Liz Ritter   (interview 1999 photo 1999)

   At the Danziger Center in J. Hood Wright Park (Fort Washington Ave. & 174th St.), Liz Ritter, President of Hudson Heights Owners' Coalition, had this to say about the organization:

   "We had our first meeting in January of 1993. A neighbor, Bob Oliver, said, 'We need to get a bunch of buildings together and work on stuff. There's garbage. We don't necessarily have enough attention from the precinct.' You know, a lot of those things, they call them 'quality of life issues' now, that was a relatively new term back then. Bob's idea was that if a lot of people who lived in the same neighborhood got together and decided what were some common goals and common problems to work on, and we worked on them, maybe we could solve them. It's not a really new concept (laughs). It's an extremely old concept. I think one of the reasons it's been around so long is it works. Y'know, people working together get stuff done.

   "Shortly after the group formed, there was a devastating fire in the businesses along the north side of 187th Street. That was about a year later, in 1994. One of the things where we thought H.H.O.C. as a civic organization could really have a big impact, was galvanizing community support behind getting the bank (which was severely damaged in the fire) to reinvest in the community, and taking that significant loss and possibly turning it into an opportunity for economic development and community development.

   "Through people in the community working together . . . people began to get a better sense of what were some of the things that folks in the neighborhood wanted in terms of stores, or restaurants, or business amenities . . . and also to get a sense of what business talents were out there of people who wanted to open stores.

   "There was a guy who almost opened a book store, and I really regret that he didn't. But we got another dry-cleaning store, which I didn't think we needed, but the business seems to be thriving. The coffee shop refurbished itself. We got a vet, and Kismat (an Indian restaurant) moved up the street from Broadway and reinvented itself as this elegant, wonderful place, and that was when people started to realize, 'Oh, 187th Street doesn't have to be . . . a merely functional business district. It can be responsive to local consumers. That's what Hudson Heights Owners Coalition is about."