Gentrified Fool - South Bronx (SoBro)

[virtualchoirboy]

I remember a while back someone mentioned the development in the Bronx. This is but a taste of what is coming. I am not opposed to development, but at what cost? These are pictures from the Mott Haven/Port Morris section of the Bronx. Most of the businesses in this area are Antique stores.
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y41/virtualchoirboy/th_SoBro006.jpg (http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y41/virtualchoirboy/SoBro006.jpg)
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y41/virtualchoirboy/th_SoBro013.jpg (http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y41/virtualchoirboy/SoBro013.jpg)This is the Clocktower, it seems to be the cornerstone of this art movement. Just beyond this is the newly reconstructed 3rd avenue bridge that leads directly into Manhattan.
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y41/virtualchoirboy/th_SoBro014.jpg (http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y41/virtualchoirboy/SoBro014.jpg)
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y41/virtualchoirboy/th_SoBro012.jpg (http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y41/virtualchoirboy/SoBro012.jpg)This is one part of the Piano Factory loft spaces.
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y41/virtualchoirboy/th_SoBro011.jpg (http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y41/virtualchoirboy/SoBro011.jpg)This is another part of it.

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y41/virtualchoirboy/th_SoBro009.jpg (http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y41/virtualchoirboy/SoBro009.jpg)This is the main entrance, this building is massive. It takes up most of the block, save some furniture stores...new furniture stores.
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y41/virtualchoirboy/th_SoBro010.jpg (http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y41/virtualchoirboy/SoBro010.jpg)

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y41/virtualchoirboy/th_SoBro008.jpg (http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y41/virtualchoirboy/SoBro008.jpg)Those are the PJs down the block from these 2200/mo loft spaces. No matter, half of Queensbridge projects have gone Coop. Im figuring the same will happen here.
This is only a few blocks, there are developments going up all over this area.

[ablarc]

Will the Bronx live down its reputation?

[ASchwarz]

No public housing in NYC has ever been converted to coops. This is an urban myth.

I don't really see the problem with artists in Port Morris. It was nonresidential and there was formerly little commercial activity (outisde of a few storage warehouses) so there's no residential or commercial displacement.

Why can't the Bronx have artists? Nothing wrong with a creative community in the South Bronx. Diversity is a good thing.

[virtualchoirboy]

there isnt a problem with diversity or artists. It becomes a problem when there is soo much "diversity" that the neighborhood becomes monochromatic.

[NoyokA]

there isnt a problem with diversity or artists. It becomes a problem when there is soo much "diversity" that the neighborhood becomes monochromatic.

That my friend would be an oxymoron.

I believe your concern is that the South Bronx will become gentrified. Gentrification does not occur when artists move in, it occurs after the artists move in and are themselves forced out as has happened in Tribeca, Hells Kitchen, Williamsburg, etc. etc.

[virtualchoirboy]

That my friend would be an oxymoron.

I believe your concern is that the South Bronx will become gentrified. Gentrification does not occur when artists move in, it occurs after the artists move in and are themselves forced out as has happened in Tribeca, Hells Kitchen, Williamsburg, etc. etc.

I didnt mean diverse in the literal sense. If you look at Harlem, for example, pretty soon its going to be soooo diverse that the composition of the neighborhood will be flip flopped. Meaning the majority will become the minority and vice versa.

[virtualchoirboy]

About the housing projects going co op: My mother, who works for housing, says they are moving towards privatizing AND conversions. There are test cases around the city...such as queensbridge.

[krulltime]

Vacant Lot Was Their Paradise


http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2006/07/24/nyregion/24bronx.xlarge1x.jpg
Geraldo Justiniano watched a crew last week work on the foundation of a three-family home being put up
on East 139th Street in the South Bronx.


By MANNY FERNANDEZ
July 24, 2006

Technically, the lot on East 139th Street near Willis Avenue in the South Bronx was vacant, according to city records.

Yet there was nothing vacant about it.

Over here was the camper where the guys from the neighborhood watched football games on Sundays. Over there was Izzy’s 1981 Yamaha motorcycle, an old motorboat, a wheelchair, three Rottweilers and the cages for Mr. Lopez’s chickens. Children from across the street used it as a playground. There were parties, domino games, volleyball matches, auto-repair workshops and pig roasts.

About 12 years ago, Geraldo Justiniano decided to reclaim the abandoned lot for the neighborhood. He put up a chain-link fence, laid down some gravel and mowed the grass. And though he lives in a two-bedroom apartment a few blocks away, he would often sleep in the camper on weekends, soaking up life in the great outdoors of East 139th Street, the morning crows of a rooster his alarm clock.

When the construction crew arrived this month, no one was really surprised. Mr. Justiniano — people call him J. J. — watched one day last week as a giant claw tore a deep hole in the soil. Five three-family homes are going up on the lot, which had become known in this corner of Mott Haven by two names: La Yarda and Paradise.

“A lot of memories,” said Mr. Justiniano, 39. His friends and neighbors have been feeling equally nostalgic: On the Fourth of July, they threw him and La Yarda a farewell party.

The commercial and residential development that has transformed the South Bronx in recent years has done more than added jobs and housing. It has altered the physical landscape, filling in the empty topography that in the 1970’s and 80’s came to symbolize the decline and abandonment of entire parts of American cities.

The vacant lots of the area’s past — the eerie urban prairies strewn with garbage and the rubble of dead tenements — graced the covers of books and the pages of newspapers. They starred in Hollywood movies like “Fort Apache, the Bronx.” They drew visits from local politicians, a president, a future president and even a pope.

Yet for many South Bronx residents, the empty land was something more than an eyesore or an emblem of urban blight. Lots remained abandoned for so long that they took on an unexpected, improvisational life of their own in one of the poorest communities in the country. Now, as new apartment buildings, homes and businesses rise in the area, this small piece of gritty South Bronx history — the abandoned lot — is disappearing.

These lots were unloved for the most part, but not unused. They were dumps, drug bazaars and a breeding ground for illegal activity, but they also became community gardens, outdoor churches and places where streetwise entrepreneurs set up shop. They were home to wooden crosses, discarded couches, oil spills, beat-up cars and people like Jorge Luis Manzo, known as Choco, who years ago lived in a small wooden shack on a burned-out stretch of St. Ann’s Avenue, one of many streets devastated at the time by rampant arson.

Anthony Perez Cassino, a lawyer who is the chairman of Community Board 8 in Riverdale and grew up in the South Bronx in the 1970’s, said the abandoned lots cast the entire borough in a negative light, a reputation that continued long after they began to be replaced by much-needed housing. “It’s good to see it go,” he said of the empty spaces. “In the bigger picture, it’s for the better.”

According to land-use and geographic data from the Department of City Planning, there were 1,300 vacant parcels in the South Bronx in 2005. Many are now construction sites or are no longer empty, the result of the borough’s building boom. Since 2002, $3 billion in private and public money has been invested in residential, commercial and institutional development projects in the Bronx, according to figures from the borough president’s office. The number of new Bronx addresses issued in 2005 was 1,352, nearly double the number in 2001.

The empty lots that remain are narrow slices of pavement or large expanses of urban wilderness. Some are impromptu junkyards. Others have five-foot-tall weeds. Chain-link fences act as billboards advertising mattresses for sale and Carlo’s Lite Mover. The fences do not keep people out so much as keep them in. There are dining room chairs set on the grass, crushed beer cans, cigar butts and tables.

At a lot on Fox Street, there is a touch of gallows humor: a freshly dug mock grave and a cross at the edge of the sidewalk. At a lot at Prospect Avenue and East 156th Street, there is Mama Isabels Place, a food van that has been a neighborhood staple for years. People sit beneath the van’s canopy on cafeteria-style chairs, eating $1.25 pastelillos de carne, or meat turnovers.

And there is La Yarda.

The 100-by-100-foot space, which is being developed by the Jackson Development Group of Bellerose, N.Y., has been the scene of an unusually friendly property dance, as Mr. Justiniano, the lot’s unofficial tenant, moves out and the company, which bought the site six months ago, moves in. The developer even hired Mr. Justiniano to work as a security guard during construction.

Mr. Justiniano is short and stocky, and he has a tan as deep as any lifeguard’s from spending so many hours in the lot. He grew up in the apartment building next door, and his unorthodox view of public and private property began early, when he took over one empty lot on the block at age 9 and another at 19. Now he runs an office-supply delivery company and is the vice president of the Bronx chapter of the Lunatics, a New York City motorcycle club.

As he sat on a bench that used to be the back seat of someone’s van, he talked about the old times in Paradise. He and his friends brought in a projector to show movies on the wall. They had an Easter egg hunt for neighborhood children and once hitched a motorized water scooter to the back of a Jeep during a snowstorm. “Our own field of dreams,” said Mr. Justiniano’s friend Izzy Fortuna, 45.

At the goodbye party on the Fourth, neighbors signed a banner spray-painted with the words “Farewell La Yarda.” A woman named Sandra wrote: “We will miss the good times.” Someone else scrawled: “Home never has a name.” José E. Serrano, the Bronx congressman whose district includes Mott Haven and who happened to be in the neighborhood that afternoon, signed the banner and took home a plate of food.

“This is an example of a spot in the neighborhood that became sort of an oasis,” Mr. Serrano said. “I’ve always seen people using a lot. I’ve never seen anyone say goodbye to one.”

Mr. Justiniano is storing the camper, the children’s toys and other items at another lot at the corner. It is much smaller than La Yarda. But he thinks it will be perfect for a pig roast.


http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/07/24/nyregion/24bronx.large2.jpg
Justino Lopez greets a Rottweiler that was relocated, along with the camper, from Paradise to another lot.


Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[So Bx Resident]

NOT TOO LONG AGO, "ASchwarz" said:

"No public housing in NYC has ever been converted to coops. This is an urban myth."


"ASchwarz," please visit the official Bronx Borough President website at the following URL; "http://bronxboropres.nyc.gov/" Evidently, the Bronx Borough President himself has proven you wrong; here's a small clip of what you'll see on his site's front page:

"...This included Carrión’s leadership in the conversion of 1,865 former Mitchell-Lama rental units to co-op homeownership through 100% private investment. Residents will be able to purchase their apartments at an affordable, below-market price to realize the dream of homeownership..."

There is really no such thing as large vacant lots in the South Bronx anymore. They've all been snatched up to develop some really awesome-looking, modern buildings. Any older "walk-up tenements" in the areas surrounding these new buildings have been purchased and completely modernized as well.--- but still, this does not satisfy the demand. Potential buyers want to purchase condos, co-ops, etc. so the borough/city has begun tapping into what we affectionately call "the projects" buildings in the South Bronx and converting them to co-op apartments. There is no doubt in my mind that only a small percentage of the these "projects" tenants will be able to afford the apartments. I wonder where they'll go. In fact-- I wonder every day where the lower income families have gone for the last 10 years.

Right now, the South Bronx commands in the area of $ 350,000.00 for a single family 3-bdrm, 1.5 bath home/town-home. 4 condominium developments slated for completion by Oct/Nov/Dec 2007 will be priced at approximately $ 325,000.00 for a 3-bdrm, 2.5 bath unit. These are known as the "Cornerstones" (developments A, B, C and D).

I myself own a 3-bdrm, 2.5 bath co-op (w/terrace) in the South Bronx, which I purchased 15 years ago for $ 25,000.00. The apartment across from me, which is basically a mirror of my own unit, sold for $ 250,000.00 last week. My sister, my brother, cousin and myself are thrilled at this. Our maintenance is only $ 350.00 per month, as we have all paid off mortgages AGES ago. Our 2 buildings are surrounded by about 8 of these "Mitchell-Lama" buildings. The Mitchell-Lama apartments, while lacking terraces, boast wonderful floor plans, and spacious rooms; have 2 full baths and washer/dryer hook-ups. All they need are hardwood floors, renovations to the kitchens and the bathrooms, a fresh coat of quality paint and crown molding and I guarantee buyers will tear someone's arm off for one of those units. I wonder what the appreciation for my apartment will be in the next 5 years.

No more vacant lots...barely ANY older building left to rehabilitate-- so the only remaining alternative is to renovate and sell off the public houseing apartments. A myth you say? Far from it.

- ROB

[ablarc]

As an old-timer, Rob, you know the area well. For me, it's a faded memory seen from a train, but what I recall was ultra-urban.

Time for you to treat us to a photo essay, if you like to take pictures.

[Peakrate212]

Regarding:

NOT TOO LONG AGO, "ASchwarz" said:

"No public housing in NYC has ever been converted to coops. This is an urban myth."


"ASchwarz," please visit the official Bronx Borough President website at the following URL; "http://bronxboropres.nyc.gov/" Evidently, the Bronx Borough President himself has proven you wrong; here's a small clip of what you'll see on his site's front page:

"...This included Carrión’s leadership in the conversion of 1,865 former Mitchell-Lama rental units to co-op homeownership through 100% private investment. Residents will be able to purchase their apartments at an affordable, below-market price to realize the dream of homeownership..."

Mitchell Lama is NOT public housing. Aschwartz is refering to Housing Built and run by the City of New York, Housing Authority; often known as "Projects". ASchwartz is 100% correct. NOT ONE UNIT of Housing Authority Housing has ever converted to anything. They all remain owned by the Govt.

Mitchell Lama was a government programs to encourage PRIVATE DEVELOPERS to build housing that got certain tax breaks in exchange for keeping the rents at lower than market rate for a certain amount of years (usually 30 years).

The Bronx Borough president is refering to buildings converted to Co-0p ownership after said 30 year period.

[So Bx Resident]

Hello all:

Actually-- I would LOVE to take some photos and post them here-- to show the changes that are taking place.

So far as I can tell, these actually ARE "projects," because they have those navy/orange NYCHA signs on several areas on the building grounds.

My cousins Haydee and Diane remained in their mother's 3-bdrm/2-bath apartment in the projects after their mother died. Now Haydee lives there with her husband and two kids-- in a NYCHA building. They attended a little seminar about the building's conversion to Co-Op toward the 3rd quarter of 2007. The building beside hers (a carbon copy) is not yet slated to go co-op, but they've promised to keep everybody posted.

Since my cousin Haydee and her husband both work and have been saving to purchase a house for the last couple of years, they may actually stay there for the required period of 5 years should they decide to purchase.

The distinction between "Mitchell-Lama" and "NYCHA" buildigns appears to have become a bit blurred. If we rely on the Bx Boro Pres website, we are led to believe that only "Mitchell-Lama" buildings are targeted for this change-- however-- my cousin Haydee and friends of my niece's who live in NYCHA buildings have apparently attended meetings that suggest that NYCHA buildings are also part of the change.

I am tempted to contact the Bx Boro Pres' office to directly ask them to clarify the issue-- because I've driven around the neighborhoods and admittedly NOT all of the "projects," or the buildings I perceive to be "projects" have the NYCHA sign on them; for example, several blocks south of Lincoln Hospital (E. 149-147 th Streets between Morris and Park avenues) on Morris Avenue there is a cluster of about 8 short-ish buildings that, in my opinion are "projects." I think everyone would say the same, though these don't have a single sign on them, there are rumors that ALL of these buildings are going co-op. My niece, who works at Lincoln Hospital has heard this buzz since the beginning of this year. Curious!

In any event-- I will continue to research this, and if it starts to bug me enough :o I will contact Carrion's office for further clarification, because I would like to know EXACTLY where these "Mitchell-Lama" buildings are anyway.

Photos of the major changes happening in the Melrose section, and related web addresses to follow in the next few days. Apologies to all-- no offense was intended in my first post :o