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Morning Matters — 4/6/12

6 Apr

Good morning. Today’s Morning Matters is dedicated to the Heritage Field opening and the Times’ coverage.

Heritage Field opened yesterday on the site of the old Yankee Stadium. (Photo: J. Moss)

The New York Times is in loooove with Heritage Field, the high-quality three-diamond spread in the footprint of the old Yankee Stadium, so much so that it merited above-the-fold placement on the front page. It is a lovely sight, but it is laden with the recent history of the city prioritizing the Yankee corporation over the kids in Highbridge and other nabes surrounding the stadium. As Juan Gonzalez reported two years ago in the Daily News …

Three and a half years after Mayor Bloomberg closed huge portions of Mullaly and Macombs Dam parks to make way for the Yankees new $1.5 billion stadium, the replacement ballfields the city promised are nowhere to be seen.

It has been nearly 18 months since the last game was played in the old stadium. Yet its concrete hulk still looms like a gray ghost across the street from the Yankees new palace.

I’ll admit, I have a pretty firm point of view on the democracy-ignoring deals regarding the new stadium, its impact on taxpayers and the community around it. I wrote this lengthy editorial in the Norwood News back in 2006. But I think I’m looking at it with fairness and not bias when I say that in a story regarding a land use issue this big for the Bronx an interview or two with one of the prominent local activists or former community board members who opposed the stadium deal (they were ditched from CB4 by then-BP Adolfo Carrion, Jr.) would have been warranted.

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It’s Official: The Times Declares South Bronx Is ‘Gentrifying.’ But Is it True?

26 Mar

By Gregory Lobo Jost

This time it’s not even a prediction, but a bold declaration that the south Bronx has been gentrified. Based almost entirely on anecdotal evidence, Joseph Berger of The New York Times Metro section has painted a picture of an area of the south Bronx on the Grand Concourse as a new middle class hub where white folks don’t just go for Yankee games.

While the amazing housing stock along the lower Grand Concourse — mostly built in the 1920s and 30s and chock full of art deco gems — is no secret, the area has been largely working class/working poor with a smattering of middle class black and Latino residents (think public sector workers) for the past few decades. (Tip: Read Constance Rosenblum’s Boulevard of Dreams if you are looking for a great book about the housing on the Concourse and its fascinating history. I appropriately read it while on jury duty on 161st Street a few years ago.) Berger simplifies the complicated reasons behind the decline of the area down to “white flight and urban disenchantment,” though to be fair that’s not the point of the article.

The point, rather, is that “more middle-class professionals, many of them white, are … buying co-ops with sunken living rooms and wraparound windows for under $300,000 in Art Deco buildings that straddle a boulevard designed to emulate the Champs-Élysées.” While this is likely true, the question is whether the numbers are significant enough to declare something so controversial as gentrification having already occurred.

Continue reading →

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Fresh Direct Opponents and Armory Activists Hit the Streets Tonight

21 Mar

Activists in the south and northwest Bronx are taking to the streets this evening to make their voice heard on two development projects — the Kingsbridge Armory and Fresh Direct respectively.

As Bronx Matters reported yesterday, the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition will be rallying in front of the Kingsbridge Armory tonight at 6 p.m. to call for living wage jobs at the massive landmark, schools in the National Guard building behind the armory, and the creation of space for small businesses and community use

Development proposals are due this week for the Kingsbridge Armory (Photo: J. Moss)

The event takes place at the corner of Reservoir Avenue and Kingsbridge Road. Daniel Beekman at the Daily News reports that a development tea called the Kingsbridge National Ice Center seems to be favored by local politicians like Councilman Fernando Cabrera.  More on the rally here.

Activist Harry Bubbins protests the Fresh Direct deal outside the State of the Borough Address in February. (Photo: J. Moss)

South Bronx activists and supporters from other parts of the borough are headed to the upper west side of Manhattan to launch a boycott of Fresh Direct, which is set to build a facility in the Harlem River Yards with an estimated $130 million in taxpayer subsidies. Opponents object that public money is being used to support an effort that they say will deliver more truck traffic to an asthma-prone community and block efforts to build the Harlem River Greenway. More info from the press release after the jump.

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Back on Road to Armory Redevelopment?

20 Mar

The Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition will be rallying once again to bring good jobs and community uses to the Armory. (Photo by J. Moss)

Yet another chapter is beginning in the two-decade old development saga at the Kingsbridge Armory. Proposals for the facility are due in later this week and whether this latest try at reimagining the landmark will stick and work is anyone’s guess. The Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, which has been laying down its visions for the Armory since the late 1990s is holding a rally there tomorrow night at 6 p.m (corner of Kingsbridge Road and Reservoir Avenue). They’re calling again for living wage jobs and also for community space, opportunities for small businesses and no big-box retail. All that stuff got a little buried in the push last time around for what ended up mainly as a living wage campaign. That fight successfully buried the mayor’s proposal for a Related shopping mall at the Armory (a la Gateway near Yankee Stadium) as a new borough president, Ruben Diaz, Jr. got in front of an organized, union-backed campaign. The Council defeated the mayor’s plan handily, which is a real rarity in land use issues.

I’ll have a lot more to say about this as I’ve been covering the Armory since 1993 when District 10 Superintendent John Rehill wanted to see a massive complex of public schools there right after the National Guard handed over the keys of the head house and drill hall to the city. In the meantime, if you’re interested, here’s a link to a bunch of stories (67 actually) about the Armory that I and other wrote for the Norwood News, and my detailed take on what was going on at the time the Council defeated the mall plan.

—Jordan Moss

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Morning Matters — 3/20/12

20 Mar

Good morning, everyone.

Here’s some video documenting this year’s annual painting of the giant shamrock on the 231st Street near Broadway for St. Patrick’s Day.

Tenants and advocates will really outside Bronx Housing Court today in support of a bill, sponsored by Council Member Fernando Cabrera, that will require landlords to post a tenants’ bill of rights in their buildings. The legislation has been stalled for a year.

All that redistricting politics was like a big dose of castor oil for most New Yorkers, but now it’s a hard reality, at least in terms of the Congressional lines. Want to see what district you have landed in? Just plug in your home address here.

Congressman Jose E. Serrano tweeted this morning that it was 20 years ago today that he won a special election for his Congressional seat.

Speaking of anniversaries,  not Bronx related (though I heard he once appeared in a folk festival at Hunter College, now Lehman, in the 60s): Bob Dylan celebrates 50 years since he first recorded with Columbia Records.

The opposition to Fresh Direct is ramping up with the group South Bronx Unite launching a boycott against the grocer which is planning on building a factory in the Harlem River Yards. For more on the fledgling South Bronx Unite and a recent gathering in Melrose with veteran foes of the Atlantic Yards development, check out this Bronx Matters exclusive story.

For Bronxophiles this is kind of a must-read. Artists have converged on the stately but empty rooms of the Andrew Freedman home on the Grand Concourse to create installations related to the building and what was left in the areas that the Mid-Bronx Senior Citizens Council does not occupy. The creations won’t be permanent tenants but organizers hope to draw attention to the property and the possibilities of it being a business incubator. There are already plans, the Times reports, to fills some of the empty space with a bed-and-breakfast.

The Center for Public Integrity gave New York a grade of D for its predilection for corruption. Believe it or not, New Jersey got the best grade.

Speaking of corruption, alleged we should say, Pedro Espada’s defense attorney infuriated the judge yesterday.

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Morning Mattters, 3/19/12

19 Mar

Spring may be a few days away but with a high of 72 today that doesn’t seem to matter. Here are some news items Bronx Matters finds interesting/important today.

Lead paint violations are still a big problem in the Bronx.

Residents at 1055 Grand Concourse have been without heat and hot water for two weeks.

The new lines for the 29th Senate District, which replaces the 28th and is currently represented by Jose M. Serrano, takes quite the circuitous journey through the Bronx and the east and west sides of Manhattan. (Print version of this article seems to have mistakenly included the photo of Serrano’s dad, Congressman Jose Serrano.)

A Bronx high school near Yankee Stadium isn’t going to get to take any swings this season at the baseball fields that replaced the old stadium.

Tired of waiting for good food and fresh produce to come to the neighborhood, the Mary Mitchell Family and Youth Center on Mapes Avenue in Crotona has started its own fresh food delivery service.

Developers have just a few more days to submit a Request for Proposals for the redevelopment of the Kingsbridge Armory, and the borough president isn’t that happy with what he’s seen so far. [link includes RFP]

State Senator Ruben Diaz, Sr. is standing up for his aide who allegedly embezzled $75,000 from a nonprofit Diaz helped to found and assailing Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

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Brooklynites Share Development Fight Lessons with Boogie Down Brethren

12 Mar

A panel discussed the "Battle for Brooklyn" after its showing at the Bronx Documentary Center. From left, Atlantic Yards opponent Daniel Goldstein, filmmaker Michael Ganlinsky, Council Member Letitia James, Good Jobs NY director Bettina Damiani and Bronx activist Mychal Johnson. (Photo: J. Moss)

By Jordan Moss

They came to watch the “Battle for Brooklyn.”

They left armed with some advice for their fledgling fight in the Bronx.

The documentary film, shown at the Bronx Documentary Center in Melrose last Thursday evening, chronicles the seven-year civic trench war against the Atlantic Yards development project in downtown Brooklyn. About 30 south Bronx residents and activists, all adamantly opposed to Fresh Direct building a factory in the south Bronx’s Harlem River Yards, came to see it and learn some lessons about what they’re up against.

The Brooklyn project, led by mega-developer Bruce Ratner, is bigger and more expensive and ultimately handed defeat to project’s opponents.

But the story still resonated in the Boogie Down.

Continue reading →

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Morning Matters — 3/1/12

1 Mar

Good Morning Readers – Thanks for checking out Bronx Matters. I’m going to try to post links to a few Bronx things that matter every morning, say by 11 a.m. or so. So, here we go!

Visitors to the Point CDC take a look at an interactive model of the Sheridan Expressway and its surroundings. (Photo: Kimberly Devi Milner/Hunts Point Express)

It’s long been the dream of many activists, citizens and environmentalists in Hunts Point (that’s in the southeast Bronx for those of you reading this beyond the borough) to decommission the 1.25-mile Sheridan Expressway in order to make way for parkland, affordable housing and more waterfront access. With a federal Department of Transportation grant of $1.5 million, city agencies are studying the future of the Expressway and surrounding arteries. Hunts Point Express reports that an interactive model of the Expressway is making its way through the borough to engage citizens in planning for its future. For more background on the community’s efforts to eliminate the Sheridan, and an illustration of what could replace it, check out this Express article from last year.

The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development targets 200 crumbling buildings a year in its Alternative Enforcement Program, and it has just added another batch of them with 56 in the Bronx, reported Dan Beekman in yesterday’s Daily News. Through the program, HPD makes emergency repairs and bills the landlords who neglected the critical work in the first place. Want to find out what HPD has on record for the condition of your building? Just plug in your address at HPD Online and you’ll find out that and a lot more.

The battle over Congressional lines is heating up, pitting Bronx Democratic chief Carl Heastie (who represents the northeast Bronx in the Assembly) against fellow lawmaker Keith Wright, of Manhattan, who wants a chunk of the Bronx for Charlie Rangel’s district. Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. issued a statement yesterday placing himself firmly in Heastie’s corner and arguing against the use of the Bronx as spare parts for Manhattan’s legislative districts. “We will not stand for any plan that would slice the Bronx into many small pieces,” Diaz said. “For decades, the Bronx has had at least one Congressional district entirely within its borders, and this should not change.” The district he is referring to is Jose Serrano’s.

—Jordan Moss

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