Talk Bronx New York

A Community Plan for the ‘Highway to Nowhere’

North of Westchester Avenue, where the Sheridan now runs on grade, the Community Plan would create 1,200 new homes with retail and community space below. Open space would enable residents of Longwood and West Farms to easily reach the Bronx River and the new and redeveloped parkland of the Bronx River Greenway.

Sheridan ramp traffic menaces pedestrians and subway riders and interrupts the Westchester Avenue commercial strip

Removing the Sheridan would allow development of a retail and community hub at the intersection of Whitlock and Westchester Avenues, linking the Number 6 train stop with the station designed by Cass Gilbert for the New York and New Haven Railroad.

For 10 years, South Bronx residents have been fighting to get the state to tear down an old expressway so that a greener and more sustainable mixed-use neighborhood can take its place. The community’s vision fits nicely with the goals of the city’s long-term sustainability plan, PlaNYC2030. But will the city embrace this precocious community-based effort?

The Highway to Nowhere

South Bronx residents have fought for a decade to cast off the shadow of Robert Moses’ Sheridan expressway — a 1.25-mile, little-used stretch of highway locally known as “the highway to nowhere.” In its place they aim to build more than 1,000 sustainable and affordable apartments, greenways, parks, resident services and progressive businesses that will offer living-wage, long-term jobs to Bronx residents in the city’s burgeoning “green industry” to Bronx residents.

One of Moses’ few projects that never reached full fruition, the Sheridan Expressway carries an average of 37,000 cars a day (to compare, on any given day, approximately five times as many cars traverse the nearby Cross Bronx Expressway). Construction on the Sheridan began in 1958, and Moses named the road for his good friend, the Bronx commissioner of public works, Arthur V. Sheridan, who died in a car accident in 1952.

Determined to provide yet another option for drivers traveling between New York City and New England, Moses originally envisioned the Sheridan to continue four miles north from the Cross Bronx Expressway through the New York Botanical Gardens and the Bronx Zoo, to the New England Thruway. In one of the first of several defeats that eventually ended Moses’ reign, advocates for the gardens and the zoo blocked his plan. This was good news for the city, but the South Bronx was left with the redundant stub of an expressway that connects the Cross Bronx to the Bruckner — a purpose already served by parallel stretches of the Major Deegan Expressway and the Bronx River Parkways.

Stunted or not, South Bronx residents say that the road does its share of damage. Not only does it cut them off from access to the Bronx River, but the Sheridan also separates Bronx Community Districts 2, 3 and 9 from one another. Home mostly to African American and Latino families with significantly lower than average household incomes, these districts also suffer from some of the highest asthma rates in the entire state.

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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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DEP Seeks Rate Hike As Institutions & Co-Ops Owe Millions

Call it Law and Water.

While the city Department of Environmental Protection turned off the water at nearly 100 single-family homes earlier this month, the agency has left the water running at dozens of Bronx institutions and co-op buildings that owe millions in unpaid bills.

To make matters worse, many of those institutions say they struggle to pay the bills because the DEP is charging them for years of misread meters and other billing mistakes.

The chaotic billing situation exists even as the DEP seeks a 14.5% water bill hike.

City Council opponents of the hike fume it would not be necessary if the DEP collected the $600 million owed by 15% of its customers.

The DEP says it did not have the ability to recover the money until last December, when Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council gave it authority to impose property liens on deadbeats.

In early April, the DEP announced it was shutting the water off at 93 homes across the city that owed between $1,342 and $2,330 - a total that amounted to no more than $220,000.

Meanwhile, according to a list of delinquent payers the DEP released after receiving it via a Freedom of Information Act request, the top 10 debtors in the Bronx owe $6 million - most of them exempt from the lien sale.

They include St. Vincent De Paul, a nursing home which owes $844,465; Leland Gardens, a condo building on Leland Ave. which owes $961,642, and a housing development fund co-op building at 2089 Arthur Ave. which is $870,813 in arrears.

Many of the largest unpaid Bronx bills are from nursing homes that say they are strapped for cash and dependent on government funds, including St. Vincent de Paul, Workmen’s Circle MultiCare Center and the Hebrew Home for the Aged.

Soloman Rutenberg, Workmen’s Circle’s executive director, said the home was hit with a $400,000 bill after the DEP found it had been misreading the home’s meter for several years. Read more..

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Growing Co-ops Where the Rubble Reigned 

EDUARDO RODRIGUEZ, a 51-year-old with an athletic build and a garrulous manner, used to play stickball amid the burned-out buildings in Hunts Point. He never dreamed that four decades later he would seek to return to live in Hunts Point, the South Bronx neighborhood of his youth.

“Are you kidding?” Mr. Rodriguez said the other day. “It was a horrible place. Much of it was abandoned. You’d see dope addicts on every stoop and rooftop.”

The story of the rebirth of the South Bronx has been slowly unfolding for three decades, but only in recent years have developers turned their attention and resources to this particular community.

In a sign of how far Hunts Point and neighboring Longwood have come since the early 1970s, when more than 100 murders a year were recorded in the local precinct, compared with 8 last year, construction on what according to the borough president’s office is the area’s first new cooperative apartment building is poised to begin this month. Mr. Rodriguez, who manages 80 parks and playgrounds in the South Bronx for the city’s Parks Department, plans to apply for one of the 50 apartments.

“Hunts Point has made a 180-degree turnabout,” said Mr. Rodriguez, who lives in Highbridge, a couple of miles to the west. “It’s much cleaner. The murder rate is way down. It’s completely different.”

The new co-op, a sleek, seven-story building sheathed in glass, is set to rise on the site of an abandoned park at Fox Street and Leggett Avenue. While the site is actually in Longwood, many residents and natives, among them Colin Powell, have long referred to the area as Hunts Point. The building, which is to open in the summer of 2009, will offer energy-efficient appliances along with a fitness center, a landscaped roof, a community room and parking.

With support from the city and the state, apartments will cost $89,000 to $242,000 and be available to families with annual incomes of $37,000 to $91,000. The first 25 apartments will be sold to neighborhood residents.

John Robert, district manager of Community Board 2, anticipates no lack of prospective local buyers, even though the median household income in the area is only $18,000, below the federal poverty level of $20,650 for a family of four.

“We’ve heard stories for the longest time of families moving out of the area because it’s all low-income and they earn too much to get subsidized housing,” Mr. Robert said. “This is perfect for working-class people who can afford a little more than the area average so they can stay in the community where they grew up.”

Les Bluestone, a partner in the company developing the co-op, envisions the new building as an encouraging signpost pointing to the neighborhood’s future.

“If this shows that there’s a market for units at these prices, it will encourage other affordable housing,” said Mr. Bluestone, whose Blue Sea Development Company built housing for moderate-income families in nearby Melrose and Morrisania. “We’re hoping this will be a catalyst for other projects in the area, showing developers that ‘Come on in, the water’s fine.’ ”

SOURCE: NYTimes.com Read more..

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Bronx Community Boards Schedule

COMMUNITY BOARD 1 (Melrose, Mott Haven) meets at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, April 24 at CB1 Office, 3024 Third Ave. Call (718) 585-7117.

COMMUNITY BOARD 2 (Longwood, Hunts Point) meets at 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 30, at Urban Health Plan, 1065 Southern Blvd. Call (718) 328-9125.

COMMUNITY BOARD 4 (Highbridge, Mount Eden and Concourse) meets at 6 p.m. Tuesday, April 22, at Bronx Lebanon Hospital, Murray Cohen Auditorium, 1650 Grand Concourse. Call (718) 299-0800.

COMMUNITY BOARD 5 (Morris Heights, Fordham, Bathgate and Mount Hope) meets at 6 p.m. Wednesday, April 23 at St. Simon Stock School, 2195 Valentine Ave. Call (718) 364-2030.

COMMUNITY BOARD 9 (Soundview, Clasons Point, Parkchester, Bruckner and Harding Park) meets at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 17 at CB9 Office, 1967 Turnbull Ave. Call (718) 823-3034.

COMMUNITY BOARD 10 (Throgs Neck, City Island, Pelham Bay, Co-op City, Zerega, Westchester Square, Country Club and Edgewater) meets at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 17 at Preston High School, 2870 Schurz Ave. Call (718) 892-1161.

COMMUNITY BOARD 12 (Wakefield, Williamsbridge, Woodlawn Eastchester and Baychester) meets at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 24, at CB12 office, 4101 White Plains Road. Call (718) 881-4455.

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