Talk Bronx New York

* It’s unfortunate that The Post continues to ignore the real issue at the Kingsbridge Armory — the use of taxpayer subsidies to finance private industry while offering little or no benefit to the community (”Kingsbridge Commissar,” Editorial, Dec. 18).

The Bronx has the highest poverty rate of any US urban county, despite the significant development that took place here under the Bloomberg administration. The mayor’s development model has not worked for us, and it is time we ask the developers who eat from the taxpayers’ trough to do better.

For The Post to compare my demand for community benefits to armed robbery is insulting, and it obscures the true culprits in this regard — billionaire developers who raid the taxpayers’ wallets while offering only the bare minimum in return.

It is time for corporate profiteers to play by a new set of rules that put the people first.

Ruben Diaz Jr.

Borough President

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The Maldonado family had been living without gas, electricity or hot water, but did not move out until the school year ended.

 As the school year sailed to a close last month, Arielle Figueras crossed the stage in her cap and gown and proudly accepted her fifth-grade diploma.

The next day, she was homeless.

Arielle, a petite 11-year-old, and her parents, brother and sister packed their belongings and arrived at the intake center for homeless families in the South Bronx. Though they had been fighting with their landlord for months and their gas and electricity had long been shut off, they refused to leave their apartment while school was in session.

“She was graduating, so we had to wait,” Arielle’s mother, Marilyn Maldonado, said. “We just didn’t want to disrupt their routines. We couldn’t do that to them.”

Many New Yorkers view summer as a time for vacations, camp and lazy days at the beach. But city officials have been preparing for quite a different summer ritual: the swelling of the population of homeless families.

They call it the summer surge, and say that this year could be the worst yet.

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Two schools created as part of the Bloomberg administration’s effort to replace large, failing high schools with collections of small ones have been added to the state’s list of failing schools.

The state list, officially known as Schools Under Registration Review, includes schools that the State Education Department deems to be performing so poorly that it has the authority to shut them down if they do not improve.

But the list has become less meaningful as Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein has, in recent years, acted on his own to close dozens of struggling schools — some of which have been on the SURR list and some of which have not.

In fact, in announcing the newly named schools, state education officials noted that there were three more New York City schools that would have been placed on the list had they not already been scheduled to close. Read more..

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BurdenNEW YORK CITY-A 30-block swath of the South Bronx would be rezoned to include 3,400 housing units and as much as 841,000 square feet of new commercial space under a plan the Bloomberg administration released on Monday. The unveiling marks the beginning of the public review process for the rezoning along the southern end of the Grand Concourse, part of the “South Bronx Initiative” first announced by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2006.

At present, the neighborhood is predominantly industrial, with about 20% of the building space vacant, according to the Department of City Planning. The industrial sector would be protected under the new zoning, but the city also hopes to encourage the development of market-rate and affordable housing to accommodate the South Bronx’s increasing residential population. Current zoning in the so-called Lower Concourse district does not allow residential development. Read more..

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Retail, office development finally gets off ground in South Bronx

Shoppers crowd the Hub retail district, where Harris Stores, below, sells 300 items a day from its 99-cent sidewalk rack.

The South Bronx

site had sat empty since a mayoral groundbreaking ceremony.

The mayor was Abe Beame, and the year was 1976. The ceremony marked the first of three decades of false starts in a slice of the city that had more than its share of undelivered promises.

But finally, last year, megadeveloper Stephen Ross built a two-story retail and office building at Third Ave. and E. 156th St., and renovated the parking garage next door.

Shoppers in the neighborhood known as the Hub said they like what his firm, the Related Cos., delivered.

Yonarys Ramos runs errands at the building’s Rite Aid on her way home from work in the admissions office of Boricua College because the drugstore stays open until 9 p.m.

Ramos, who has four kids, gets school supplies at its Staples. And she thinks the prices are right at its Nine West outlet store — her cousin bought a purse there for just $5.

“I hope they build more stores,” said Ramos, 31.

She’ll get her wish if Related becomes a joint-venture partner with Blackacre Capital and Cypress Equities in a massive development planned nearby at a nearly empty, six-acre site at E. 149th St. and Bergen and Brook Aves.

Related wants in on the proposed 1.1 million-square-foot project, called the Plaza at the Hub. Before getting involved, the developer is asking the Bloomberg administration to move a city agency into an office building that would be part of the project, sources said.

Also, Related is seeking changes in the development plan, for instance, to include more housing. The current design calls for up to 250 apartments, 375,000 square feet of shops, a large supermarket, a 14-screen movie theater and about 1,000 parking spots.

Officials at the city Economic Development Corp. and execs at Related — which built the ritzy Time Warner Center and is now constructing the Gateway Center mall at the former Bronx Terminal Market — wouldn’t discuss the proposed project. Regarding the Third Ave. project, Glenn Goldstein, the president of Related’s retail division, did say he’s in “advanced negotiations” with a casual restaurant about renting the last vacant space, on the ground floor of the garage.

While development officials were reticent, real estate brokers were eager to talk about changes the proposed Plaza at the Hub project would bring.

“A regional-tenanted corridor would get an opportunity to have lots of national tenants — and parking spaces, so people would come in by car,” said broker Steve Lorenzo of NAI Friedland Realty. “It would bring the Targets of the world to the Hub and make it a place for 21st-century shoppers.”

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