Point Community Development Corp.

THE POINT is based in an annex of the historic American Banknote complex (circa 1911) and features a 220-seat live theater, a Neighborhood Internet Center, a professional dance studio, a youth-run video-editing facility, a 4,000 square foot incubator for neighborhood-owned businesses, and a photography center operated in conjunction with the International Center for Photography. THE POINT operates programs under two broad headings--Arts & Enterprise. The centerpiece of THE POINT's arts programming is Live From the Edge Theater, a 220 seat performance space, neighborhood gathering place and media enterprise incubator. In December, 1995, Live From the Edge began weekly neighborhood poetry "slams", bi-weekly hip-hop nights for up and coming young poets and rappers, and daily instruction in Latin percussion, music, and theater arts. The Hunts Point Re-Envisioning Project is a comprehensive planning, organizing, and revitalization initiative aimed at enhancing economic vitality, quality of life, and oppportunities for open space creation and environmentally-sound development in Hunts Point. The project employs public art and arts-related enterprises as levers to restore investment and pedestrian traffic to the area's main commercial strip, Hunts Point Avenue, and public planning sessions to draft an overall plan for land use and open space development in the peninsula. Aspiring entrepreneurs from the community are recruited for THE POINT's 4,000 square-foot Marketplace. Current tenants of this business incubator include Anything Dance, a dance apparel shop run by a young woman from Hunts Point; Pat's Soul Food Kitchen, a neighborhood-owned restaurant featuring Southern cuisine; Rice-Gonzalez Public Relations, an arts promotion and consulting firm specializing in non-profit arts organizations; Augustin Cruz, a woodcarver; Strange FruitTV, a cable TV production company founded a South Bronx videographer; BronxGear, an apparel design and printing business operated by teenagers; Breakout Entertainment, a music promotion business run by a young entrepreneur; Tats Cru, a trio of graffiti muralists with contracts from Coca-Cola, Reebok, and ABC Carpet & Home. THE POINT's Youth Economic Development Initiative (YED) provides space and technical assistance to young people seeking to start businesses and offers hands-on experience by engaging participants in the operation of actual business ventures. Youth-operated businesses include BronxGear, a design workshop and "art factory" which produces hand-made silk scarves, and South Bronx Postcards, a youth-operated business run in conjunction with the International Center of Photography. ICP at THE POINT is a new photography program operated in conjunction with the International Center of Photography. The Center offers daily classes in black and white photography, photographic composition, and film developing free of charge to young people from the Hunts Point community. WPNT is THE POINT's low-power AM radio station, which offers a weekly training program in broadcasting and audio engineering for at-risk young people and other interested residents. THE POINT also sponsors regualr film series and the annual South Bronx Film & Video Festival. El Grito Dance Studio furnishes daily instruction in modern dance, jazz, tap, flamenco, martial arts, ballet, B-boyin'/B-Girlin' or break dancing, and aerobics. The studio is also home to Arthur Aviles Typical Theater, a new dance company launched by the former lead dancer for Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, Contemporary Ballet Theater, and Full Circle Productions, a hip-hop company founded by young people from the South Bronx. Finally, in August, 1995, THE POINT launched Camp Quinnahung, a ten day sleepaway camp program in upstate New York for sixty-five 9-14 year olds from the Hunts Point area.

A.C.T.I.O.N. (Activists Coming To Inform Our Neighborhood) and middle grades leadership program City Year’s After School Heroes and arts-in-education programs including the International Center of Photography (ICP) at THE POINT and Cirque du Soleil’s social outreach program Cirque du Monde. THE POINT's youth programs have been the recipients of awards including the Union Square Award and Coming Up Taller Award. 

This central feature of THE POINT’s services offers after-school programming throughout the school year in addition to summer programming for 500 young people in grades 1-12. In addition, THE POINT offers extended programming on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and Saturdays. Through justice-based arts and service learning activities, THE POINT’s youth programs aim to support the academic, artistic and positive social development of young people of color in the low-income community of Hunts Point. Specific youth programs include the teen community leadership group

THE POINT uses the lens of environmental justice, youth development and arts and culture to engage individuals from Hunts Point in the effort to create a more livable community and generate economic opportunity. THE POINT is a key player in several advocacy coalitions and initiatives such as the South Bronx Greenway and South Bronx Waterfront Brownfield Opportunity Area (BOA). In addition, THE POINT’s Small Business and Non-profit Incubator offers subsidized rent and connections to the Hunts Point community to tenants including: the Bronx office of City Year NY, the boat-building and on water education organization Rocking the Boat, Bascom Catering, internationally recognized graffiti artists Tats Cru and the therapeutic counseling service Unitas.

 

Currently, THE POINT is working on Waterfront and Conservatory Restoration Projects to open and safeguard space for future generation by conversion to public trust conservatory lands.