‘This Would Be Like Losing Our CBGB’

On a recent Friday, the bright seaside melodies of Colombia’s Pacific Coast floated out over a quiet side street off Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights. Inside Terraza 7, two singers sashayed onstage while the audience danced along the narrow aisles between the bleacher seats and small stage. Throughout the set, the band grew from three to six members while the crowd shouted in delight. A man listening near the bar downstairs shimmied in his seat, which was visible to the second story through an opening near the upstairs stage.

Taking in the scene, it would be difficult to imagine that this packed club and community center was in danger. But earlier this month, the venue’s owner, Freddy Castiblanco, had posted a call for help: Terraza 7 was “at risk of eviction due to rising economic pressures in the post-pandemic era.” Castiblanco’s rent was rising and he’d lost the income generated by the club’s COVID-era outdoor seating. Now, he is seeking donations to ward off the prospect of eviction, and asking for political help in getting the venue culturally landmarked. For Jackson Heights locals and many musicians across New York City, the possibility of losing Terraza 7 is unthinkable.

“This would be like losing our CBGB, an institution that gave birth to all this music style,” says Esneider Arevalo, a chef who often ends culinary tours of his neighborhood at Terraza. (In the 1990s, Arevalo also booked hardcore shows at ABC No Rio on the Lower East Side.) “In a few years from now, we’re gonna hear about this or that singer, or this or that musician who got their start at Terraza.”

Terraza is more than a music venue; it is a cultural and political crucible, serving as a kind of town square with beer and quesadillas for Jackson Heights and Elmhurst. As Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who held a town hall at Terraza during her first congressional campaign, tells me, “Terraza 7 is easily one of the most important cultural gems and community institutions in all of Queens.” Jessica Ramos, the state senator for the area, says “the closure of Terraza 7 would yield a serious blow to the quality of life of Colombians and Latinos in my district — that is no exaggeration.”

Since 2002, Terraza has showcased music from almost every region of Central and South America, the Caribbean, Spain, North Africa, and India. A recent week’s events had included a screening of a film on timba — the polyglot sounds popular during the Cuban economic upheaval of the 1990s — and, as part of a recurring queer-music series, a young Brooklynite named Adriana Vergara performed a mix of Peruvian, Venezuelan, and Chilean compositions, accompanied by two guitarists and her 70-year-old father.

“Terraza hearkens back to the legacy of New York,” says guitarist and CUNY professor of Latin music Benjamin Lapidus. “The kind of cultural mixing that’s happened here since the ’20s and ’30s.”

Castiblanco opened Terraza shortly after moving to Queens from Colombia. He was floored by the neighborhood’s local diversity — over 160 languages are spoken in Jackson Heights — but found that the different communities tended to keep to themselves. There also wasn’t really a devoted place to hear live music in the neighborhood. Through the music and other events he booked, he sought to emphasize the connective tissue of diasporic roots underlying all of this music and the people who had made it. “How migrations,” he says, from Africa and elsewhere, “generate the musicality of the Americas.”

John Benitez, a bassist from Puerto Rico who helped start Terraza’s recurring jam session, says, “Everything that happens at Terraza is connected to the movement for unity and peace and transforming the community.” But Alevaro says that business is down in the area in light of the NYPD “blitz” to “clean up” Roosevelt Avenue, and Ramos tells me that even when restaurants along the stretch are busy, spending is down because residents are hurting financially: “People have a lot less disposable income,” she says. “We haven’t fully recovered from the pandemic.”

Terraza 7 has been facing eviction court proceedings since the fall, after its landlord demanded payment of several years of discounted or unpaid rent, plus late fees. Castiblanco first faced the threat of displacement in 2016 when his original lease ran out and the building was sold to a new owner. The business instead seemed safe for a while, but the rent has risen, first to $5,000 a month to $10,000. He was able to work out a discount, paying $7,500 for months. But even with the benefit of pandemic-era street seating, which could fit dozens more people than the small space inside ever had room to accommodate, there was never enough money. In addition to SBA loans, Castiblano has borrowed nearly $200,000 to stay afloat. On top of that, he now owes his landlord over $150,000. He says posting the video asking for help got his latest court date postponed from January 16 to late February. “Many people ask, ‘Why don’t you move to Brooklyn or Long Island City?’ It would be easier where the people have better purchasing power,” Castiblanco says. “But I have a cultural and political responsibility to be here.”

His hope is that his fundraiser can help to free him from the debts to his landlord, and then he can find a new space in Jackson Heights to continue Terraza 7. Advocates say it’s crucial for the business to stay in the area. “Terraza 7 has also given back endlessly to the local community over the years — from pandemic support to political organizing to unite people in challenging times,” Ocasio-Cortez says. “We cannot allow the endless greed of ever-rising rents to push them out.”