Talk Bronx New York

Completed in 1914, the Bronx Borough Courthouse on 161st Street and Third Avenue has served as home to the borough government and a courthouse. The Beaux Arts-style building features a granite exterior, marble interiors, and a statue of Justice above the south entrance. The building was abandoned in 1978, but later designated as a historic landmark by the city. It has been refurbished and was home to various community groups, but today it sits empty. Without an owner or use, preservation groups worry that the building is again falling into neglect and disrepair. Source..

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New Bronx Academy Gets Promise From Department of Education

The Department of Education has approved plans for a new charter school to be placed inside the landmark courthouse on Third Avenue and 161st Street.

“That charter school process is not easy,” said Reverend Wendy Calderon-Payne of the Urban Youth Alliance. “They make you prove that you have the ability to run a charter school.”

For three years, religious leaders in the South Bronx worked and prayed to bring a charter school to the courthouse, which has been closed since 1978. The Virginia-based organization Imagine Schools was granted the charter, but the facility will be run by the Bronx organization Urban Youth Alliance and will be called the Bronx Academy of Promise.

The theme of the school will be career education. Along with learning the core subjects, students will be taught what jobs are associated with those subjects and how to get into the various fields.

“We are promising the young people here something very, very special,” said Reverend Timothy Birkett of the Church Alive community church. “We are going to give them an opportunity to look forward to their future, and we are promising things are going to be better than they are today.”

For 30 years, various groups have been unsuccessful in developing the property. Although the charter has been granted, there are still millions of dollars in construction that needs to be done.

While construction is going on, community leaders are going to have to pay close attention to security at the site. Over the years, there have been a number of break-ins, where fixtures and electrical wiring have been stolen.

Leaders say new copper pipes already been put in for heating have been stolen. The building was also steam cleaned, but someone tagged it with graffiti.

“We are asking the community to support us; don’t tear us down,” said Calderon-Payne. “Let the building go up so that our children, their children, their nieces and nephews can come and get a great education.”

Currently Boriqua College is building a campus next to the courthouse. The charter school will go from kindergarten to the eighth grade.

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Subprime Meltdown: Expressed By Depressed Homes In The Bronx 

Williamsbridge — The glass is gone from the windows of 767 East 216th St. The wooden house sits on a sinking yard — its windows staring out with dead unblinking eyes. At 762 East 217th St., menus and newspapers clutter the tiny vestibule, the front door doesn’t lock and the buzzers don’t buzz, although people still live in the apartments. The house at 749 East 213th St. just looks disappointed; the proud brick three-story could have sheltered several families but it faces the intersection hollow, no glass in its storm door, no life in its windows. At 1041 East 216th St., newly built and utterly empty, a line of pink violation notices from the Department of Buildings hangs like some sad bunting welcoming the foreclosure age.

This is what the subprime meltdown looks like: block after block of brick one and two family homes in this working class neighborhood in the northeast Bronx are for sale, in foreclosure proceedings or simply abandoned, blank doors and windows gaping like open mouths. Fifteen lis pendens — notices of foreclosure — were filed for property in Williamsbridge since February 15. There were 86 during January; 54 in December.

There are six homes in foreclosure or headed there on one short block of East 217th Street, just off the commercial district of White Plains Road. Tenants at 720, a newly constructed brick building sold as co-ops, are in foreclosure. CitiBank’s mortgage unit alerted the owner of 732 just up the block that it began foreclosure proceedings the day before Valentines. 746 is in foreclosure. So is 747 across the street. And 760 is up for auction. And 762 next door. And Nancy Lewis at 815 on the corner of the next block is getting notices from Washington Mutual, who sold she and her handyman husband a $400,000 mortgage in 2006.

“A lot of people got scammed,” she said last week, after picking up her daughter from school. “People got riped off. Mhmm. And I’m one of them,” she said, shaking her head. The Lewises bought their house so their grown children and grandchildren could all gather in one place. “We wanted a place they could all come to, a backyard for the kids to play.”

Ms. Lewis was reluctant to discuss her finances in detail, but the $3,000 a month mortgage payments are unaffordable. She believed the mortgage broker’s version of new math when he sold she and her husband their home, not realizing until later that brokers earn a cut of every mortgage they sell, the bigger the mortgage, the bigger the cut.

She’s not alone. In 2006 Williamsbridge had one of the highest rates of homeownership in the Bronx, 31 percent, nearly matching the citywide average, according to data analyzed by NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Public Policy. But while the neighborhood had the highest rate of mortgage lending in the borough bankers once shunned, a full 50 percent of those mortgages, and 51 percent of home equity loans, were subprime.

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