In the late 1980's, planners from the NYC Housing and Preservation Department unveiled a huge urban renewal plan for a 63-block area in the Melrose section of the South Bronx. Characterized by large swaths of vacant land and city-owned property, Melrose came to symbolize the public and private sector's wholesale abandonment of the South Bronx in the 60's and 70's. The proposed redevelopment proposal was called the Melrose Commons Urban Renewal Plan, and like most urban renewal plans, it called for large site assemblages of land requiring the displacement of long-time residents and businesses in the area. Despite the City's abandonment of the neighborhood, there were still nearly 6,000 people living in Melrose who were determined to remain and fight for their community's future. These residents and businesses formed the Nos Quedamos Committtee to resist the Melrose Commons Plan's call for displacement and the development of market rate, low density housing. (Nos Quedamos is Spanish for "We Stay"). For several years, with assistance from planners and organizers, Nos Quedamos embarked on an intense, weekly series of open community meetings with city officials, and politicians to force wholesale revisions to the original plan.

Nos Quedamos achieved an enormous victory by forcing the City to re-write the original Melrose Commons Plan to minimize displacement, increase the affordability and density of the proposed housing, and provide for open space and community facilities. In 1993, the radically revised Melrose Commons Urban Renewal Plan was submitted to the NYC Planning Commission for public review. However, developers opposed the new Melrose Commons, so the City Planning Commission added lethal amendments, hoping to derail the community plan. NYLPI organized a citywide meeting of community boards, planners, and activists engaged in local planning, and convinced other communities that an assault on the plan's integrity jeopardized the future of all community plans unpopular with City Hall. Community boards and groups across NYC expressed support for the Melrose plan. The City Council ultimately approved the plan in 1994 - without the Commission's amendments.