CLINTON HILL — A block of Putnam Avenue will be co-named for a local black businessman — after a vote by the local community board to reject the request last year sparked accusations that the community ignored prominent African-Americans in street renamings.
The street, between Grand Avenue and Downing Street, will be known as Cecil A. Collymore Way, named for the man who supported Clinton Hill's business community at a time when drugs and crime were rampant in the neighborhood.
The co-naming effort was sponsored by Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo, after Community Board 2 voted last year not to support it.
The rejection by CB2 spurred backlash among supporters who accused the board of repeatedly dismissing requests to confer the honor on well-known African-Americans.
Renee Collymore, Cecil Collymore’s daughter and a former district leader who will be seeking election again this year, said she has been pushing for recognition for her father for the last six years.
The street co-naming will be signed into law Thursday, along with the co-naming of 64 other streets, after receiving support from Cumbo and Borough President Eric Adams.
“I am extremely happy that the council member and the borough president are conscious of all that has taken place in our communities in the city and in the United States today,” Renee Collymore said. “Words cannot express the emotion that is taking place in my household.”
Renee Collymore said her father, originally from Barbados, invested in Clinton Hill when few people were willing to open new businesses in the 1970s and 1980s due to high levels of crime and drug use. He died in 2003.
“It was a family effort to help better Fort Greene and Clinton Hill at a time when no one wanted to come and invest in it, when no one wanted to live on those streets,” Renee Collymore said.
The proposal to co-name the street was rejected by the community board in October due to “bad internal procedures,” according to CB2 District Manager Rob Perris.
While the board’s transportation committee was in favor of co-naming the street for Collymore, the motion did not pass a vote by the full board because several members felt they did not have enough background information on him, leading to several abstentions, Perris explained.
The community board, whose role is advisory to the City Council, later changed its street naming protocol to require supporting documentation on candidates for co-naming.
While the City Council is the only government body that can approve co-namings, each community board handles recommendations differently, and some like CB2 have procedures in place to review requests.
CB2 has historically shown a lack of bias in street namings, with eight streets named after people of color, four after white people and two after institutions, records show.
Perris said CB2 is “conservative” in its street co-namings and that some community board members questioned the political motives behind Cecil Collymore's honor, given his daughter's current election campaign.
“Increasingly it seems like street co-naming is all about politics," Perris said, "and CB2 would rather not get involved in all that."
