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Morning Matters — 3/27/12

27 Mar

Good morning! It’s cold out there — kind of a more normal March day.

Quite a number of hits (a Bronx Matters record actually) on two of our posts yesterday by Gregory Lobo Jost on The Times’ controversial announcement of south Bronx gentrification and Bob Kappstatter’s take on Governor Cuomo appointing Assemblyman Peter Rivera to be state labor commissioner. If you haven’t read them they are worth a read — and a comment. Keep the conversation going.

Daniel Beekman continues his solid reporting of Bronx housing issues. Today, he tells the tale of a group of West Farms tenants who banded together to make repairs their absentee landlord has avoided. The want to form a co-op.

Sixteen Bronx schools are contaminated with PCBs leaking from light fixtures, NY1 has learned. Citywide 245 schools in 149 buildings are contaminated. To see the list of schools click on link on the left side of the NY1 story (X before a building number in the first column of the PDF indicates the Bronx.)

Speaking of school contamination, parents are still seeking answers on the conditions at PS 51/Bronx New School which drove them from their Bedford Park building to a former Catholic school in Crotona. Norwood News has the story.

An accountant testified in the Pedro Espada trial yesterday. Not a good day for the former senator.

Jeanmarie Evelly, a Norwood News reporter who is also a contributing editor at City Limits, has this important story in the latter about solitary confinement going way up in city jails.

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Peter Rivera’s New Job and the Race He Leaves Behind

25 Mar

By Bob Kappstatter

The long national nightmare, as they say, for Bronx Assemblyman Peter Rivera finally ended on Saturday when Gov. Cuomo named him new state labor commissioner.

Assemblyman Peter Rivera

The announcement came at the annual Somos El Futuro winter conference of the state Assembly/Senate Puerto Rican/Hispanic Task Force, where Rivera is an elder statesman whose appointment can’t but help Cuomo solidify his Latino support.

Rivera, according to all reports, has pretty much been searching for a new paycheck outside the state Assembly for a number of years now, while still hedging his bets over running for another term or for a judgeship.

Before his new state gig, Rivera’s last hope was reported to be a run for the plum job of Bronx Surrogate, whose office doles out assignments (and fancy fees) to party-faithful lawyers to handle the estates of persons who die without wills.

Although Rivera was saying as late as Friday that he was weighing a run for Surrogate, that dream pretty much crashed and burned recently when the Bronx Democratic Party’s non-partisan judicial screening panel put the kibosh on it, labeling the attorney and former assistant Bronx D.A. “unqualified.”

Not that he would have received party backing in the judicial primary (Dem Party Boss Carl Heastie reportedly already has a favorite candidate) or might have survived his next Assembly primary race, with the opposing candidate already backed by a powerful local state senator.

Although baseball and politics ain’t over ’til it’s over, a number of Bronx political insiders say attorney and party operative Luis Sepulveda now holds the winning edge to fill Rivera’s 76th Assembly District seat in Parkchester/Castle Hill/West Farms/Van Nest.

His nearest challenger in the Democratic primary is Rivera’s longtime chief of staff, Danny Figueroa, who only recently began to plow the district for votes – and name recognition.

Continue reading →

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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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Redistricting Update

16 Mar

Alex Kratz of Norwood News has the latest — including coverage of a community meeting on the issue and mention of State Senator Jeff Klein’s reversal of a pledge to vote against redistricting.

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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 — 3/12/12

12 Mar

Good morning. Enjoy the warmth (unless you’re worried about climate change, which I guess we all should be.)

The Times has a brief, clear and comprehensive roundup of where things stand with redistricting. Just what I was looking for.

Depending on how it all shakes out, State Senator Adriano Espaillat, who represents northern Manhattan and parts of Riverdale, might take on veteran congressman Charlie Rangel.

The corruption trial of former State Senator Pedro Espada and his son begins this week. The Wall Street Journal sums up the charges and looks at the battle of the healthcare centers that Espada ran to hold on to their Medicaid funding. State Senator Ruben Diaz, Jr. the only member of the “Amigos” club still in office, continues to be a big Espada supporter.  “I have not found another one like Pedro Espada, he’s strong, firm, and he’s a good legislator,” he told the Journal.

State Senator Jeff Klein was the subject of a New York Post investigation over the weekend into his business and real estate dealings.

Congressman Eliot Engel hired a Republican lobbyist, Nick Spano, to help him get the district lines he wanted. Didn’t work out so well. the Riverdale Press reports. Engel spent $40,000 but he lines drawn by the legislature remove much of his Riverdale base from the district.

The work of Bronx artist Daniel Hauben, who has long put borough scenes on canvas, will be a central feature of Bronx Community College’s new library. To see a series of images of Hauben’s wonderful work, click here.

Hunts Point residents rallied for the closure of Club Heat, a strip bar where a woman was killed in December. Hunts Point Express has the story.

 

 

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