An East Harlem cultural center is languishing despite Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito’s 2011 vow to resurrect it, artists say.
“They haven’t done s- -t there for two years,” poet Jesus “Papoleto” Melendez said of the Julia de Burgos Cultural Center at 106th Street and Lexington Avenue.
The renovated building boasts a 160-seat theater and 2,300-square-foot community room — but few people or programs, critics say.
A ground-floor art gallery is the only permanent public space. The last event in the theater was a comedy show five weeks ago. There is no public schedule or Web site.
Mark-Viverito criticized the center in 2011 as underutilized and yanked control from Taller Boricua, an arts group that unofficially managed the property for the city. The group was allowed to continue running the gallery.
After two years of inaction, the city handed the theater and community room to the Hispanic Federation, a Bronx nonprofit.
The federation last year got $1.31 million in discretionary funds from the council. Its founder, Luis Miranda, is Mark-Viverito’s chief political consultant. His lobbying firm, MirCam, gets $102,000 per year from the Hispanic Federation.
The federation-led Julia de Burgos Arts Alliance was supposed to provide 1,700 hours of cultural programming in its first year.
“But nothing has happened,” said Luis Cordero, founder of the Puerto Rican Institute for the Development of the Arts.
But the federation says it hosted 77 community and cultural events, totaling 1,600 hours, in 2014.
The center “has a vibrant history in El Barrio,” said Mark-Viverito rep Robin Levine. “We look forward to working with the center.”