Along the walkway of the Washington Houses community center, past a flier for talent show auditions flapping in the wind, a bright yellow mural reads, in part: “Thrive, Not Just Survive.” Inside the squat building of drab cinder block one recent morning, grayed men and women chatted over Spanish-language newspapers and lunchtime ravioli. In another room down the hall, a group of students took a G.E.D. practice exam, set on turning their lives around.
he center has been here in East Harlem, amid public-housing towers that are home to about 3,480 residents, for more than 55 years. Most of the programming comes through the Union Settlement Association: after-school, summer, tutoring, arts, college prep, job readiness, fatherhood, re-entry, teen night, mental health and life skills.
Six days a week, the center draws people from as far as Staten Island. But lately there has been fear in the neighborhood, inspired by a plan of the New York City Housing Authority to raze the building housing the center for private residential development.
The authority says the center’s operations will not be interrupted even if it is relocated, but some residents are skeptical.
“I can understand that they need the money,” said Domingo Munoz Jr., 67, who retired from his last job as a clothing salesman and is vice president of the tenant association, at the center one recent morning. Moving from Puerto Rico, he and his family settled into their apartment across the street in 1970. Now it’s just he and his 94-year-old father, who walks to the community center every day.
“But where is the center going to go?” Mr. Munoz said. “An answer — that’s what we want. What’s going to happen to us?”
Since January, the authority has been convening meetings with residents on its development plan. The City Council held a public hearing on it last week; the next Housing Authority meeting at Washington Houses is scheduled for Wednesday.
The gist of the issue is this: to generate funds for its growing repair needs, the authority plans to leverage an asset coveted in Manhattan and, increasingly, in East Harlem — real estate.
“It’s valuable land as well,” said Victor Sozio, a broker at Ariel Property Advisors, of East Harlem in general. “I think it’s an incredible value proposition for experienced developers. They’re acquiring land in East Harlem, in some cases for less than one-third of the price that they would be paying in other parts of Manhattan.”
In its plan, the authority would lease 14 of its parcels in the city, mostly parking lots or garbage compactor yards — but also the community center — to private developers, who would then build and operate residential housing.
Eighty percent of the new apartments would go at market rate; the rest would be designated permanent affordable housing. To be eligible, a family of four could have a maximum annual income under current guidelines of $51,540. Housing Authority residents would have first preference.
The leases with the developers would run 99 years and could generate $30 million to $50 million in annual revenue. That money would be used for much-needed building improvements, the authority says, like new roofs, elevator repairs and upgrades to heating systems.
The Washington Houses alone faces $52 million in unmet building needs over the next five years. And the community center, on Third Avenue near 98th Street, is troubled by faulty air-conditioning, dreary lighting and a leaky roof.
Frederick S. Harris, the authority’s executive vice president for development, said that though nothing had been finalized — whether the center will eventually be relocated, or transformed where it stands — “they’ll stay in continuous operation.”
Still, concern remains over how much even a temporary move would affect what the center offers.
“The thing is, this is a better piece of land,” said Richard Reeves of Union Settlement, who is the director of young adult programming at the center. “The problem is, we’re here.”
For some, the Housing Authority plan is another slight to a neighborhood continually marketed for redevelopment as something outside of itself, with real estate names like Upper Yorkville or Upper Lexington. It stokes fears that some people who have lived here for generations will eventually be priced out.
Mr. Harris said that in the Washington Houses, “some fear this is the beginning of trying to get them out, although we’ve tried very hard to say the opposite.” He said he hoped that people at the community meetings would take away the idea that the authority “is trying to use the assets it has to preserve public housing for a long time.”
Since Mr. Munoz and his family came to East Harlem, he has “seen it change for the better and worse,” he said. He spoke of how a run-down supermarket in the area had finally been renovated as a result of redevelopment. “But,” he added, “with all the higher-income people moving in, everything is higher than before.”
The numbers of people using the center paint a picture of a community that is strong but in need.
About 275 young people come to the center each day. The college readiness program averages about 400 students a year. But there is now a program geared toward probationers. Half of the young men coming into the fatherhood program left high school without a diploma, and most of them read below a ninth-grade level. Because of its neutral location, the center is considered a haven for those caught up in gangs or by the lure of fast money.
“It keeps us off the street,” said Jerry Custodio, 18, who has been coming to the G.E.D. preparatory classes for a few months with his friend Caleb Ojeda, 20.
Mr. Custodio said he left high school, where he enjoyed drawing graffiti and cartoons in design class, in the 10th grade after his mother died. He now lives with his older brother nearby. With his equivalency diploma, he hopes to get a good job, he said, maybe at the airport, and “just do something with my life.”
“It’s rough out here,” he said.