Talk Bronx New York

Talks Focus on Bronx Golf Course

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and City Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr. announced on Monday that the city had started talking with Sanford Golf Design to design and build a championship-caliber golf course over a former garbage dump at Ferry Point Park in the Bronx, potentially giving new life to a project that has been dogged by years of delay and problems. The project’s price tag has nearly quadrupled since it was proposed in 1998, to well over $80 million, by one estimate.

The proposed 18-hole, links-style Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course would be built using city capital funds, with an estimated completion by the fall of 2010. A public hearing on the proposal has been scheduled for 10 a.m. on June 26, 22 Reade Street in Manhattan. After construction has begun, the city plans to seek proposals from businesses to operate the golf course and make additional improvements, including a clubhouse and restaurant.

However, New York City Park Advocates, a community group that has often been critical of the Parks Department, quickly issued a statement criticizing the proposed deal. The group said that the city had not completed a study of the project’s environmental impact, noting that the site included a former landfill.

The project has a long and troubled history.

In 1998, during the administration of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, the Parks Department announced plans to have a developer, Ferry Point Partners, build a golf course. It would have received a 35-year lease in exchange for financing the $22 million project, which was to be completed by 2001. The 222-acre site called for a driving range, a clubhouse, two playgrounds, a banquet hall and a restaurant overlooking the East River, as well as a waterfront esplanade.

Read more..

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

For Bronx Water Plant Being Built 10 Stories Down, a Towering Price Tag

In a city of big projects, it ranks among the biggest. New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection is building one of the largest water filtration plants in the world in a 10-story-deep hole it blasted out of bedrock in the Bronx. When completed in 2012, the plant, capable of purifying 300 million gallons of water a day, will be buried there.

But the plant, which will filter water from the Croton watershed in Westchester County, is no Bronx treasure chest. Even as construction moves forward, questions about soaring costs and delays continue to plague the project.

The cost is now estimated at nearly $3 billion, a huge jump from the $660 million city officials estimated when they announced an audacious plan in 1998 to build the plant below the surface of Van Cortlandt Park. They vowed that the park would be made as good as new, even if that meant replacing whatever was lost during construction. They now plan to rebuild a driving range on top of the buried plant.

Some officials and others fear the final tab could climb even higher, and in the process push up water rates. On April 1, the city comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr., announced that he was starting an independent audit to determine whether city officials understated the original price, to get the plant built in the Bronx rather than Westchester. Besides scrutinizing the complicated accounting, Mr. Thompson will have to sort through accusations by some residents and officials of deliberate distortions of costs, and intimations that the project has been tainted by mob influence, though nothing has been proved.

His would not be the first effort at monitoring the expenses since work on the big hole began in late 2004. The city’s Independent Budget Office examined the project and came up with a cost estimate last September of $2.8 billion, significantly higher than the Bloomberg administration’s last previous estimate of $2.1 billion. The budget office is now comparing its cost estimate with the city’s earlier projections and is expected to report on it in the next few months.

The city’s Department of Investigation hired a law firm, Stier Anderson L.L.C., last year to monitor the progress of the construction. The law firm is now affiliated with Thacher Associates, a fraud detection company. Keith Schwam, a spokesman for the department, said the firm was keeping track “of various contractors, subcontractors and personnel” at the Bronx site.

While the plant’s opponents concede that it is too late to stop the work in Van Cortlandt Park, they say that shining more light on the project’s financing will reveal whether there was any wrongdoing in the site selection process. 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

Carrión to Name Campaign Chairmen 

Adolfo Carrión Jr., the Bronx borough president and candidate for city comptroller, is expected to name two co-chairmen for his campaign: former State Comptroller H. Carl McCall and Leo J. Hindery Jr., a longtime media executive, according to advisers to Mr. Carrión.

Mr. McCall was the Democratic candidate for governor in 2002, losing to George E. Pataki. Mr. Hindery is a former chairman and chief executive of the YES Network. He also served as the finance chairman of the mayoral campaign of Mr. Carrión’s predecessor, former Borough President Fernando Ferrer, in 2005.

The presence in the campaign of two prominent names is intended to give added heft to Mr. Carrion’s effort to win citywide office in what is expected to be a crowded race for comptroller. Late last year, Mr. Carrión announced that he would not run for mayor — as he had long planned — but for comptroller instead.

Mr. Carrión’s decision to run for the lower position came after intense urging from many politicians in the Bronx and the rest of the city. They contended that Mr. Carrión was unlikely to prevail in a Democratic mayoral primary that also included William C. Thompson Jr., the current comptroller.

The politicians, mostly black and Hispanic elected officials, told Mr. Carrión that his effort to become New York City’s first Puerto Rican mayor would be crippled by dividing the minority vote between him and Mr. Thompson, New York’s only black elected official holding a citywide office. And they said that neither Mr. Thompson nor Mr. Carrión would have much of a chance without solid support from black and Hispanic voters.

Mr. McCall, who sought unsuccessfully to become the state’s first black governor, has remained active politically, endorsing various candidates for statewide and local office.

SOURCE: Blogs.NYTimes.com

Read more..

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

Ferry Point Golf Course Finally Approved To Go From Dream To Reality

It was supposed to be a world-class golf course, designed by Jack Nicklaus, and best of all, it would cost the city next to nothing. Developers would pay for it all and recoup the cost of the city-owned course from greens fees.

But nearly 10 years and $15 million later, the Ferry Point golf course in the Bronx is still a duffer’s dream waiting to happen. And on Friday, for the first time, the city announced that it — not a private developer — would pay the unknown millions needed to complete the project.

The Parks and Recreation Department put out requests on Friday for proposal seeking a developer to build the course, at city expense, and another to operate it.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the city comptroller, William C. Thompson, announced the plans in a joint news release that heavily emphasized the bid for contractors, but made only glancing reference — one subordinate clause — to the fact that the city will pay for the project.

Read more..

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