An Urban Revival.(the Bronx)(Brief Article)

It used to be that Nicolas Bielma could hardly give away a tortilla. When he opened his store in Hunts Point in the early 1990s, the South Bronx was a burned-out wasteland. What use could the locals--mainly African-Americans and Puerto Ricans--possibly have for a bodega where festive, 1950s Mexican music blared from speakers and the shelves were piled high with chili peppers? It turns out Bielma was on to something: today, his storefront anchors a bustling commercial strip that includes a Mexican music dealer and restaurant. The aisles of his store are mobbed with customers from neighboring Mott Haven and beyond. And the tortillas? "We are selling 70 to 80 cases a week," Bielma says. "Sunday I cannot talk to you, I am so busy."

For years, it seemed the Bronx would never recover from the devastation of the 1960s and 1970s, when entire blocks burned to the ground and longtime residents fled in droves. The population in the local district that includes Bielma's shop fell 44 percent between 1970 and 1980. But the Bronx is on the rebound. And immigrants are the driving force. According to the latest Census data, the population of the Bronx now stands at 1.3 million, up 11 percent from 1990--a stunning turnaround that few expected. The vast majority of recent arrivals are of Hispanic origin, many from Mexico. Together with smaller numbers of immigrants from the West Indies, Asia and elsewhere, they are rebuilding the borough as they rebuild their lives. "The Bronx has come back from the dead," says Emmanual Tobier, a professor of economics and planning at New York University.

From his community-development office in a converted warehouse a couple of miles away from Bielma's shop, Paul Lipson has watched the miraculous urban resurrection begin to spread to his decimated neighborhood in Hunts Point. In the 1980s Hunts Point's modest commercial district had a 60 percent vacancy rate. No longer. On a recent day, Lipson maneuvered his pickup truck through streets packed with new immigrant-owned stores and marveled at the changes. "It's hard to know who lives in the neighborhood," he says. "But it becomes visible if you look at the businesses." Warehouses long abandoned by the upwardly mobile children of Italian, Irish and Puerto Rican immigrants have new signs adver-tising Dominican, Mexican and Jamaican wholesalers. A local park once ...