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How one nonprofit is working to bring business back to Brownsville, Brooklyn

Longtime Brownsville, Brooklyn residents focused on bringing business back to neighborhood
Longtime Brownsville, Brooklyn residents focused on bringing business back to neighborhood 02:22

NEW YORK — Longtime residents of Brownsville, Brooklyn are focused on bringing business back to their neighborhood.

A local nonprofit is creating a new hub to provide wealth-building opportunities.

What is the Brownsville Hub Cooperative?

La'Shawn Allen-Muhammad has lived in Brownsville for nearly her whole life. She is passionate about the neighborhood, despite decades of economic decline. 

"What's really unique is Brownsville has the largest concentration of public housing in the United States," she told CBS News New York reporter Hannah Kliger, citing a policy brief from the Mayor's Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety.

As executive director of the Central Brooklyn Economic Development Corporation, she's working with a $1.3 million grant from the Robin Hood Foundation, a charitable organization which works to address problems caused by poverty. The grant came through the advocacy of JobsFirst NYC, which creates solutions that drive economic mobility. 

Their goal is to build the Brownsville Hub Cooperative from the ground up. A new building erected at 97 Glenmore Ave. will serve as headquarters for the hub, and will include more than 200 units of affordable housing, along with a trade school and several local businesses.

"The neighborhood's first spa, locally owned by a group of women, will be in the building. We will have a credit union in the building as well as another community space in addition to our new headquarters," Allen-Muhammad said.

Several empty storefronts currently line Belmont Avenue, one of the main arteries through the community. Allen-Muhammad says with the help of its business incubator and a variety of community investments, she hopes the area can become known as the neighborhood's "restaurant row" in the coming years.

"Growing up here, the only place you could go and sit down to have a meal is McDonald's or KFC. We always had to leave the community to go and have a meal as a family or on a date," she said.

"The fact that you have an entire community where there is no sit-down restaurant is a bit remarkable," said Eda Henries, a Brownsville resident, investment banker, and partner at Cornbread, an elevated soul food restaurant which will be the first sit-down spot here in decades.

Stuart Cinema, an indie, woman-owned movie theater, is also moving in.

Nonprofit helps Brownsville residents find employment in construction

Meanwhile, the organization is tapping other local talent. Jemel Norman runs Rise to Power Inc., a nonprofit that helps people find employment in construction. He's been doing OSHA training for young professionals through the Hub. 

"People in Brownsville just needed a marketable skill, which was the construction, health and safety training. And I understood that being a contractor, I had the connections to the developers and the job. So if I was able to train them, then we could create that pipeline from training directly to the jobs," Norman said. 

Will Matthews went through one of those trainings eight months ago, and now works as a site safety supervisor at NYCHA developments. 

"We come here to get the training, come here to get the skills that we need, the tools, and we bring it on to the next person," Matthews said. 

The Brownsville Hub Cooperative's new headquarters are set to be completed by the end of 2025. 

Have a story idea or tip in Brooklyn? Email Hannah by CLICKING HERE.

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