Harlem project bucks COVID blues

Shrugging off gloomy predictions about the city’s future, big-league developers on Monday unveiled plans for transformative new projects on Harlem’s famed 125th Street, including a new Target store.

The deals — remarkable strokes of confidence in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic — aren’t long-range pipe dreams either, but fully financed ventures that will break ground soon and be completed within two years.

One of the projects, at 121 W. 125th St., has even signed a lease for a 44,000-squarefoot Target, The Post has learned exclusively.

The ever-growing Target brand will be part of an ambitious new 17-story project between Malcolm X and Adam Clayton Powell boulevards named the Urban League Empowerment Center. The mini-tower designed by Beyer Blinder Belle will house a new headquarters for the venerable nonprofit dedicated to advocacy and economic empowerment for African Americans.

It will also have 170 affordable rental apartments, a civil-rights museum, 73,000 square feet of offices for community groups and a total 90,000 square feet of retail. Construction is to start this fall.

The team behind the Urban League project consists of BRP, Dabar Development, L+M Development Partners, Taconic Partners and the Prusik Group. The latter three are also behind the Essex Crossing complex downtown.

Other 125th Street developments west of Fifth Avenue include a Whole Foods retail complex, several national chains, an enlarged Studio Museum in Harlem, new apartment towers, and a Marriott Hotel where the Apollo Theater nearby will operate a performing-arts center.