Talk Bronx New York

 A Library With a Past Ponders Its Future

TWO years ago, a lanky teenager named Adolfo Abreu who lives in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx got involved in a campaign to turn the shuttered Fordham Library Center into a youth center. Unhappy about the dearth of activities available to him and his friends, he spent months rallying support for the cause, only to learn in late May that the city was eyeing the former library for use as an animal shelter. 

“I felt like, wow, they care more about animals than us?” said Adolfo, a high school freshman who serves as the president of Sistas and Brothas United, the youth branch of the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, a local organization. “We’ve been fighting for this for years. That part of the Bronx is like a wasteland, and having an animal shelter isn’t going to improve it.”

The former library, a handsome three-story red brick building with arched windows, sits on a downtrodden block of Bainbridge Avenue near Fordham Road’s bustling retail corridor. It has been locked since 2005, shortly before the new $50 million Bronx Library Center opened one block to the west.

Adolfo Abreu isn’t the only one with grand visions for the building. Members of local community groups have envisioned the nearly 30,000-square-foot former library as outfitted with a computer lab, a boxing ring and an art studio, and accommodating activities like after-school tutoring.

The city’s health department is working to open animal shelters in Queens and the Bronx, which currently have only pet receiving centers. The agency has a contract with New York City Animal Care and Control, a nonprofit group, to operate shelters.

Jessica Scaperotti, a department spokeswoman, confirmed that the agency was considering the former Fordham Library as a site for a shelter, but said there was no timetable for the plan. The issue was reported in The Norwood News, a local newspaper.

Despite potential obstacles, leaders of the effort to turn the old library into a youth center said they would soldier ahead. Among them is Fernando Cabrera, the pastor of New Life Outreach International in Kingsbridge Heights.

“There are plenty of other places an animal shelter would be suitable,” Mr. Cabrera said. “The community isn’t going to stand for that here.”

SOURCE

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

Ears Cocked for the Sound of Blasting

KAREN ARGENTI, a 57-year-old environmental consultant who lived on the west side of Jerome Park Reservoir in the Bronx for 20 years, still remembers how the music from concerts in Harris Park, on the reservoir’s east side, used to carry across the water.

That sound carries over water so well is one of many reasons Ms. Argenti can’t believe that for at least three weeks and possibly longer, the city’s Department of Environmental Protection plans to do blasting along the 94-acre reservoir’s eastern edge, near Goulden Avenue and 205th Street.

“The blasting is going to be just like the music,” she said. “People are going to hear it everywhere.”

The agency has long intended to build shafts near the reservoir to connect tunnels, which are part of the Croton Water Filtration Plant project, a treatment facility that the agency is building beneath Van Cortlandt Park. But a few weeks ago, the department announced that instead of drilling to make space for the shafts, it would blast.

According to Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, this plan is significantly different from the one laid out in the 2004 environmental impact statement that outlined the scope and effects of the project. “The fact is when the D.E.P. was trying to sell this to the community, we were specifically told there would be no blasting,” Mr. Dinowitz said, adding that he would like to see a revised environmental impact statement before the work goes further.

But with blasting scheduled to begin in early September, residents have little time left to voice their objections.

Read more..

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

Court Rejects Suit Against Tenant Organizers

The owners of five buildings in the Bronx have failed to raise a triable issue of fact that tenant organizers interfered with their ability to get mortgages, a state judge has ruled in granting summary judgment dismissing the owners’ case. In New Line Realty V Corp. v. United Committees of University Heights, 1021/04, Supreme Court Justice Sally Manzanet-Daniels of the Bronx found that the owners had failed to submit “any evidence in admissible form” to prove that tenant organizers from the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition had taken actions to frustrate their ability to get refinancing for their buildings.

The decision will be published Monday. The owners had claimed that as a result of picketing, circulating fliers and other activities aimed at Washington Mutual Bank, the bank had pulled a letter of intent to refinance a mortgage issued in 2000. The owners claimed damages of $1.8 million.

The organizers denied any intent to interfere with the owners’ prospects for refinancing, and contended that instead they were trying to enforce a provision in the existing mortgage that required the owners to keep the buildings in good repair. The owners’ claim for tortious interference with prospective economic advantage was the sole surviving claim of their lawsuit, filed in 2004, which also raised claims of trespass and libel against the Northwest Bronx group, a 30-year-old, clergy-based community organization.

The owners had withdrawn their trespass claim, and Justice Manzanet-Daniels had dismissed the libel claim in 2006. Under a law adopted in 1992 designed to protect tenants and others who are asserting a First Amendment right to petition government, Justice Manzanet-Daniels wrote, the owners were required to show that their claims against the Northwest Bronx group have “a substantial basis in law and fact.”

The 1992 law (Civil Rights Law §§70-a, 76-a) was designed to curb lawsuits aimed at deterring the exercise of free speech rights by both creating a higher standard to establish a claim’s viability and giving defendants the right to counterclaim for violations of their speech rights. Suits aimed at stifling efforts to petition the government for redress of grievances and to express views at public hearings have been dubbed “Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation,” or SLAPP, suits.

Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

This Article Was Submitted By a TalkBX Reader.

If You Would Like an Article Posted on TalkBX You Can Send The Article To

TalkBox AT TalkBX.Com or VIA Our Contact Page

The Lost Supermarket: A Breed in Need of Replenishment

Even Kings and Queens are facing their own food crisis.

Kings and Queens Counties, that is.

A continuing decline in the number of neighborhood supermarkets has made it harder for millions of New Yorkers to find fresh and affordable food within walking distance of their homes, according to a recent city study. The dearth of nearby supermarkets is most severe in minority and poor neighborhoods already beset by obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

According to the food workers union, only 550 decently sized supermarkets — each occupying at least 10,000 square feet — remain in the city.

In one corner of southeast Queens, four supermarkets have closed in the last two years. Over a similar period in East Harlem, six small supermarkets have closed, and two more are on the brink, local officials said. In some cases, the old storefronts have been converted to drug stores that stand to make money coming and going — first selling processed foods and sodas, then selling medicines for illnesses that could have been prevented by a better diet.

The supermarket closings — not confined to poor neighborhoods — result from rising rents and slim profit margins, among other causes. They have forced residents to take buses or cabs to the closest supermarkets in some areas. Those with cars can drive, but the price of gasoline is making some think twice about that option. In many places, residents said the lack of competition has led to rising prices in the remaining stores.

The residents of the Ingersoll Houses in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, have been without their local supermarket since last year, when it was razed along with a strip of stores and restaurants to make room for new housing and retail developments. What used to be a quick jaunt across the street for Della Dorsett is now a tricky trek, as she maneuvers her electric wheelchair several blocks uphill along Myrtle Avenue, returning home with plastic bags dangling from handles and nestled between her feet.

Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

Bronx Beaches Are Mostly Private

A member of the American Turner Club had the place all to herself last week.

It may not be Miami, San Diego, or even the Rockaways, but the Bronx - yes, the Bronx - has 10 beaches where visitors can enjoy a summer swim.

While most people know about Orchard Beach along the sprawling shoreline of Long Island Sound in Pelham Bay Park, there are several lesser-known and less-crowded spots to take a dip in the waters of the northernmost borough.

Six of the sandy shores are side-by-side private beaches along a stretch of Clarence Ave. from Throgs Neck to Country Club. They accept new members, but require applicants to be sponsored by a current member in good standing.

“It’s a strip of heaven that we try to keep secret,” said Carol Richardson, who has been working at the American Turner Club, the largest club on the strip, for almost 20 years.

“Oh, wow. This is the Bronx?” she said people exclaim when they see the view from their 180-seat dining room, and from the beach for the first time.

The private club’s 200-foot-wide beach has brownish sand, a pier and a small lawn. There are rocks and some cigarette butts in the sand, making it an entryway to the water, not a spot for sunbathing.

All the beaches on the strip look out on City Island, and the smell of salt water makes the borough’s air pollution problems seem like they belong to another, distant place. The Health Department checks the water almost weekly and assures it is healthy for swimming.

The Danish American Beach Club down the street has a bar, dozens of picnic tables and a sun deck. It is only accessible to its 400 members, but the club accepts new members.

“I don’t think anyone realizes there are beach clubs like this. In the summer, you have to watch where you step because there are a million little children running around,” said Matt Curry, 32, the caretaker of the club, who lives on the property and was a member as a child.

Next door, a member of the White Cross Fishing Club said most people do not know about the strip and “that’s the way we like it.”

He said prospective members must be recommended by two members in good standing to join the 100-member club.

“Strictly private, for members only,” says a sign outside.

The Morris Yacht and Beach Club on City Island also has a beach -its waters are tested regularly for swimming - as do Locust Point and the Schuyler Hill Civic Association.

Orchard Beach is the largest Bronx beach, at 1.1 miles, and the only one run by the Parks and Recreation Department.

SOURCE: NYDailyNews.com

Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post