HIP HOP NEWS: Hip Hop's Birthplace To Be Sold

The Bronx, New York based apartment building on 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, which has been recognized as the birthplace of Hip Hop culture, is scheduled to be sold this week, despite several attempts to save it as a historical landmark.

The building's landlord is expected to withdraw it from the city's Mitchell-Lama moderate housing program, According to the New York Times. The Mitchell-Lama program offers building owners incentives such as low-rate mortgages and tax breaks in exchange for charging tenants low to moderate rents for a certain period of time, by paying off the mortgage with a $5 million payment.

Now withdrawn from the housing program and not officially recognized as a historical landmark, the legendary building is now free to be sold to an investment group led by high-profile real estate developer Mark Karasick, whose interest in the building is unknown to advocates of the property.

A group of interested parties, including the current tenants and housing advocates, had filed a lawsuit in State Supreme Court, in an attempt to legally block the sale to Mr. Karasick's group. The lawsuit argued that the city had to adhere to the State Environmental Quality Review Act before allowing the buyout to go forward. Despite some success, winning a temporary restraining order, the court ruled against the group of tenants on Friday, September 26.

Despite the building's sentimental value, New York's Department of Housing Preservation and Development believed that the building in actuality was worth around $7.5 million and was simply not sustainable. After halting the sale of the building earlier this year, while they assessed the building's true monetary value, the Department finally agreed to sell the property to Mr. Karasick and his group.   

DJ Kool Herc, widely recognized as the father of Hip Hop culture, has been one of the most vocal supporters of the tenants and the building, actively helping to oppose the building owner's plans to remove the building from an affordable housing program.

After migrating to New York from his native Jamaica in the early 1970s, DJ Kool Herc (born Clive Campbell) experimented with new DJing techniques, utilising his previous experience as a soundsystem DJ in Jamaica, laying the blueprint for the multi-million dollar worldwide phenomenon of Hip Hop culture that we know today.