The tony Upper East Side may not be the friendliest neighborhood for Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, but an assortment of locals say they're are ready to welcome their soon-to-be new neighbor.
Just a few blocks away from Gracie Mansion, the owner of Punjabi Junction said she can’t wait to serve the neighborhood’s high-profile transplant from Astoria, Queens.
“I would wholeheartedly welcome Zohran Mandami,” Harpreet Sohal, who owns the Indian bodega, said. “He should know that he has a part of him on the Upper East Side, right beside Gracie Mansion.”
Sohal, whose homemade platters and samosas are popular with cabbies, encouraged the city’s first South Asian mayor to come “say hi to the auntie.” She also serves the mayor’s favorite drink.
“My husband is the boss of chai,” she said.
While the Upper East Side is thought of as one of the city’s most homogenized, wealthy neighborhoods, there are still plenty of residents who embrace the democratic socialist who once said billionaires shouldn’t exist.
Robert Snyder, the official Manhattan Borough historian who has lived on the Upper East Side since 1991, said Lexington Avenue serves as a dividing line, with Manhattan’s elite to the west, along with storied institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Guggenheim.
“Once you cross east of Lexington Avenue, it is a different neighborhood,” Snyder said. “It’s not all rich people,” he added.
Gracie Mansion, a five-bedroom Federal-style home, sits on East End Avenue and 88th Street, an area that is part of Yorkville.
Mamdani will be joining presumptive Council Speaker Julie Menin, who represents the Upper East Side, as well as NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who lives in the neighborhood.
The John Haynes Holmes Towers in the Upper East Side.
Around 60% of the neighborhood’s precincts voted for Andrew Cuomo in the November election.
But Sohal and other longtime residents attest said there’s another side to the Upper East Side.
Walk-up rent-regulated apartments — where tenants would benefit from Mamdani’s promise of a rent freeze — line many of the neighborhood’s blocks and reflect its beginnings as an immigrant enclave. Starting around the early 1900s, the area began attracting immigrants including Germans, Hungarians, Czechs and the Irish, according to Snyder.
The neighborhood is home to two NYCHA complexes within walking distance of Gracie Mansion. Staffers at the Stanley Isaacs Neighborhood Center, the nonprofit located on the public housing sites that serves both seniors and children, said a mayoral visit is long overdue.
“In my six, seven years here, there's been no mayor visit,” said Jemma Marens, a program director for aging services. “I think our center shows a great depiction of what New York City looks like.”
Many residents have been struggling under the rising costs of living, Marens said. On First Avenue between 90th and 91st Streets, the line outside a food pantry regularly snakes around the corner.
Some longtime residents blame gentrification, which accelerated after the Second Avenue Subway opened in 2017, making Yorkville more accessible.
Reporters staked out Gracie Mansion last year after Mayor Adams was indicted.
“We're actually losing housing that's affordable to these high rises, where studios and one bedrooms start at $1 million dollars,” said Ben Kallos, who grew up in Yorkville and represented the district as a City Councilmember for eight years.
Charles Panoff, a real estate agent, said the neighborhood is home to a broad mix of income levels.
“You have people making $30,000,” he said. “You have people making millions of dollars living on East End Avenue.”
Panoff, who worked as an intern on former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s campaign, recommended Mamdani schmooze with regulars at the Mansion, a popular diner on the corner of 86th Street and York Avenue often frequented by mayors.
“I’ve sat at the counter there with a construction worker who lives around the corner and somebody who is on the Rent Guidelines Board, whose family owns more property than most families around the city,” he said. “This is where you will find a cross section.”
New York City mayors have often resisted moving to Gracie Mansion. Mayor Eric Adams — who has described the house as haunted — only spent a couple days a week at Gracie during the height of a federal corruption investigation. The case was dismissed at the request of President Trump’s Justice Department.
His predecessor, Bill de Blasio, dragged his feet on moving his family from Brooklyn. De Blasio never quite fit in, and notoriously had his security detail drive him to a YMCA in Park Slope so he could exercise.
There are still signs of the Upper East Side's history as a haven for Germans, Hungarians, Czechs and Irish immigrants.
“De Blasio’s problem was he liked to stick it to those folks,” said Chris Coffey, a Democratic political strategist who grew up on 89th Street and Park Avenue. “The Upper East Side is not just the Upper East Side. It comes to stand in for business.”
At the very least, Mamdani can avoid a workout scandal by taking advantage of Asphalt Green, a sports complex that is a block away from Gracie Mansion. Having played on a recreational soccer team, the mayor-elect can use Asphalt Green’s soccer field, which regularly hosts pickup games.
He is also welcome to run on their treadmill and swim in the facility’s Olympic-sized pool, said Jordan Brackett, the CEO of Asphalt Green.
The new mayor may come to appreciate one quality about Upper Eastsiders who work with the famous — discretion.
Asked whether any previous mayors have been Asphalt Green members, Brackett declined to comment.
