school was targeted for closure. Published reports indicate that the K-8 school has only 74 students.

How Catholic parishes can survive in the 21st century is too complex to get into here. One thing that is clear is that St. Margaret Mary certainly could have used that million bucks.

What’s also clear is that St. Margaret Mary parish -- with new immigrants coming in, and with school enrollment dropping among the second and third generation Irish and Italians -- is changing.

Parish residents who were angry about Muslims setting up shop in their neighborhood may have -- if you can excuse the metaphor -- won the battle.

But there is a longer-term issue at work here. New York City is changing rapidly, and the only consolation is that New York has been in a constant state of flux pretty much since the 1600s. That’s true even in quiet, outer borough enclaves such as Midland Beach. No one welcomed the Irish -- or the Italians or the Jews
or any other group -- with open arms. This did not keep them from coming.

The same is surely going to be true for Muslim immigrants from the Middle East.

If you want proof of that, take the 10 minute drive from Midland Beach, along Father Capodanno Boulevard, over the Verrazano Bridge into Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

The onetime Irish and Norwegian stronghold now has a large Muslim presence. You don’t have to like the new Bay Ridge, though it must be added the neighborhood didn’t fall apart when Muslims moved in.

Irish Catholics weren’t exactly embraced in every corner of the city. The city, of course, survived that momentous change, too.

It is a blessing and a curse that New York City changes so relentlessly. This is what gives the city its energy and vitality.

It is also what makes this such an unsettling, downright scary, place to live sometimes.

(Contact Sidewalks at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

Christmas comes early on west side

Christmas came a little early this year for Tom Dwyer.

In fact, to numerous Irish business owners on the West Side of Manhattan, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie suddenly looks a lot like Santa Claus, and not just because the Garden State leader could stand to lose a few pounds.

Tom Dwyer is the owner of the Blarney Rock pub on West 33rd Street.  Dwyer, whose parents were Irish immigrants, had spent the last several years facing his own demise. 

As with dozens of other businesses on the West Side of Manhattan, the Blarney Rock was in the bull’s eye of a massive transportation project which was designed to ease the flow of commuter traffic into New York City from New Jersey.

By and large, everyone from unions to politicians to suburbanites are in favor of such massive projects.  They create jobs, improve commuting time and give elected officials an opportunity to claim they have done something.

There’s just one problem. Businesses which have been around for decades have to be torn down to make way for this kind of progress.

The Blarney Rock, as well as another Irish bar on the block, Hickey’s, were just such businesses.
“I didn’t think we had a chance,” said Dwyer.

Under a messy process called eminent domain, local governments can essentially seize private property in the name of municipal improvements, such as tunnels designed to link two states.

The property owners are generally reimbursed, at market rate, for their losses.  The problem is, often, this does not change the fact that the property owners did not want to give up their homes or businesses.

Dwyer was one such business owner.  So when officials announced the New York and New Jersey tunnel, Dwyer fought back.

“I gave it my best shot.  I figured, if I was going to go down, that’s how I wanted to go down,” said Dwyer, whose Sligo-born father opened up the Blarney Rock in 1969.

Dwyer and many other Irish-born, Irish American and other immigrant business owners attended community board meetings and made their case that the New York/New Jersey tunnel should not be built.  Some, however, eventually threw in the towel. 

They chose not to renew leases, figuring there was no point.  The process of razing certain structures eventually began, all in the name of getting this massive construction project started.

Did Dwyer ever think he had a chance of winning this battle?

“No,” Dwyer admitted.  “I was resigned to it.”

And that’s when Christie -- Governor Santa Claus, at least to certain West Side business owners -- stepped in.

In late October, Christie announced that he was scrapping New Jersey’s participation in the tunnel project.  The fiscally conservative Christie -- whose confrontational image has already earned him whispers as a GOP presidential candidate for 2012 -- cited potential cost overruns.

But this initial joy was short-lived.

Though Christie earned plaudits from some corners, others were critical of the governor for being short-sighted.

Such critics included members of the Obama administration, who met with Christie in an attempt to get him to change his mind. 

Christie even stated that he would be willing to reconsider the project, which put West Side businesses owners back into the line of fire.

In the end, however, it appears that the Blarney Rock and Hickey’s and numerous other Irish businesses in the Madison Square Garden area are here to stay.

“We’re alive and well and we’re gonna live forever,” said Dwyer.

This is only fitting.  These Irish pubs survived 40 years of change in New York, from shifting neighborhoods to violent crime to skyrocketing real estate costs.  Would it have been fair to survive all that only to be felled by eminent domain?

In the end, Manhattan needs joints like the Blarney Rock, if only because the latest gaudy, trendsetting watering holes tend to attract vapid patrons willing to spend $12 on a pint -- if the place offers pints at all.

When asked for the secret to the Blarney Rock’s success, Dwyer says, “We always leave the customer with a smile on his face.”

Of course, given Christie’s announcement, it is Dwyer and many other Irish business owners on the West Side who are smiling these days.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)