Talk Bronx New York

New York promotes the Bronx’s parks and gardens

Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is blooming!

Despite its urban image, the Bronx has 7,000 acres of park land, about 25% of its total area. In addition to Yankee Stadium and the Bronx Zoo, the borough’s green spaces include the New York Botanical Garden; a 19th century garden overlooking the Hudson River called Wave Hill; and Van Cortlandt and Pelham Bay parks, where you can bird-watch, play golf and ride horses.

New York City is touting the Bronx’s green attractions in a new promotion. “Most people don’t think of the Bronx like that. We want to open their eyes to the actual physical beauty of the Bronx,” said George Fertitta, CEO of NYC & Company, the city’s marketing and tourism organization.

CITY GUIDE: Where to sleep, eat and shop in New York

It’s quite a turnaround for a place that once symbolized urban decay. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning,” sportscaster Howard Cosell famously said during a 1977 Yankees game, as footage aired of a building in flames near the stadium. An epidemic of arson plagued the city at the time.

New York is a different place now, billed as America’s safest big city and attracting a record 46 million tourists last year. Many of those tourists are repeat visitors, and “their appetite for something other than Times Square and the Statue of Liberty is enormous,” said Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion Jr., who got an enthusiastic reception talking up the Bronx at a recent tourism conference in Berlin.

Green spaces only comprise part of the Bronx’s attractions. There is also Italian food on Arthur Avenue, a hip-hop music tour, a bed-and-breakfast called Le Refuge Inn, and saltwater swimming at Orchard Beach. For more information, visit the Bronx Tourism Council website at www.ilovethebronx.com or NYC & Company at www.nycvisit.com/bronx. Meanwhile, here are some highlights.

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New South Bronx Apartments Named For Local Nun

A once-empty lot in the South Bronx is now the site of new apartments.

The Sister Thomas Apartments at 870 Southern Boulevard in Hunts Point was officially named Thursday.

The abandoned city-owned lot, once a reminder of the crime that plagued the neighborhood in the 1970s, was developed by the South East Bronx Community Organization into 103 units of affordable housing.

“When I came up today in my car and I went through the area, and it was extraordinary,” said former Mayor Ed Koch, who attended the dedication. “It was alive. And I remember when I went through this area when I became mayor and it was dead or dying.”

“And Lord make this home a happy place and bless it from above. So that’s how my new family knows how much I love them,” said Sister Thomas of the Sisters of Charity, whose name graces the apartments.

Sister Thomas was one of those who led the push to clean up the neighborhood and bring housing back to the borough.

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Increased Flow of Council Grants to Private Groups Leads to a Backlog 

Speaker Christine C. Quinn said, “It’s fair criticism to say there wasn’t enough vetting of capital budget allocations” in the past.

 The Northeast Bronx Development Corporation received City Council grants of $4.7 million despite a troubled financial history.

Increased Flow of Council Grants to Private Groups Leads to a Backlog 

An Orthodox Jewish school in Queens was to get $500,000 for a swimming pool. A social service agency in Queens plagued by financial mismanagement was set to receive $100,000 for a shelter and a van.

A nonprofit corporation in the Bronx that has filed only one tax return in nine years was to be granted more than $4.7 million for a housing complex, a community center and a hip-hop museum.

Every year, the City Council receives a huge wish list of requests for capital project money for local organizations. And in recent years the Council leadership has deemed some $500 million in projects worthy of public finance, even projects that are sometimes parochial, overly ambitious or sponsored by organizations with spotty financial histories.

Investigators reviewing Council spending have focused on grants that community groups receive to offset their operating expenses. But the capital budget that legislators use to finance big-ticket items like new buildings or buses is a larger pot of money: a half-billion dollars versus $360 million. And for years it has been shrouded in bureaucratic secrecy.

Once, council members rarely used their capital money to do more than finance a pet project within a city agency, perhaps road repaving in their districts. But increasingly, larger amounts of taxpayer dollars have been set aside for church groups, nonprofit groups and other private organizations, earmarked by council members to buy these groups equipment or renovations, or sometimes new buildings.

The practice has grown so expansive that the city has hired extra staff to shepherd the projects, which are often fraught with legal complications. Hundreds of groups approved for the money, meanwhile, have never received it. Some requests have been stalled because of constitutional questions over the separation of church and state, others because the groups did not have the financial or technical means to carry out the project — even with city aid. Many simply languished, yet remained on the books, year after year.

In fact, the backlog has grown so big that last year the Council and the Bloomberg administration stopped financing any new capital projects for private groups until they could develop a better way to choose which programs deserve the money.

“We really had to find a way to get this under control,” said Speaker Christine C. Quinn. “What was happening is the money was getting put in the budget and then it wasn’t moving, which is really a waste.”

The unspent money could have gone to schools or libraries or health clinics, Ms. Quinn said.

Advocates say it would be wrong, however, to view the broad expanse of capital spending on nonprofits as wasteful.

“Without city assistance, the not-for-profit sector would not be able to maintain the quality of facilities that are necessary to meet the needs of the poor and vulnerable citizens of New York,” said Ronald Soloway, director of governmental relations for the UJA-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies.

The city’s capital budget is meant to finance permanent improvements to its infrastructure, like new buildings or bridges, or expensive equipment like buses. As with the operating budget, the mayor’s office sets aside a portion of the capital budget for the Council to spend as it deems fit.

The Council spends most of its money on public schools, libraries and parks. But increasingly over the last five years, resources have been directed to outside nonprofit groups. The current capital budget shows at least 570 projects totaling more than $490 million, though the city no longer supports many of the projects.

Many of those projects that never came to fruition had sailed through a review process that required only minimal vetting and that the City Council used for many years to set spending priorities, according to city records and interviews. Only after the money was allocated and on the books did the vetting process really begin.

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Foreclosures affect Bronx homeowners 

Devon Honeyghan spent $25,000 renovating the kitchen of his Bronx house in preparation for selling it and moving to Georgia.

But two “For Sale” signs and an abandoned house standing all in a row across the street have him doubting he will make any of his money back.

Honeyghan, a 42-year-old livery cab driver, lives in Wakefield, the working-class northeast Bronx neighborhood hit hardest by the mortgage foreclosure crisis.

Statistics released this month by the Center for Responsible Lending show the value of nearly 400,000 homes in the Bronx has dropped $4.9 billion because of surrounding foreclosed homes.

The foreclosure crisis began with missed mortgage payments and first-time owners losing their homes. It later hit banks and the financial industry, but its most recent victims are the neighbors who live on streets with abandoned homes.

Honeyghan, who bought his new house in Georgia at the market’s peak, is so desperate to sell his Bronx home that he offered to buy the abandoned house across the street, which has become an eyesore and is filled with stray cats. He could not because it is locked in a divorce case.

“I just don’t see myself getting my money back,” he said. “I was going to spend $10,000 on the bathroom, but it’s not worth it.”

Carmen Rosa, district manager of Community Board 12, says most foreclosed homes in the neighborhood have not deteriorated - just yet - but residents fear what is to come.

“You see the signs up - ‘For Sale, For Sale, For Sale’ - on every street,” Rosa said.

“At our board meetings, residents are very concerned about the impact the foreclosures will have on the value of their homes,” she said, “but they are also concerned if someone walks away from their home that people will break in and they will have to become watchdogs. There is a social impact, too.”

Paul Founsette, 54, a contractor who lives on Ely St. in Wakefield, for example, sweeps the sidewalk and driveway of the two-story brick house across from his. It was foreclosed and has been vacant for more than a year. The “For Sale” sign seems to have given up too, toppled over in the driveway.

“If it’s not clean, it’s going to blow across,” Founsette said. “It just looks bad for everyone. It’s a rough time.”

Two blocks from Founsette is a foreclosed home with an overflowing mailbox and a truck with blown-out tires abandoned out front.

And, posted on telephone poles on every corner throughout the neighborhood are flyers from land sharks calling out to those at their lowest point of desperation - “Wanted - Houses and Land, Bought All Cash, Top $$$.”

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Bronx Residents’ Crime, Safety Concerns Lead Quality of Life Survey

A citywide survey has everyone raving about their ‘hoods, but Bronxites are apparently not so happy in theirs - when it comes to crime and safety.

The quality of life survey by the Citizens Committee for New York City found issues Bronx residents also rated as most important - but of the lowest quality - were clean sidewalks, streets and open spaces; clean air; public officials’ responsiveness to neighborhood needs; quiet neighborhoods and good public schools.

They were most satisfied with proximity to public transportation as well as shops, restaurants, parks and playgrounds. They were also happy with the borough’s diversity and having neighbors they get along with.

The survey questioned 340 Bronxites. While statistically a low sample, the Citizens Committee said it sought a broad range of respondents - in parks, on street corners, outside the Bronx Public Library and on the Grand Concourse.

“I think it is significant that everywhere else in the city beside the Bronx considers their neighborhoods relatively safe,” said Jemilah Magnusson, spokeswoman for the Citizens Committee, a nonprofit group that promotes civic engagement. “Even if it is just perception.”

John Robert, district manager of Community Board 2 in Hunts Point-Longwood, said he thinks the results are representative.

“All of the outer boroughs suffer from the stepchild thing, but we’re maybe the third stepchild,” he said. “The Bronx is on the back burner.”

Residents elsewhere gave their boroughs a fair-to-excellent rating on safety. Bronxites gave the borough’s safety a lower rating of poor to good. Read more..

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