Hoylman and Pols Demand Boys Club Postpone Sale of Famed Lower East Side Clubhouse

The letter can be located in the attachment above

A group of elected officials Wednesday sent a letter to the Boys Club imploring it to put a hold on plans to shut down and sell its touchstone clubhouse building on the Lower East Side.

The four elected officials and a community board member want the organization to hold a community meeting and take input before putting the six-story Harriman Clubhouse at 287 E. 10th St. up for sale.

“As you are well aware, the Harriman Clubhouse has been a vital part of our neighborhood for more than a century,” the letter reads. “Therefore, the decision to sell such an important community asset must only be taken after rigorous analysis and extensive public consultation.”

The pols include state Sen. Brad Hoylman, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, Assemblyman Harvey Epstein and City Councilwoman Carlina Rivera.

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The Harriman Clubhouse opened in 1876 to give boys an opportunity to “rise above their conditions of social and economic poverty,” according to its website, which claims close to 1 million boys have used the facility over the decades.

“So many New Yorkers, including family members of the board, have benefited from the facility, and don’t we owe the same to future generations?” Hoylman said.

Epstein added, “I am concerned that in a gentrifying city, access to social programs is critical. If we lose the club, we also lose the opportunity to put something else there. But we need that building for the community.”

Ada Salgado, the mom of an 18-year-old shot and killed in 2011, said she is appalled at the plans to close the facility and at the whittling away of programs by the club in recent years.

“I think crime will go up if they close it, because the teens won’t have anything to do,” she said. “There’s really nothing else here for them. It’s just going to be more hanging out on the corner, and that’s going to lead to more violence.”

Salgado’s son Donovan Keith Salgado often used the Boys Club as kid. He was shot and killed at Campos Plaza on Oct. 16, 2011. Hakim Smith, 24, was convicted of manslaughter in the killing and sentenced in 2017 to 25 years in prison, state records show.

Edward Padilla, 30, said he used the clubhouse almost daily from age 7 to 17, and is deeply disappointed with the organization’s plans. “It’s just a sad moment,” he said. “When I was going there, I didn’t have a chance to end up on the streets. It’s going to be bad. They’ll really have no place to go.”

Calls to members of the board of the organization were not returned. But in a letter to parents in June, Executive Director Stephen Tosh said changing demographics and operational expenses made the move necessary.

According to meeting minutes, the organization’s board hired a real estate appraisal company to assess the nonprofit’s holdings in 2015, but word of the plans to sell the building only began filtering out recently.