Bronx Development [Archive] - Wired New York Forum

krulltime

July 14th, 2004, 01:45 PM

Development spurt bridges the gaps on Bruckner Blvd.
Cheap, accessible area becomes chic

By Tommy Fernandez
July 12, 2004

When stockbroker Sherman McCoy was waylaid along Bruckner Boulevard in the novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, all he encountered was a wasteland filled with thugs.

If the Tom Wolfe character were to stop on the boulevard now, he'd be able to buy a sofa or a 6-foot-tall Buddha. Perhaps he'd stop by Thrift World Antiques to pick up some 1930s crockery signed by the artist. "Some would call the pots jardineres," says Mary Brimage, who owns the store at 122 Bruckner.

Yuppie love

After about a decade of steady gentrification, developers are revving up for a flood of McCoys by this winter as the city completes its two-year renovation of the Third Avenue Bridge. Stores, restaurants and upscale apartments are sprouting to serve the yuppies discovering the allure of the southern tip of the Bronx.

"There is quite a bit going on in this area now," says Neil Pariser, senior vice president of the South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corp. "It has become quite a haven for artists and other pioneering professionals."

The projects catering to them are ambitious. At 112 Lincoln Ave., the 170,000-square-foot former clock tower will have 80 live/work lofts ready to rent next month. The developer, Carnegie Management, will have another 125 ready by spring.

Across the street, a 100,000-square-foot piano factory at 26 Bruckner was recently transformed into a high-tech office building with 4,000 square feet of retail space. The developer, Bradford N. Swett Management, is finishing a building at 14 Bruckner that will provide 40,000 square feet of commercial space, says principal Christopher Doyle.

"It's far easier, and cheaper, for any business to service the northern tip of Manhattan from here than probably anywhere else," says Mr. Doyle, whose firm owns eight properties along the boulevard.

The first enterprises to settle in the neighborhood during the late 1980s were adventurous antique dealers, driven out of Manhattan by high rents. They were followed by a steady stream of artists yearning for big places in which they could both live and create. When the city rezoned the area for mixed use five years ago, even more businesses were able to enter this burgeoning SoHo of the South Bronx.

It doesn't hurt that the boulevard enjoys traffic levels of more than 50,000 cars a day, according to Mr. Pariser. The bridge renovation project has closed off traffic in one or both directions along the boulevard for much of the past two years, however, and businesses had to weather some slow seasons.

Yvette Hernández, manager of Famous Deli Grocery at 40C Bruckner, says that shutdowns made it hard for regulars to reach her store. "Coming to us and going back would take them 45 minutes-traffic would just be so horrible."

The temporary traffic problems didn't dampen developers' enthusiasm for the area, though. Carnegie Management principal Isaac Jacobs says that professionals are streaming onto Bruckner because of escalating residential rents elsewhere.

"Manhattan is priced out; so is Williamsburg, Brooklyn," he says. "Artists and people who work in midtown and uptown still want someplace close."

Neighborhood rents remain comparatively cheap, but the bargains are quickly disappearing. The lofts at Carnegie's clock tower range from $975 to $1,800 a month.

Rents rising

Commercial rents at area buildings range from $10 to $18 per square foot. These are a far cry from the average of $6 per square foot prevalent just a few years ago. The hikes have been high enough to drive away some businesses, like New York Princess Knitwear Inc.

Throughout the area, locations are being gobbled up so quickly that Mr. Pariser's group is having a hard time finding cheap vacant space to develop as parking for the area. "We don't have the luxury of vacant lots on Bruckner anymore," he explains. "It's a landlord's market now."

Copyright 2004, Crain Communications, Inc

RedFerrari360f1

July 14th, 2004, 01:52 PM

Whats going on with that new bridge up in the Bronx?

krulltime

July 15th, 2004, 12:57 AM

Pathmark Grocery Store Opens In New Horizons Retail Center In The Bronx

JULY 14TH, 2004

New Yorkers will finally be able to do some shopping at a new Pathmark in The Bronx and locals say it's long overdue.

The grocery store opens Friday inside the New Horizons Retail Center in the Crotona Park neighborhood.

Because of construction problems and delays, the shopping center is millions of dollars over budget and two years behind its original opening date, but developers say the wait will be will worth it.

NY1's Dean Meminger has more from the Crotona Park section of the Bronx.

It's finally time to do some shopping at a new Pathmark in the Bronx, and it's a long time overdue. The store opens this week inside the New Horizons Retail Center, developed by a local community group.

“Typically, this size shopping mall in an urban area has one or two anchor stores and up to 10 stores. This mall has 20 stores,” says Cicero Wilson of the Mid-Bronx Desperadoes.

The size of the mall caused big headaches for the developers. Because of construction problems and delays, the mall's price tag is at least $10 million over the initial budget of $30 million, and the opening is two years behind schedule.

When NY1 visited the site last summer, there were plenty of dirt mounds and unfinished stores, and it was a big target for graffiti artists.

But in spite of the problems, funders stayed on board.

“We had to keep going. We had 20 stores that kept their leases,” says Denise Scott of the Local Initiative Support Corporation. “Pathmark actually added $1 million to the investment site.”

Bringing Pathmark and other big business into this Bronx neighborhood is not only about making money for businesses, it's also about helping local residents with jobs. The leases the stores sign state they must hire local residents.

“This is like my first real job,” says Pathmark employee Omari Lowely. “Pathmark gave me a chance to gain experience.”

Along with Pathmark, Petland, Popeye's Chicken and Washington Mutual Bank are just some of the tenants opening.

“It is absolutely great for me. I live 15 minutes from this community,” says Bethzaida Hernandez, who works at Washington Mutual.

The New Horizons Center is located on East 176th Street off Boston Road.

Copyright © 2004 NY1 News.

Gulcrapek

October 13th, 2004, 07:50 PM

1011 Washington Avenue

http://www.lmequity.com/portfolio/new.php?pid=39

http://www.lmequity.com/images/dynamic/Washington-2.JPG

"Construction will begin on this 136 unit apartment building, located on Washington Avenue between 164th and 165th Street, in July 2004. This project is being financed through HDC's new LAMP program and will include 8,000 square feet of retail space."

Stern

October 13th, 2004, 09:06 PM

I wonder why they made the sky so dark in that render? Its not a bad looking building.

krulltime

January 14th, 2005, 10:27 AM

NYC Housing Authority Takes 62,000 SF at Hutchinson Metro

http://www.globest.com/newspics/nyc_1200waters.jpg

By Barbara Jarvie
Last updated: January 13, 2005 07:57am

BRONX, NY-After a four-year search, the New York City Housing Authority signed a 20-year lease for 62,000 sf at the Hutchinson Metro Center here. This marks a consolidation of employees from three Bronx locations to a single floor.

Hutchinson was originally set on 18.5 acres, the center currently has 460,000 sf of class A office space. Approximately 115,000 sf of space remains available in the first building. Owner Simone Development Cos. has purchased an additional 24.5 acres on site, creating an as-of-right opportunity for an additional 640,000 sf of office space. The $60-million first phase is expected to generate between 2,500 and 3,000 new jobs for the borough.

Cushman & Wakefield brokerage professionals Tara Stacom, executive vice president, Matthew Astrachan, executive director, and Shawna Menifee, associate director, arranged the transaction. “The opportunity that the Hutchinson Metro Center presents really didn't exist in the Bronx previously,” says Stacom. Asking rents in the complex are in the low $30s per sf.

NYCHA joins Mercy College, which recently opened its new 130,000-sf Bronx campus at the site and the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, which consolidated its Bronx offices to 50,000 sf. The Metro Center parcel, formerly the Bronx Psychiatric Center site, is located directly off the Hutchinson River Parkway in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx. The land was purchased in 2001 from the state through the Empire State Development Corp. by Hutch Realty Partners LLC. It is the first class A office complex to be built in the Bronx in more than a decade.

© 2005 by GlobeSt.com, LLC.

alex ballard

February 25th, 2005, 07:48 PM

How is the South Bronx progressing in it's comeback? What's going on with this "Gateway Center" going up at the Market? And is the Bronx booming with new development like the other boroughs?

Stern

March 2nd, 2005, 12:10 PM

Acadia Doubles Retail Redevelopment

http://www.globest.com/newspics/nyc_400eastfordhamroad.jpg

Tuesday, March 1, 2005
By Barbara Jarvie

GlobeSt.com

BRONX, NY-In a conference call, White Plains-based Acadia Realty Trust said costs for a redevelopment here at 400 East Fordham Rd. have blossomed to between $60 million and $70 million, instead of the $35 million to $40 million originally estimated for the effort, which is part of the firm’s urban infill concentration. The company is also in negotiations for two additional sites in the city.

"There is strong tenant demand," said Kenneth F. Bernstein, Acadia’s president and CEO. "National retailers are underrepresented here." The footprint will be larger and the scope expanded. The company is in negotiations for two more redevelopment projects, one in Northern Manhattan and the other in Brooklyn.

"We’re building a nice pipeline for future growth," Bernstein continued. These projects are expected cost approximately $100 million, as well. Its second project is a $30-million to $35-million effort in Pelham Manor. The company entered into a 95-year ground lease for a 16-acre site which will be redeveloped into a multi-anchor community retail center.

The site at 400 East Fordham Rd. is currently home to a Sears, whose lease expires in 2007. Sears has been in the site near Fordham University for 40 years. According to New York City statistics, Fordham Road is the strongest retail area in the borough and is the third largest retail corridor in all of New York City, with over 650,000 people in a two-mile radius and annual retail sales in excess of $500 million.

Acadia sees the potential for retailers not already established in the Bronx such as Target, Kohl’s, Office Max, Bed Bath & Beyond, Best Buy and Wal-Mart. "The Fordham Road redevelopment is the first of what we expect will be several New York urban/infill redevelopment projects that we plan to execute with P/A Associates," Bernstein added.

Acadia acquired the site here through Acadia Strategic Opportunity Fund II LLC. The fund II, which has $300 million of committed discretionary capital, was established to acquire up to $900 million of real estate assets on a leveraged basis as well as invest in Acadia's Retailer Controlled Property Venture with the Klaff Organization. Upon completion of the redevelopment, it is anticipated the project will earn an unleveraged yield in excess of 10%.

During the third quarter, Acadia completed its first investment through the RCP venture. Approximately $23.2 million was invested by Funds I and II into an affiliate of Lubert-Adler/Klaff, which is part of the investment consortium, along with Sun Capital Partners, Inc. and Cerberus Capital Management LP that acquired the 257 store Mervyn's department store chain from the Target Corp. for $1.2 billion.

On a year-over-year basis, Acadia increased its portfolio occupancy by 470 basis points. Year-end 2004 occupancy was 92.3% compared to 87.6% at year-end 2003 and 86.3% for 2002. Same store net operating income for the retail portfolio increased 3.9% for annual 2004 over 2003. During 2004, Acadia executed new and renewal leases totaling 640,000 sf, or 9% of the retail portfolio at an average increase of 9% over the previous base rents on a cash basis.

Kris

March 6th, 2005, 11:26 AM

March 6, 2005

LIVING IN

The Sound of Construction

By NANCY BETH JACKSON

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/03/04/realestate/06livi.583.jpg
Hundreds of apartments and town houses have been built in Melrose Commons. New buildings, above, under construction on East 159th Street.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/dropcap/w.gifHEN Paul Newman starred as John Murphy, a police officer, in "Fort Apache, the Bronx" in 1981, he patrolled a burned-out wasteland, a hostile landscape inhabited by junkies, winos, pimps, hookers, cop killers and killer cops.

Today, the tourists who come to see where the movie was filmed find a far different neighborhood. In the last five years, urban decay has been replaced by new houses and apartments.

Melrose Commons, a 35-block area in the South Bronx, still has plenty of vacant lots, but the mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhood is abuzz with construction. Retail space, until recently limited to a handful of mom-and-pop shops, rented for $7 to $11 a square foot a year in the mid-1990's. A 1,300-square-foot C-Town supermarket in a 124-unit moderate-income rental building opening late next summer will pay $19.90.

According to the 2000 census, nearly 7,000 people lived in Melrose as the new housing came out of the ground. The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development anticipates that about 3,000 housing units will have been added by the time Melrose Commons is fully developed at the end of the decade. New construction could add around 10,000 residents to the neighborhood, estimated Petr Stand, a principal at Magnusson Architecture and Planning who has been involved in the development for 13 years.

The change was accomplished through the efforts of a local neighborhood group, Nos Quedamos/We Stay, a coalition of residents and shopkeepers who refused to be bulldozed by an urban renewal plan with no place for them.

The founder and executive director of the group, Yolanda Garcia, died last month. Her daughter, Yolanda Gonzalez, has been named executive director and will continue what her mother started 13 years ago.

In an interview not long before she suffered a fatal heart attack at age 53 in her modest storefront office, Ms. Garcia recalled how the neighborhood rebirth began.

Ms. Garcia, whose family owned a carpet store on Third Avenue, was among the mostly Hispanics and African-Americans who stuck it out while the South Bronx burned, only to learn by chance in 1992 that the city planned to displace them to make room for 2,600 middle-income residential units. Without being consulted in the nine years the plan was under study, 78 homeowners, 400 tenants and 80 businesses were to be priced out of their own neighborhood where the median income was under $12,000.

"You can't fight City Hall," her brother German, now deceased, told her then.

"Yes, we can," she replied.

The mobilization that followed - at one point meetings were held 188 times in six months and meetings are still scheduled weekly - taught people to make themselves heard and how to navigate the system. In the end, the city's plan was scrapped, replaced by a development vision that recognized environmental and health issues, good design and community involvement.

The real estate in question had a large concentration of city-owned property about equidistant from Midtown Manhattan and suburbs in Westchester, Connecticut, Long Island and New Jersey and good transportation by bus, train, express subways and roads. Yankee Stadium and the Bronx Courthouse are to the west. An industrial zone and Metro-North's Melrose station are on the northern edge. Third Avenue leads south to the Hub, the district's historic commercial center at 149th Street.

Melrose began as a German village in the 1850's. Population took off with the Third Avenue elevated train. By the 1920's the Hub bustled with shops, movie theaters and burlesque houses filled with Italian, Russian-Jewish and Irish immigrants as well as Germans. Before the white flight to the suburbs in the 1960's, Melrose Avenue was known as "the Broadway of the Bronx" with flower shops, delicatessens, funeral homes and at least two German bakeries.

By 1994, a German Methodist church, built in 1878, had succumbed to urban blight. Although stained-glass windows with memorials in German survived, the church organ had been cannibalized and the sky could be seen through the roof when the Rev. Eddie Lopez Jr. merged three small Spanish-speaking Methodist congregations. Inspired one Easter morning, he suggested the church be renamed Silesia la Resurreccion, reinaugurated after a half-million-dollar renovation.

The neighborhood's resurrection is well under way, too, beginning with Plaza de Los Angeles, 35 three-family town houses, which sold out five years ago. First-time homeowners with annual incomes of $32,000 to $70,000 paid at an average of $320,000 with government subsidies to encourage long-term ownership. La Puerta de Vitalidad, the first affordable-housing rental building, soon followed. Other rental apartments, including a senior residence, have been added.

Two additional rounds of subsidized town houses have been completed with more ownership projects to come. Under the city's New Foundations program, which encourages home ownership by transferring public lots to private ownership after a competitive process, private developers have begun building affordable housing on private land. Poko Partnerships, a real estate developer from Port Chester, N.Y., recently sold 10 town houses still under construction on Courtlandt Avenue. The average price of the subsidized three-family homes was $480,000.

The best source of housing availability is the Department of Housing Preservation and Development's Affordable Housing Hotline at 311 and at the Web site www.nyc.gov/hpd (http://www.nyc.gov/hpd). The site notes that a 110-unit building, under construction on Melrose Avenue, is accepting applicants for rentals, from $542 for a one-bedroom to $920 for a three-bedroom. Tenants will be chosen by lottery.

Robert Roman, who runs a small construction company, was sweeping the sidewalk one recent winter morning in front of the town house he and his wife, Diana, bought in 2003 after participating in a lottery. The block of town houses replaced a community garden, but Mr. Roman, who began renting in the neighborhood in 1987, thought it a more than fair exchange. A first-time homeowner, he is also a first-time landlord.

The new housing will mean a better community, he said. "We will pay more taxes and have more police protection," he said. Subsidy provisions prevent him and other town house owners from selling for at least five years and offer incentives for staying even longer, but he doesn't mind the restrictions. "I have no plans to move anytime soon," Mr. Roman said.

Ms. Garcia wanted more than roofs over people's heads. Mr. Stand of Magnusson Architecture recalls that she pushed good design to encourage people to identify with their buildings and insisted that owner-occupied town houses and rental apartments for the previously homeless share the same block. She encouraged everyone in the neighborhood to keep an eye out to make sure that construction was carried out as promised.

Environmental issues were addressed as Nos Quedamos explored reclaiming rainwater to wash down sidewalks or water landscaping. It was the local sponsor for New York State's first "green" affordable housing development, 30 three-family town houses called Sunflower Way I, completed in 2002.

Designed by Danois Architects, they sold for an average of $289,000 to buyers, also chosen by lottery, earning $41,258 to $75,000. The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development recognized the project for excellence last year after buildings operated at or below energy use that had been predicted before construction. Sunflower II, completed in late 2003, added 41 town houses.

Because her son, Ismail Gonzalez, had died at age 25 from asthma, which is more common in the South Bronx than in most other New York neighborhoods, Yolanda Garcia was committed to building healthier buildings. She encouraged designs that impede the growth of mold.

Nos Quedamos promotes landscaping and small neighborhood parks, but an ongoing dispute in the community is the future of nearly two dozen pocketsize community gardens established when the neighborhood was in decay. Several gardens have been replaced by affordable housing.

After housing, education is the most important issue in the neighborhood. Mr. Roman, the construction company owner, wants "to do a little better" for his daughters Rose, 12, and Michelli, 5, who attend Public School 29, a few blocks down Courtlandt, but he thinks they are getting "a not bad education."

Built in 1962 as an elementary school, Public School 29 now is pre-kindergarten though sixth grade with seventh and eighth scheduled to be added by 2007. The school recently was removed from the state's list of schools in need of improvement, but last year only 31 percent of the students met or exceeded the English Language Arts test standards and about 42 percent met math standards. Rhonda Ross Kendrick, an actress and the daughter of the singer Diana Ross, has helped with an after-school drama program, but Insideschools.org (http://insideschools.org/), an independent Web guide to New York City public schools, reports that "academic achievement has a way to go."

South Bronx High, which had one of the worst reputations in the city, was replaced three years ago by the South Bronx Educational Campus, made up of three smaller schools: Mott Haven Village Prep, New Explorers and the Academy for Careers in Sports.

While streets are not crime free, local precincts reported a 65 to 70 percent drop in crime in the last 12 years.

One of Ms. Garcia's unrealized dreams was a town center around the 42nd Precinct station house in the northeast corner of Melrose Common that would include new schools, a green market and a pedestrian mall. Although that hasn't happened yet, Boricua College has proposed a campus there.Those who own businesses are optimistic about the changes under way. Paulo Delconte, 67, who immigrated to Melrose from Trieste, Italy, as a teenager, was among the shopkeepers who stayed, keeping his convenience store at the corner of 157th and Melrose Avenue open even in the worst of times.

"The housing is going to come back," he said. "It's going to be good for me, good for everyone." He plans to add a delicatessen with his favorite recipes for eggplant, veal and meatballs.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/03/04/realestate/06map184.jpg

Copyright 2005 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

alex ballard

March 6th, 2005, 02:30 PM

Is there heat in the house market of the Bronx? What's going on in the more suburban areas to the north and east? Also, any news about the Gateway Ceter at the market?

billyblancoNYC

March 10th, 2005, 01:24 AM

HOME DEPOT TO BUILD BRONX WAREHOUSE
http://www.cityfeet.com/News/NewsArticle.aspx?PartnerPath=&Id=11131

By Lois Weiss
Wednesday, March 09, 2005 - Home Depot has picked a spot on E. 132nd St. in the Bronx for a new warehouse and distribution project and is seeking city and state benefits.
Home Depot has picked a spot on E. 132nd St. in the Bronx for a new warehouse and distribution project and is seeking city and state benefits. The project is slated for the Harlem Yards area that is owned by the State of New York.

-------------------------------

March 09, 2005
Home Depot seeks $36M for Bronx facility
by Wendy Blake
http://www.crainsny.com/news.cms?id=10122

Home Depot is seeking about $36 million in tax-exempt bond financing to help it build a warehouse, distribution and fulfillment center in the Port Morris section of the Bronx.

According to sources familiar with the situation, Home Depot is eyeing a parcel of land at East 132nd Street in Port Morris, which is zoned for industrial development. A public hearing will be held April 7 on its proposal. The city’s Industrial Development Agency issues triple-tax-exempt bonds which are in turn privately underwritten, enabling companies to get lower-cost financing for projects.

Critics of big-box retailers are gearing up for a fight. Bettina Damiani, project director of advocacy group Good Jobs New York, says her organization is looking into whether Home Depot would be eligible for other types of incentives, including Empowerment Zone and Empire Zone benefits.

Stern

March 10th, 2005, 03:03 PM

Globe Street:

City Adds $27M for Hunts Point Economic Development
By Barbara Jarvie
Last updated: March 8, 2005 07:37am

HUNTS POINT, NY-To spur business development here, the city has committed an initial investment of $27 million to implement the Hunts Point Vision Plan. The city has already invested $110 million at the Hunts Point Fish and Produce Markets. The goals of the Hunts Point Vision Plan includes developing new waterfront parks, improving traffic safety, upgrading street lighting, repaving streets and improving the rail freight lines serving the area.

“It’s also true that this part of the city can be doing better,” says Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “This new vision of Hunts Point will attract and grow businesses, put people to work and make the community a more vibrant place to live.” The Hunts Point Peninsula has an area of approximately 690 acres, with almost half made up of the 329-acre Food Distribution Center. Much of the New York region is fed by the center, which has more than 115 wholesalers that generate revenue of more than $3 billion a year. There are a number of new developments in the center including the opening of the $85-million Fulton Fish Market this spring and the already developed $25-million Produce Market.

The Department of City Planning will rezone the area to encourage the growth and expansion of the food-related industry. The rezoning is also intended to protect the adjacent residential neighborhood, while discouraging the expansion of waste-related uses in sensitive areas.

Dovetailing with the Hunts Point initiative is the Related Cos. plans for the 26-acre Gateway Center near Yankee Stadium between East 149th Street, River Avenue and the Harlem River. Related is proposing a $330-million effort that features approximately a one-million-sf mixture of big box, specialty and smaller retail in five new buildings, parking space for about 3,000 cars and a one-acre public park with an esplanade. Construction will take about two years, and the entire retail center is expected to open in 2008. The city will grant Related a 49-year lease for the property, with options to extend to 99 years. The project will create more than 2,400 construction jobs and about 2,100 permanent jobs and generate approximately $21 million in annual tax revenue for the city, according to Related.

Over the past year, city officials worked with the Hunts Point Task Force to develop the 20-year vision plan to define a coordinated vision for neighborhood revitalization. Preliminary recommendations covered everything from transportation, waterfront, workforce, and land use policy. The task force also concentrated on identifying short-term action items.

Daily News:

Hope in Bloom in Hunts Point

BY MICHAEL SAUL and BILL EGBERT

Mayor Bloomberg unveiled an ambitious Hunts Point Vision Plan yesterday, putting his money where his vision is.

"Our administration is committing more than $27 million in capital funds to carry out the vision that the Hunts Point task force developed," the mayor said at the opening of the new Hunts Point Works job center.

The expected funding for the Hunts Point Vision Plan will go toward traffic-safety improvements, zoning changes and waterfront development, as well as a major workforce development effort, officials said.

"Hunts Point could be doing much better," said Bloomberg. "Unemployment here is 24%, the highest of any community in the city."

Kellie Terri-Sepulveda, executive director of The Point Community Development Corp., praised the new job center, but said that diversifying the area's industrial economy would boost the area's employment and quality of life.

"We definitely need to train workers," she said, "but we also need to attract new types of businesses - amenities like restaurants, bookstores and music stores."

Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión, a former city planner and the driving force behind establishing the task force, agreed.

"Hunts Point's potential has long been dismissed because it was regarded as a heavily industrialized, limited-use area," Carrión said.

"The revitalization plan that we have created has the vision to incorporate all of the elements of sound economic development," he said, "including infrastructure improvements, optimizing land use, developing workforce opportunities and protecting the environment."

Many of the ideas put forward by the plan are not new, but the plan brings the mayor's stamp of approval, along with funding and city agency participation.

Matthew D'Arrigo, co-president of the Hunts Point Produce Co-op, believes the mayor's personal involvement made the difference.

"I remember when the mayor came up here two years ago," said D'Arrigo. "Very soon after that visit, we started getting a lot more communication from the city. I saw a dozen EDC [Economic Development Corp.] people coming up here repeatedly since then."

The vision plan includes many items on the Produce Co-op's wish list - in particular, expanded rail links and added refrigerated warehouse space.

Both improvements will serve a dual purpose, D'Arrigo noted, not only saving his co-operators money, but also reducing the impact of truck traffic on local residents.

krulltime

April 27th, 2005, 02:13 PM

Soon to be built where the old Museum is and also accompanied by a residential tower (Last Picture):

The Bronx Museum Of The Arts:

http://www.pbase.com/image/42653368.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/42653369.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/42653371.jpg

Copyright ©1997-2005 Arquitectonica International Corporation

Gulcrapek

April 27th, 2005, 07:33 PM

Oooh.. good stuff.

Derek2k3

April 29th, 2005, 12:52 AM

http://www.pbase.com/archit_kderek2k3/image/42708366.jpg

DAILY NEWS

http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/story/303808p-260021c.html

Terminate terminal plan: pols

2 rip 'sweetheart deal'

BY FRANK LOMBARDI
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

The Bronx rumble over a $300 million retail redevelopment of the decrepit Bronx Terminal Market turned nastier and more complex yesterday.

Two Council members - neither from the Bronx - and other critics of the project demanded an investigation of what they charge is a sweetheart deal the developer is getting from the city and other public agencies.

But Andrew Alper, president of the city's Economic Development Corp., called the arrangement "totally above board" and a long-thwarted opportunity for the city to bring tax-generating economic development and job creation to the site just south of Yankee Stadium.

"If they want to have hearings, God bless them," he said. "This transaction is a good transaction for the city."

The two complaining Council members - Hiram Monserrate of Queens and Charles Barron of Brooklyn - were joined at a press conference on the steps of City Hall by scores of workers from the market and representatives of unions and other opposing groups.

Barron threatened to use the City Council's power over zoning to thwart the redevelopment - which envisions transforming the ramshackle ethnic food market into the Gateway Center Mall retail shopping complex.

Calling for Council hearings, Monserrate lambasted the Bloomberg administration for "rolling out" this "scary ... sweetheart deal" for the Related Companies, which now holds the long-term lease on the city-owned, 31-acre site.

Related's founder and chief executive, Steven Ross, is a close friend of Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, Mayor Bloomberg's chief economic development strategist.

Monserrate also protested the planned eviction by the developer of the 23 tenants and their 700 workers.

"We want to know how Related gets these multimillion-dollar deals without any public review," he said.

The 80-year market lease was awarded by the Lindsay administration in 1972 to landlord David Buntzman. Related Companies last year finally bought out the lease from Buntzman for a reported $42.2 million.

Alper said Related is now paying the city $250,000 a year in rent, and that would rise to a minium of $500,000 if the development wins land-use approvals.

The mall project would generate 1,600 construction jobs and more than 2,000 permanent jobs, he said, and ultimately pay the city annual taxes of $21 million.

Alper acknowledged that the city has agreed to buy back the lease from Related for some $40 million if the mall project falls through. But he said past city officials would have jumped at that prospect to rid themselves of Buntzman and get back his lease.

Originally published on April 27, 2005

http://www.bxtimes.com/News/2005/0210/Boroughwide_News/news_T10.html
FOOD FIGHT
Bronx Terminal Market
merchants take on the city
by Bobby Ciafardini

http://www.newyorkgames.org/news/archives/004259.html
March 21, 2005
Bronx Terminal deal loaded with financial incentives
Newsday
Graham Rayman

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0512,robbins1,62311,5.html
Market-Rate Giveaway
Produce merchants get the boot for a City Hall favorite and yet another Olympic stadium
by Tom Robbins
March 22nd, 2005 11:54 AM

Derek2k3

May 5th, 2005, 08:15 PM

Grand Concourse & Bedford Park Boulevard
10 stories
Build Tech Architects
Dev-Yoel Movtady
Residential
~50 units
Under Construction 2005-2006

http://www.bronxmall.com/norwoodnews/past/032405/news/qgrace.jpg

Norwood News
http://www.bronxmall.com/norwoodnews/past/032405/news/N50324page5.html

Concourse Building Demolished
10-Story Structure to Replace It

By HEATHER HADDON

In the first major housing complex built on the Grand Concourse in decades, a 10-story building will rise where a former school was knocked down at Bedford Park Boulevard.

The squat building, most recently owned by Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church, was half demolished as of early last week. Yoel Movtady, a Long Island marketing executive, purchased the site for $625,000 last fall.

The new development will house roughly 50 units of middle-income housing, predominantly two- and three-bedroom apartments with a few one-bedrooms. The first floor will include some commercial space, which Movtady hopes to rent to doctors or other professionals. A parking lot is permitted for the basement.

The building is still in the planning phases, and Movtady hasn’t yet devised a timeline for the construction. Build Tech Architects, who have designed many Bronx projects, are drawing up the building’s blueprint. They also designed an 8-story building slated to rise at Perry Avenue and East Gun Hill Road.

The complex is Movtady’s first real estate development. “I saw that this is an area that could be developed,” said Movtady, who came across the site about a year ago. “The building wasn’t being used … and there should be something built here. We want to bring new housing for families to the area.”

The structure was formerly home to the Bedford Park Academy, a private school, until Grace Lutheran bought it in 1981. The space hadn’t been actively used recently, with the school’s main site located around the corner on Valentine Avenue. Rev. James Gajadhar, Grace Lutheran’s pastor, did not return calls for comment.

The entire Grand Concourse, which was planned with a consistent architectural style, hasn’t seen a major new housing development in some 30 years, according to John Reilly, executive director of the Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation. “It’s a big change,” said Reilly, a lifelong Bronx resident. “There have been renovations and conversions, but I can’t think of any new [housing] construction.”

Given the site’s prominent location, Reilly hopes that the new building will be both attractive and affordable. He didn’t think a 10-story structure would necessarily tower over the surrounding apartments, which are mostly six and seven stories, due to newer construction trends toward shorter stories.

Movtady is toying with the idea of making the building into condominiums. “We are leaning toward ownership …. but we are still searching to see if there is a market,” he said.

Community District 7 as a whole has seen a spate of three-family homes constructed recently, reversing the long-standing trend toward rental apartments. “There has been a demand for private homes, so I guess there could be one [for condominiums] too,” Reilly said.

Movtady hopes so. “If this project is a success, we will try to develop more sites in the area,” he said.

Derek2k3

May 5th, 2005, 08:30 PM

New 142-foot antenna tower to be added to high-rise.

Norwood News
Fordham Issues Study of Norwood
Radio Tower Site
By HEATHER HADDON

http://www.bronxmall.com/norwoodnews/past/110404/news/ztower5.jpg

Here's a link to a run down of projects going up in Norwood-Bedford Park.
http://www.bronxmall.com/norwoodnews/past/012705/news/N50127page4.html
NYC developers are getting away with murder.

krulltime

May 6th, 2005, 12:33 PM

NYPOST REAL ESTATE:

By LOIS WEISS

One of the largest residential buildings in the Bronx just hit the market for a relative bargain of $83 a foot. Multiply its 430,000 feet to get an asking price of $35.7 million.

Called the Lewis Morris, after one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence [not one of the former Yankees], the grand apartment house at 1749 Grand Concourse has over 270 apartments and four elevators.

According to sales broker Marco Lala of Massey Knakal Realty Services, the wealthy families that once inhabited the building used to employ full-time help that lived on the top floor.

That current SRO space is being converted to "penthouse suites." Even its 6.5 room sprawling apartments still rent for an average under $1,300 a month.

Copyright 2005 NYP Holdings, Inc.

Derek2k3

May 27th, 2005, 08:16 PM

DAILY NEWS
Complex housing for Morrisania
BY BILL EGBERT
May 27, 2005

http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/story/313278p-267999c.html

A new affordable-housing Bronx development that opened its doors this week is showcasing an innovative approach to serving two sometimes competing housing needs.

Officials cut the ribbon Wednesday on The Franklin Avenue Apartments in Morrisania, which combines affordable housing for working families with supportive housing for formerly homeless people with psychiatric disabilities.

The $11.5 million, 66-unit building at 1363 Franklin Ave. boasts a 14,000-square-foot landscaped garden with a children's play area, a library/computer room and even wireless broadband Internet access.

"A beautiful building like this helps restore dignity to the tenants, the neighborhood and the Bronx as a whole," said Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión.

"These beautiful apartments will provide more than just much-needed housing for Bronxites," he said. "They will further strengthen the economic base and quality of life."

Tenants with disabilities will have on-site support services provided by Community Access, a-not-for-profit organization that helps people with psychiatric problems transition from shelters and hospitals to independent living.

Dunn Development Corp., a for-profit developer, took advantage of a variety of publicly funded incentives to make high-quality affordable housing more economical to build.

Financing, for example, included $9.5 million in low-income housing tax credits and a $2 million construction loan from the Community Preservation Corp., as well as rental subsidies and supportive services funding for the special needs tenants provided by the city Health and Mental Hygiene Department and the Homeless Services Department.

Community Access and Dunn Development previously worked together on the award-winning DeKalb Avenue Apartments in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

Originally published on May 27, 2005

Derek2k3

June 1st, 2005, 09:25 AM

http://www.pbase.com/archit_kderek2k3/image/44167473.jpg

Outlook Point Estates , a new condominium complex, provides residents with a view of the water from the first floor patio or the second and third floor terraces.

Bronx Times
Luxury condominiums at Outlook Point Estates hit the market
by Bobby Ciafardini

http://www.bxtimes.com/News/2005/0401/Boroughwide_News/full_T14.html

A 67-unit condominium project, Outlook Point Estates, opened its doors to the public last week in Spencer Estates, offering 23 buildings, each consisting of three units with ?rst, second and third ?oor condos available for sale.

The high-end, gated residential complex is situated on a peninsula, is off Griswold Avenue immediately adjacent to Evers Marina at Outlook Point. The waterfront condominium complex features a host of amenities, including a gym and community room, which both overlook the water, a laundry room and access to the marina for boating and other water activities.

The condos, which were developed by BDM Builders Inc., are selling for between $495,000 and $725,000.

To date, four of the most expensive units went off the market and 10 total units have already been sold to prospective buyers in the ?rst week.

Architect Tony Freda, who designed Shelter Cove---another upscale water-front condominium complex in the area---said he is extremely proud of Outlook Point Estates.

"These are some of the most beautiful condos you are going to see," he said. "We saw an opportunity to create something special and we are thrilled with the outcome of the project. Outlook Point Estates is de?nitely one of the most luxurious projects we’ve done."

Ben Walker, the broker for the project, said one of the most attractive details for prospective buyers is the 15-year tax abatement on the property.

"In other words, buyers only a pay a small portion of tax on the property per year for the ?rst 15 years," Walker said. "During that time, you save quite a bit of money on taxes alone and your estimated maintenance charges range from $157 to $238 a month."

Walker also said each of the units vary in size and square footage, allowing buyers many options.

The condos themselves, many of which have skylights and cathedral ceilings, also include all appliances, and each comes with two off-street parking spots.

All of the second and third ?oor apartments have two terraces — one facing the water and the other facing the center of the complex. All ?rst ?oor units have patios with waterfront access, and a majority of the ?rst ?oor apartments have parking garages. In addition, the main entrance at Outlook Point Estates has a remote control gate with a security camera.

"The fact that the property is located on a peninsula makes it truly unique and special," said Walker, "but the other amenities are a tremendous addition to the property and add greatly to the enjoyment, safety and comfort of the buyer."

Walker also pointed out how residents of Outlook Point Estates have access to Country Club and a short commute to Manhattan, Westchester and Connecticut. "You’ll have access to all major highways," he explained. "Buyers will also have access to express lines on buses and trains nearby.

"It’s a magni?cent property," added Walker, "and we are excited to bring it to the community."

For more information on Outlook Point Estates, call the broker at (718) 892-2907 or (718) 823-0010.

http://www.bxtimes.com/news/2000/0810/Boroughwide_News/30.html
LUXURIOUS LIVING
8 waterfront homes started

billyblancoNYC

June 17th, 2005, 09:23 AM

GlobeSt.com EXCLUSIVE: Simone Signs $175M Mixed-Use Agreement
By John Jordan
Last updated: June 17, 2005 07:46am

http://globest.com/news/308_308/newyork/135331-1.html

WHITE PLAINS-Simone Development Cos. of New Rochelle hopes to break ground later this year on the second phase of its Hutchinson Metro Center property in the Bronx that will include a 10-story tower building totaling 250,000 sf of space. In addition, thanks to an accord reached earlier this week, the firm hopes to begin construction this time next year on a $175-million redevelopment project in the City of New Rochelle.

Joseph Simone, president of Simone Development appearing at a meeting of the Westchester County Board of Realtors Commercial Investment Division, outlined preliminary plans for the second phase of the Hutchinson Metro Center project in the Bronx. Simone explained that the project would be built on spec. At present, the 460,000-sf Hutchinson Metro Center is approximately 88% leased. Simone said that he expects the former psychiatric facility complex will be 100% leased by year’s end, thus the need for further development at the property.

Earlier this year, Simone acquired 24 acres at the site that affords the company the right to build another 640,000 sf of office space. No cost estimates on the second phase of the center were released. “We intend at some point to have 1.8 million sf at the site, that is the goal,” he said.

Gulcrapek

June 17th, 2005, 01:52 PM

I hope the architecture is better on the "tower."

Kolbster

June 19th, 2005, 12:46 PM

pianoman11686

June 24th, 2005, 12:52 AM

This is an eye-opening article. I had no idea the South Bronx, of all places, is becoming a trendy, artsy neighborhood, and may soon become a less-expensive version of SoHo. It seems like good times abound in all of the boroughs these days.

Goodbye South Bronx Blight, Hello Trendy SoBro

By JOSEPH BERGER

Published: June 24, 2005

Last summer, Todd Fatjo stepped out on the roof of a former piano factory in the South Bronx and fell in love with the jagged panorama - the workaday bridges along the Harlem River, the blur and purr of three highways, the rooftop water tanks, the gaudy billboards and the hulking housing projects.

"It's great at sunset," said Mr. Fatjo, a 29-year-old D.J. who was raised in the countryside of Middletown, N.Y., in the foothills of the Catskills. "I like the industrial scene, the metal, the brick. I've seen enough sunsets over mountains."

Mr. Fatjo is part of a crop of newcomers, many of them refugees from the rising rents of Brooklyn and the East Village in Manhattan, who are making the South Bronx the city's new cutting-edge address.

Hundreds of artists, hipsters, Web designers, photographers, doctors and journalists have been seduced by the mix of industrial lofts and 19th-century row houses in the Port Morris and Mott Haven neighborhoods. Some now even call the area SoBro.

Yes, it's the very South Bronx that had a reputation for grinding poverty, rampant arson, runaway crime and as the starting point of Tom Wolfe's race-relations nightmare, "The Bonfire of the Vanities," which chronicles what happens to a Master of the Universe driving with his mistress in his Mercedes-Benz on a creepy Bruckner Boulevard.

Well, Bruckner and the blocks nearby now boast two tidy bars that a Master of the Universe would feel more than comfortable patronizing, including one, the Bruckner Bar and Grill, that offers pear and arugula salad.

There are a dozen antique shops, at least one new lively art gallery, Haven Arts, to join three older ones, and a cafe partly owned by a resourceful Dominican immigrant that sells bourgeois bohemian delights like croissants and veggie wraps.

There are also the allures of the longstanding Latino and African-American culture - sidewalk dominoes games, flamboyant murals, lush vacant-lot gardens and restaurants with fried plantains and mango shakes - that give the neighborhood a populist authenticity that cannot be matched in the more decorous precincts of Manhattan or Brooklyn.

Porfirio Diaz, who owns the Maybar Cafe and Piano Bar on Third Avenue, said his new customers are "very happy with Spanish food because the prices are low."

Still, no one expects the area to become another TriBeCa or SoHo anytime soon.

The newcomers, some of whom have spent much of their lives abroad or in the hinterlands and are not as easily put off by the Bronx's outdated reputation, say they have felt welcomed. Nevertheless, those welcomes sometimes mask fears by longtime residents that they may someday be priced out of the neighborhood.

"It's going to attract a class of people whose incomes and lifestyles are going to be radically different from those in the South Bronx, which is one of the poorest areas in the city," said Hector Soto, a lawyer active in developmental and environmental issues.

Many of those fears coalesced around a rezoning measure passed by the City Council last March that essentially added another 11 square blocks of Port Morris to a five-block zone where, starting in 1997, apartments were permitted among the factories.

Mr. Soto and other critics - backed by artists and professionals - fought in vain for provisions that would have assured that half of any new apartments be set aside for low-income families.

Amanda M. Burden, the chairwoman of the City Planning Commission, objected successfully that such set-asides would have discouraged development.

Neil Pariser, senior vice president of the South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation, a nonprofit group that has renovated factories and apartment buildings in the area, acknowledged that some poor people could eventually be displaced, but doubted the relocations would be "wholesale."

"What you don't want to do is relegate an area that has finally achieved a place in the market to only the poor," he said. "This should be for everybody."

Indeed, longtime locals have been attracted to the newly available lofts and row houses. Jose Baez, a 36-year-old freelance photographer, rents a 1,000-square foot loft in the Clocktower, the former piano factory, for $1,350. "For what you get here, you get a closet in Manhattan," he said. And local merchants appreciate the infusion of new money.

Ronald Trinidad, a 27-year-old Dominican immigrant, started the Open House Cafe a year ago with his business partner, Eric Beroff, in what had been a Mexican restaurant, and he sells croissants to artists heading to the subway stop at 138th Street and Third Avenue.

"Lots of people come here from downtown Brooklyn and ask me, 'Where do I rent?' " he said.

The area they are beguiled by is dominated by factories like the Zaro's Bread Basket bakery and warehouses like Shleppers Moving and Storage as well as by car washes and gas stations, all framed by the elevated stretches of the Major Deegan Expressway and ramps for the Willis and Third Avenue Bridges.

Many lofts were forsaken with the decline in American manufacturing, and in the 1970's the neighborhood went into a tailspin of arson, foreclosures and rampant crime.

City programs reclaimed hundreds of burned and abandoned buildings and built ranch houses and town houses on vacant lots. Crime plummeted. The South Bronx slowly recovered.

Purnima Kapur, director of the Bronx office of the city's Planning Department, said the "mixed use" rezoning of 1997 had created at least 200 new apartments and other homes.

Most new tenants are single people or childless couples, so the quality of the local schools - not among the city's most stellar - has not been an issue.

Although the impact of arriving artists was probably negligible at that point, an analysis of the 2000 census showed that median household income in Mott Haven alone had risen by 29.1 percent in the previous decade and the number of college educated residents by 86.5 percent.

By 2000, Linda Cunningham, an Ohio-born sculptor whose outdoor installations have been exhibited near the United Nations, felt secure enough about an investment to buy a five-story loft on East 140th Street with two partners for $660,000.

Now anyone strolling on Bruckner can see boxes of geraniums and satellite dishes adorning the industrial windows of the Clocktower, the five-story red-brick former piano factory that was converted into 75 apartment lofts by a landlord experienced with lofts in East Williamsburg. Those lofts rent for between $1,000 to $2,000, according to Mr. Fatjo, who, in addition to working as a disc jockey at parties, helps pay his Clocktower rent by showing apartments to artists.

"He talks their language," said Isaac Jacobs, the building's owner. (Mr. Fatjo was the subject of an article in The New York Times last summer about signs that the hipster scene in Williamsburg might be fading.)There are some newcomers who worry that gentrification will lead to an unappetizing blandness.

"A lot of people in the Clocktower feel a sense of guilt," said Darcy Dahl, an artist whose work is exhibited at Haven Arts. "They feel they are part of the first wave of gentrification and they don't want the second wave to come, but they created it."

That paradox doesn't bother Mr. Fatjo so much as that he not get caught in a neighborhood that's played out. "This neighborhood is already happening," Mr. Fatjo said. "I may have to move soon."

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Schadenfrau

June 24th, 2005, 11:33 AM

Anyone who calls that neighborhood SoBro is a fool. How embarrassing.

ablarc

June 24th, 2005, 12:38 PM

Anyone who calls that neighborhood SoBro is a fool. How embarrassing.
What makes it so?

Schadenfrau

June 24th, 2005, 12:57 PM

The area already has names: Port Morris and Mott Haven.

"SoBro" is obviously a term primarily used by desperate real estate agents on their less-savvy clients.

Frankly, I'd hope that anyone using the term would just stay away. The neighborhood is better off without them.

alex ballard

June 24th, 2005, 10:19 PM

That is a horrible name, it really is. However, let keep in mind what image the "South Bronx" conjours up:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.fis.unipr.it/~alabiso/pagpers/fotonewyork/bronx.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.fis.unipr.it/~alabiso/pagpers/fotonewyork/bronx.html&h=616&w=415&sz=54&tbnid=xVrfktKJZgMJ:&tbnh=134&tbnw=90&hl=en&start=55&prev=/images%3Fq%3DSouth%2BBronx%2B%26start%3D40%26hl%3D en%26lr%3D%26safe%3Dactive%26sa%3DN

I suggest using the neighborhood names.

pianoman11686

June 25th, 2005, 12:02 AM

It doesn't matter what the name "South Bronx" conjures up, as you put it. Showing us that it was crime-ridden in the early and mid-90's is no different than showing it ablaze in the late 70's. The area has changed for the better, in that crime is down. Now it's changing in a different way. I won't say I think it's the best way for change, but I think it's a positive nonetheless. Artists moving in will only make it a more eclectic and desireable neighborhood, and quality of life will go up. Let them call it whatever they want.

alex ballard

June 25th, 2005, 09:20 AM

It does matter. I'm only saying why it was re-named.

Anyway, I'm glad it's getting better. I hope they bring back those old apartment buidlings instead of new townhomes, so there can be more density to the neighborhood.

lofter1

June 25th, 2005, 10:51 AM

THe real estate folks should really stop making up these silly names. Already we're suffering through NoLita, Solita, etc.

Let's try out a few other names that the marketing folks might try to conjure up:

NoMan (anywhere in Manhattan north of 145th St. that the marketing people haven't figured out how to sell)

WeeMan (the group of high rise sites in Manhattan west of 10th Ave. that have a view of Weehawken)

QueEasy (anywhere in Queens that Weezy could see from the Jefferson's high-rise windows)

Any others?

Schadenfrau

June 27th, 2005, 11:40 AM

Despite what the papers are reporting, most of the people moving into Port Morris don't make a living off of their art. However, it doesn't sound very romantic to carry on about the influx of waitresses and bartenders moving to the South Bronx.

I've lived there for five years and can't tell you how many times people have started a conversation with, "So, are you an artist?" When I tell them that I'm not, a look of confusion inevitably appears.

It's a personal pet peeve, but it's pretty offensive to assume that the only reason a white person would live in the neighborhood is to sit around in an old factory and pontificate about how cool it is to be an artist.

ryan

June 27th, 2005, 11:53 AM

QueEasy (anywhere in Queens that Weezy could see from the Jefferson's high-rise windows)

QueEasy is awesome - you should have entered it in the curbed neighborhood name contest (http://www.curbed.com/archives/2005/06/21/hoodwinked_we_have_a_winner.php). I was particularly fond of ToeHo myself...

alex ballard

June 27th, 2005, 12:55 PM

Schadenfrau

June 27th, 2005, 01:14 PM

billyblancoNYC

June 27th, 2005, 01:42 PM

Who said anything about the middle-class, AlexBallard? I was expressing frustration that real estate agents and landlords are hellbent on promoting the idea that "artists" are the only means to stability in a neighborhood.

Most so-called artists are sporadically employed at best. Wouldn't the long-term stability of a neighborhood have a better chance if people with steady, moderate incomes (i.e. city workers) were encouraged to lay down roots?

Agreed, but the value of artists as a "bellweather" is what follows...bars, shops, new development. It's happened so many times that just the thought of some artists moving into an area causes the developers to go crazy, right or wrong.

Schadenfrau

June 27th, 2005, 01:50 PM

alex ballard

June 27th, 2005, 02:32 PM

"Middle-class" whatever, I'm saying stable employment.

We're both saying the same things, just in different words.

Anyway, it's all for glitz. The working-class hood has no appeal to planners or developers. The reason being is that people simply cannot believe that there is such a thing as an "Urban middle class". People continue to hold to the notion that the city is poor and rich and the middle live in the brubs. Anything else is too much for people to handle.

As for you being an artist, Schadenfrau, are you white? Just wondering...

Art is so overrated;).

Schadenfrau

June 27th, 2005, 03:03 PM

As for you being an artist, Schadenfrau, are you white? Just wondering...

I apologize if I'm being dense, but what exactly do you mean by this?

ryan

June 27th, 2005, 03:09 PM

But are the people who are considered artists really people who earn a living from art? Landlords and reporters consistently mistake me for an artist. I think that developers are doing themselves a disservice by using outdated notions of indicators of economic progress.

I don't think so - I think they use the word in place of hipster... or stylish white person under 40... or yuppie if you're feeling mean-spirited. Bottom line is whiteness - that's the quality I suspect realtors and landlords are after. Artists (aside from wildly successful ones) don't make enough money to excite these folks on their own...

I think you can call a person an artist even if they don't earn their living from it. Lots of artists I know have day jobs - it takes a huge amount of success in the art world to make a middle-class living - and I think that the group of people who do live off the sales of their work is not the best and/or brightest of the art world.

Schadenfrau

June 27th, 2005, 03:18 PM

You're exactly right, Ryan. What better to shill to an "artist" than a "loft", aka studio apartment that's not legally zoned for live/work space?

The irony of this is that I was involved running an art gallery in Port Morris a few years ago. The things that are going on there now just really make me want to hork and I really wish I could take it all back.

ryan

June 27th, 2005, 03:46 PM

Well, if Jerry Saltz is right, the art bubble is going to burst any minute now, so mediocre art galleries everywhere should get their comeuppance soon...

alex ballard

June 27th, 2005, 04:32 PM

I apologize if I'm being dense, but what exactly do you mean by this?

I guess I'm the one who's dense...

I thought you had said "They think all white people here are artists"

Did I misinterpret?

Schadenfrau

June 27th, 2005, 04:44 PM

I thought that I had made clear that I am white and not an artist.

Gulcrapek

July 20th, 2005, 03:31 PM

Riverdale Tower
19 floors
64 units
Architect: Alexander Gorlin

This might be the original proposal for Arlington Suites, I'm not sure.

www.gorlinarchitect.com/index_content.html (http://www.gorlinarchitect.com/index_content.html) > projects > high rise residential > Riverdale Tower

sfenn1117

July 20th, 2005, 04:21 PM

This tower replaces the homes on Tulfan Terrace right? Imagine living on a tiny lane in a cute little house and seeing this 19 story monster rising. This is one instance where I think nimbys have a case. But nonetheless here it is.

The design isn't bad. At least it's glass.

MarkV

August 30th, 2005, 01:31 PM

ASchwarz

August 30th, 2005, 02:26 PM

I understand there are 2 new highrise (9-story) condo projects proposed in the Melrose District on Third Avenue north of the Hub - about 115 units total. Are there any other new or recent condos in the Bronx that are comparable? Are new 1BR for $200k, 2BR for $250k and 3BR for $340K realistic?

I know a developer who is building a number of sizable condo buildings in the Morrisania neighborhood. The buildings are in the vicinity of Third Avenue and the East 160's. He plans around 300 units total. They will all be market-rate condominium buildings.

The first building broke ground around July 1 of this year. I'm not sure if prices have been set.

Could we be talking about the same development?

krulltime

September 25th, 2005, 08:19 PM

Bronx retail development moves forward

by Tommy Fernandez
September 22, 2005

Plans for a $48 million development in the South Bronx took a step forward when executives for developer Related Companies presented the latest version of the project to a community board last night.

The 170,000 square foot, two-story retail and office development at 156th Street and 3rd Avenue will have two anchor tenants, Staples and Formans Clothing Store. Space will also be rented by the Department of Transportation. The site is now an empty lot.

The project is controversial because some community leaders worry that the development could drive away business from local merchants. Related and community board officials didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The Bloomberg Administration and Bronx government have been vocal supporter of the project. "The neighborhood is obviously well-located for retailers," said Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion. "This project will help bring many jobs to the neighborhood."

Related is negotiating to complete the purchase of the lot and plans to break ground on the project next Spring.

©2005 Crain Communications Inc.

krulltime

September 25th, 2005, 08:20 PM

More retailing in store for Bronx: Related Cos. plans shopping mall

Tommy Fernandez
September 26, 2005

There is a reason why upscale developer The Related Cos. is willing to gamble $400 million on a dilapidated market in a Bronx neighborhood that still scares some locals.

Its research shows that holes in the Bronx's retail landscape create opportunities. More than half of the $13.8 billion Bronx residents spend each year on retail shopping is done outside the borough. What's more, the borough has 225,000 residents per department store, compared with 40,000 in nearby, and well-served, Westchester County.

"The Bronx is one of the most underserved boroughs with regard to retail development," says Glenn Goldstein, executive vice president at Related. "We know so many people are traveling outside the borough to get what they need. Why not bring these stores to them?"

Related is bucking for city approval of Gateway Center, which will transform a sizable section of the aging Bronx Terminal Market into a 1 million-square-foot shopping center. The project has generated controversy: Retailers, including 24 store owners who work in the terminal and are slated for eviction, have complained that the megacenter could drive small shops out of business; a pending lawsuit challenges the evictions.

The proposal recently passed muster with Community Board 4 and is now on the desk of Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión, who has roughly 30 days to review Related's plan. He says he is "committed" to the project, adding that he wants "to make sure we find good new locations" for any displaced merchants.

But Gateway Center is not the only game in town for Mr. Carrión. Retail rejuvenation is central to a number of other Bronx projects he is pushing. "Retailers are very bullish on the Bronx now," he says. "What we need to do is make sure these destinations are attractive enough--with the right consumer mix--to keep these shoppers in the county."

To do so, he helped negotiate $90 million of private financing for a 250,000-square-foot office building, which will include some retail, at Hutchinson River Park. He lobbied to get financing for a $32 million infrastructure makeover along the Grand Concourse and is promoting 1 million square feet of additional development at the Bay Plaza shopping mall at Co-op City.

But more needs to be done, says Mr. Carrión. For example, he is not satisfied with the redevelopment of 161st Street. "The area is still sort of ratty and needs some work," he says.

©2005 Crain Communications Inc.

krulltime

September 28th, 2005, 05:46 PM

Bronx development to beat records, officials say

by Tommy Fernandez

Economic development in the Bronx is on track to beat records, according to statistics released today by the borough president’s office.

The borough’s unemployment rate was 6.7% in August, down from a record-high level of 11.2% in January 2003. The average was just over $35,000, up by $4,000 since January 2000. Investment totaled $400 million during the first six months of the year and over 3,000 new businesses were incorporated.

The borough has benefited from the city's overall economic upswing and gentrification trend. The Bronx Overall Economic Development Corp. has aggressively courted developers, spurring construction especially in the South Bronx and waterfront areas.

Bronx borough President Adolfo Carrión attributed the improvement to programs such as the “Buy Bronx” campaign to encourage firms to employ Bronx businesses and the “Bronx at Work” campaign to encourage employers to hire locally. “These campaigns have led to unprecedented economic development in the borough,” Mr. Carrion said in a statement.

©2005 Crain Communications Inc.

Viva

February 25th, 2006, 03:37 PM

The neighborhood has a name already---Mott Haven
why do we need a new one?

Schadenfrau

March 3rd, 2006, 12:29 AM

What realtors call "Sobro" has many names, not just Mott Haven. Isn't anything south of Westchester now considered the South Bronx?

tmg

March 15th, 2006, 01:23 PM

Hub of activity at last

Ground broken for $53M biz project

BY ROBERT KAPPSTATTER
DAILY NEWS BRONX BUREAU CHIEF

Ground was broken yesterday on the long-awaited redevelopment of a plot of land and a derelict parking garage on the edge of the South Bronx's main shopping area.

A retail and office center anchored by the Bronx office of the city Department of Finance will anchor the new development.

The Related Companies will develop the $53 million two-story Hub Retail and Office Center and rehab the parking garage on the property just north of the Hub, the principal shopping and business district for central and South Bronx.

Related is also the major developer of the Gateway Mall project near Yankee Stadium, which many have called a sweetheart, no-bid deal with the city to replace the deteriorated Bronx Terminal Market. The developer is still locked in a legal battle with the ethnic foods merchants there over their eviction and relocation.

But at yesterday's groundbreaking ceremony for the Hub project, it was all smiles among officials as Mayor Bloomberg, joined by Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión and Steve Ross of The Related Companies, called the project "another major milestone in the ongoing renaissance of the South Bronx."

Besides bringing new economic activity and 225 full-time jobs, Bloomberg said, the 170,000-square-foot facility will extend the Hub to "the growing residential area of Melrose," where the city "has invested heavily in revitalization projects."

He said the city Finance Department office, which will replace the two current Bronx ones on Williamsbridge Road and on Arthur Ave., "will provide Bronx residents a one-stop location to pay bills and check records" as well as "attract thousands to the area, spurring additional retail growth."

Related was the successful bidder to buy the city-owned property for $1 million three years ago, but it took that long to begin construction to pursue financing and because a potential deal with Kmart to open a store on the site fell through, officials said.

Related estimated yesterday that the new center, between 153rd and 156th Sts. on Third Ave., should be open by the summer of 2007.

Besides the city finance office, it will be home to Staples, Rite Aid and Forman Mills, an apparel retailer, as well as Community Board 1.

The four-story garage will be completely renovated, with space for 265 cars.

The city will provide about $16 million for construction and equipment of the Finance Department's business center, and Carrion's office will provide an additional $500,000 for the project.

Originally published on March 15, 2006

BrooklynRider

March 15th, 2006, 03:29 PM

Always good to see the Bronx getting new investment...

Kris

March 18th, 2006, 02:01 PM

March 19, 2006
As Development Booms in Bronx, Residents Fear the Reverberations
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

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A new multistory building near an older house in the Bronx.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/03/19/nyregion/19bronx3.large.jpg
New construction is changing the look of many Bronx neighborhoods, but some fear the effects of gentrification and the loss of green space.

For decades, the area known as the Hub has been the retail heart of the South Bronx, attracting throngs of people to its small family-owned stores even as the residential blocks around it were ravaged by crime and, at times, consumed by flames.

But now, those who have kept this scrappy shopping district alive are worried, and the source of their fears is not robbers or arsonists, but development. A long-vacant lot is the planned home of a major shopping center that will include national chain stores like Staples, Forman Mills and Rite-Aid. Their impending arrival has caused as much apprehension as happiness.

"We have to watch out for the mom-and-pop stores, said George Rodriguez, chairman of the local community board, who for years has sought to bring national retailers to the area. "They did not move out, they did not capitulate. They served the clients in the area."

And the Hub is just the heart of it. A few decades after it became a national symbol of urban decay, the Bronx is home to a rash of new construction projects that are changing neighborhoods that have seen little new building in half a century. Many residents are uneasy.

The anxiety extends from woodsy Riverdale, which has had a spate of new condominium construction, to the suburban-like eastern Bronx, where huge homes have started popping up, and to the South Bronx, where plans for luxury condominiums and high-end stores have prompted fears of gentrification. Projects either planned or under way include thousands of units of new housing, shopping malls, an $800 million baseball stadium for the Yankees — perhaps a convention center and the borough's first major hotel.

The frantic pace has spurred opposition to small and large projects alike, resistance that only a few years ago would have been unthinkable in the borough, which includes one of the poorest Congressional districts in the country. The aversion to the boom is due to the dizzying speed of change, and has grown as New York City has become a more desirable place to live. Property values have skyrocketed, and wealthy people who in past generations might have moved to the suburbs are now staying and looking for more space. Poor people often find they cannot leave their current homes for fear that they will not find any place as affordable. And longtime businesses fear they will not be able to compete against chain stores.

Many are pleased about the rush. The Bronx borough president, Adolfo Carrión Jr., notes that construction means new jobs in a borough with the highest unemployment rate in the state, 7.6 percent. Still, that is much lower than the 11.2 percent rate in January 2003.

"It's a good problem to have when the arguments that people are having are not so much 'Why is nothing happening?' but 'Why is so much happening and how can we absorb it?' " Mr. Carrión said. "It's a fair concern that people have."

Dozens of residents who are critical of specific projects say they are not generally against new construction, saying their borough has been starved too long for restaurants, brand-name shops, even banks and grocery stores.

The Bronx remains seared in many minds as a symbol of urban decay — an image crystallized when a fire near Yankee Stadium led Howard Cosell to announce during the 1977 World Series that the Bronx was burning. That same year, President Jimmy Carter toured Charlotte Street, which was so ravaged it looked as if it had been bombed.

"We all know what happened in the 70's in the Bronx," said Anthony Perez Cassino, a Riverdale resident who grew up in the borough. "It's exciting to see all the development, but there's a downside — which is that in some areas, it's happening too much, too quickly. "

Last year, 9,168 building permits were issued in the borough, almost double the 4,955 awarded in 1995. And the 901 permits allotted for construction of new buildings last year was triple the number issued in 1996. The value of residential property in the Bronx has increased 42 percent, to $2.5 billion, since 2000. Land in the borough is at such a premium that single-family homes are being razed for multistory apartment buildings, houses are being built in alleys and in one case, a three-story apartment building is being constructed around a neighbor's tree.

"We're not paying attention to the alternatives for the people who are going to be displaced," said William Bosworth, director of the Bronx Data Center at Lehman College.

In Geneva Causey's neighborhood near Yankee Stadium, residents say they learned of definitive plans for a replacement ballpark through a news conference announcing the plan in June 2005. After 38 years of living in the South Bronx, Ms. Causey believes it finally might be time to move: The proposed new Yankee Stadium would be built across the street, 90 feet from her bedroom.

Mr. Carrión and other local politicians say the project will jump-start economic development. The City Council is expected to vote on the project in April. The Yankees want to start construction by May 1.

The proposal calls for building a stadium on two large neighborhood parks adjacent to the current stadium. Residents fear that the patchwork of new parks that will replace them will not make up for the green space, and the popular gathering spots, that they will lose.

"This is not going to be a desirable living area," Ms. Causey said. "It's kind of like, 'Where do you go?' This is affordable housing for people in this neighborhood. You will kill the community off."

Within walking distance of Yankee Stadium is the Bronx Terminal Market, a 31-acre collection of crumbling but popular warehouse shops. As part of a $400 million redevelopment plan, the market's remaining merchants and hundreds of their employees are being evicted. The market, which dates to the 1920's, will be replaced by Gateway Center, a mall that will include national chain stores.

Majora Carter, executive director Sustainable South Bronx, a community organization, said that officials had accepted projects that were not necessarily the best for the community because of an "inferiority complex" left over from the borough's leaner years.

"I'm all for development, but there's nothing in the middle at all," Ms. Carter said. "It's either they do a large-scale development or nothing at all. There are no neighborhood-scale shops."

And then there is the planned $50 million, 170,000-square-foot commercial development in the Hub, which like the proposed new Yankee Stadium, depends on government financing. It will include a Forman Mills discount retail store, a Staples and a Rite-Aid when it opens in two years. Though the area has sought chain stores for years with little luck, residents and community leaders like Mr. Rodriguez wonder if by upgrading they might upset the area's delicate economic balance. "We've got to make sure that whatever is done is done for the benefit of everyone in the community," Mr. Rodriguez said.The eastern Bronx has similar concerns. BJ's is trying to move into the area, and City Councilman James Vacca, who represents the district, said he fears a warehouse-style store would hurt local businesses, including several new supermarkets that have opened in the area recently.

The eastern Bronx has also had an increase in the number of huge homes being built on relatively small lots, which for years has been a problem in other areas of the city but is a relatively new phenomenon there. In response, neighborhoods like City Island and Throgs Neck have successfully lobbied for zoning laws in recent months to limit new building.

"We always saw ourselves as a touch of suburbia in the Bronx," Mr. Vacca said. "You want to retain trees and open space, and you don't want to live on top of your neighbor."

In the northern Bronx — including parts of Riverdale and Kingsbridge — zoning laws have changed as well to keep out new multistory apartment buildings and homes deemed too large for their lots.

Still, modest-size houses on streets that have not been rezoned have been bought by developers and demolished to make room for huge houses in the past year. In one case, on Tulfan Terrace in Riverdale, a 20-story condominium tower was built on the space that had housed three of the cul-de-sac's eight homes.

"We are in the midst of the most intense development push since the apartment house boom that transformed large parts of Riverdale in the 1950's," said Bradford Trebach, an associate broker and general counsel for his family's real estate firm, Trebach Realty.

Sometimes large-scale development has been greeted with praise. In Kingsbridge, a proposal to build a 207,000-square-foot shopping mall has received wide support among residents, even though some shops that the developers are in talks with, like Whole Foods, have higher prices than residents in the nearby housing projects are used to.

The new stores, which could include a chain bookstore, would force nearby retailers to adapt, said Fern Jaffe, who has owned the Paperbacks Plus bookstore for 36 years.

"We can weather the storm," Ms. Jaffe said. "Would I rather they weren't there? Of course. But development is development."

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Manny Fernandez contributed reporting for this article.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

krulltime

April 14th, 2006, 11:58 AM

City to fund affordable housing in the Bronx

by Catherine Tymkiw
April 14, 2006

The Bronx will get two new affordable housing buildings with the help of $29 million in tax-exempt bonds from the city's Housing Development Corp.

The Arker Cos. and the Jackson Development Group will spend $26 million to construct the Rev. Ruben Diaz Gardens Apartments at 967 Kelly St. in the Longwood section of the Bronx. The building will include 111 units, 20,000 square feet of retail, 27,000 square feet of offices and underground parking.

Atlantic Development will spend $28 million to build the Villa Avenue Apartments at 3121 Villa Ave. in the Bedford Park neighborhood, located one block west of the Grand Concourse. It will also include 111 units.

Both projects will be financed through HDC's low-income affordable marketplace program, which offers funding to developers who build apartments reserved for families earning no more than $42,540.

The buildings, which should be finished in 2008, are part of an ongoing affordable housing initiative by HDC. "We have a pipeline of apartments," said HDC spokesman Aaron Donovan. HDC expects to issue an additional $143 million of bonds to help fund 1,300 affordable apartments by year-end.

The agency said it has already provided more than $728 million to preserve or construct 28,084 affordable housing units.

©2006 Crain Communications Inc.

Kris

April 19th, 2006, 04:40 PM

April 19, 2006
The Greening of a Landmark of Urban Blight
By MANNY FERNANDEZ

http://graphics9.nytimes.com/images/2006/04/19/nyregion/19green.650.jpg
Nancy Biberman and Sam Marks at the site where their group is building housing for low-income families.

In the South Bronx, vacant lots achieve a kind of fame, if not infamy.

President Jimmy Carter's visit in October 1977 to an abandoned lot at Charlotte Street and Boston Road transformed an anonymous stretch of New York City into a national symbol of urban blight.

A couple of blocks away, a small patch of land became notorious as both Hollywood backdrop and neighborhood dumping ground. The five-story buildings that sat on the triangular lot at Louis Nine Boulevard and Intervale Avenue were torn down around 1980. The remaining mound of debris was used to set the mood for a bleak scene — the one where a prostitute kills two police officers — in the 1981 movie "Fort Apache, the Bronx." The lot has been vacant ever since, home to burned-out cars, trash, broken television sets and blackened soil from a 40-square-foot diesel spill.

It is here, of all places, that Nancy Biberman is planning to build big — and green. The empty lot will be the site of a $45 million, 174-unit housing complex for low-income families. A groundbreaking ceremony is to take place today.

Amid the concrete and grit of a neighborhood near the rattling elevated trains on Southern Boulevard, the red brick building will be surrounded and shaded by nearly 100 trees. By using high-efficiency boilers, it will use 85 percent less natural gas to generate heat and hot water than typical low-cost housing in the city, according to a project consultant. The paints, glues and other materials used in construction will be low in the pollutants known as volatile organic compounds. Four to 18 inches of soil will cover most of the roof, part of a green roof system of shrubs and small trees to reduce air pollution and absorb storm water runoff.

Ms. Biberman is president of the Bronx nonprofit group building the complex, the Women's Housing and Economic Development Corporation, known as Whedco, which is hoping to create an intricately designed, energy-efficient home for families earning $28,000 to $39,000 a year, with one-bedroom apartments renting for $660 a month. The building will offer a touch of elegance and sophistication — each unit will have a computer and be wired for high-speed Internet access — in one of the nation's poorest Congressional districts.

On Monday afternoon, Ms. Biberman took a walk around the lot, once owned by the city, to see the transformation firsthand. For now, it remains a rocky, weed-covered area. But workers have been digging out what remained of the demolished buildings left to rot for more than two decades. The oil spill at the front of the nearly one-acre lot was cleaned up, but at the back of the site, a machine was busy scooping up contaminated soil and dumping it onto trucks for removal.

Debris that was buried in the ground or dumped on the surface was scattered. There were clumps of bathroom tile, a rusty oil tank, a flattened Rheingold can. The machine clawed the earth along Louis Nine Boulevard, working in the same spot where the scene in "Fort Apache, the Bronx" was filmed.

"This lot has been vacant and rubble-strewn, and just a reminder of bad times," Ms. Biberman said. The new building, she added, is "symbolic in a way of the rebuilding of the Bronx."

Whedco plans to start renting out the building, which will also include commercial storefront space, in the fall of 2007. It will be one of the few low-cost housing developments in New York to have a major environmentally friendly focus, and it will be built with a combination of city, state, federal and private funds in a section of the city where asthma and air pollution have long been a problem.

There will be a sculpture garden designed by the Bronx Museum of the Arts, interior motion-sensor lights and 42 trees planted in sidewalk plots about four times bigger than most such pits, to give the roots more oxygen and water.

Ms. Biberman said the choice to build green was about more than the environment. The building's tenants, she said, "do not have the money to take a break from city life and be in a place that's green and quiet and beautiful. If people can't afford to go there, then we're going to bring it to them."

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

antinimby

June 10th, 2006, 03:21 AM

Solaria Riverdale

http://solariariverdale.com/

http://www.curbed.com/archives/2006_06_solaria.jpg

krulltime

June 29th, 2006, 06:50 PM

Condo culture hits S. Bronx

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Artist drawing of
Orion condo with
elevators that will
be going up in S. Bronx.

By LORE CROGHAN
DAILY NEWS BUSINESS WRITER
June 29, 2006

Affordable housing is going upscale in the South Bronx - where excavation is under way for the area's first elevatored condo building.

The nine-story Orion will rise on Third Ave. near E. 156th St. in Melrose Commons, a 35-block urban renewal zone where a new wave of construction is starting.

Once burned-out South Bronx nabes are seeing a real estate resurgence, as old factories become handsome rental apartment buildings and townhouses sprout on vacant lots.

"This is a breakthrough," said architect Magnus Magnusson, whose firm designed the Orion and has an ownership stake in it. "It will show that the South Bronx is no longer the backwater of New York City."

His firm, Melrose Associates, is one of four partners developing the Orion - and a second condo building set to break ground later this summer.

The quartet includes Nos Quedamos (We Stay) - a community group that got the city to abandon an urban renewal plan that would have evicted thousands of Melrose residents and businesses - and builders Procida Realty & Construction and L&M Equity.

"We believe everybody needs a little piece of something to own," said Yolanda Gonzalez, Nos Quedamos' executive director.

The 60 condos in the brick and cast-stone design at 3044 Third Ave. will have fancy touches like bamboo floors, though most units are for low- to moderate-income buyers.

The developers hope to start the sale process in the fall, said Christine Procida of Procida Realty & Construction.

The builders get tax breaks and grants from the city.

Seven units are for low-income purchasers - who earn $58,320 or less per year for a family of four. A total of 39 apartments are for middle-income buyers - who earn up to $80,190 annually for a family of four - or moderate-income buyers, who top out at $94,770 for a family of four.

Fourteen flats are "market-rate" - with no income restrictions.

Prices are expected to range from around $145,000 for one-bedrooms for low-income buyers to about $325,000 for market-rate three-bedrooms, Procida said.

The developers will coordinate a lottery for buyers with the city Housing Preservation and Development department and the Housing Partnership Development Corp. People who want their names on a mailing list for notification about the start of the lottery should call Procida at (718) 299-7000, extension 221.

The second building is called the Aurora and will have 90 units - 7 for low-income buyers, 62 for moderate-income buyers and 21 market-rate flats.

All contents © 2006 Daily News, L.P.

krulltime

July 3rd, 2006, 01:37 PM

Bronx Hub revival gathers steam
Retail nexus for the borough pulls in national chains, new projects -- and hopes of higher rents

http://www.therealdeal.net//issues/JULY_2006/images/1151609191.jpg
(Top) Retail at the Hub's 149th
Street and Melrose Avenue; and
(bottom) a planned project on
Third Avenue between 153rd and
156th streets that will house a
branch of the city's Department
of Finance.

By Marc Ferris
July 2006

Signs of change abound at the Hub, a historic crossroads once known as the Broadway of the Bronx. Some civic leaders are now trying to have this pocket of the South Bronx designated as Downtown Bronx, with limited success.

Major roads, including Third, Melrose, Willis and Westchester avenues intersect with East 149th Street here, at Roberto Clemente Plaza. Foot traffic is constant and fingers of retail extend to ancillary streets, especially the canyon along Third Avenue between 149th and 156th streets, the northern borough's analogue to Times Square. There are no electric billboards, but instead a riot of gaudy orange and yellow signs. Scaffolding and construction projects are beginning to sprout at the Hub, which is within walking distance of a recent spate of proposals to revamp the Bronx Terminal Market and rebuild Yankee Stadium.

Well-known chains like Duane Reade and Washington Mutual Bank have joined typical outer-borough establishments such as Mr. Discount, Audio Shack, Cookie's Department Store and the 99¢ Express. For every Burger King or McDonald's, there's a Jumbo's Hamburger Place. Bodegas abound.

The city's Economic Development Corporation helped jump-start the Hub's resurgence. One project still in the planning stages is an ambitious development of 180 residential units, 300,000 square feet of office space and 500,000 square feet of retail, including a supermarket and a cinema along 149th Street east of Third Avenue, which will be built by Blackacre Capital Management LLC and Cypress Equities, said Janel Patterson, a spokeswoman for the agency.

Heavy equipment has been deployed to begin the Hub's most dramatic project, now under construction by the Related Companies on Third Avenue between 153rd and 156th streets, which will house a branch of the city's Department of Finance and the offices of the local community board. Retail components will include a Forman Mills discount clothing outlet taking 42,000 square feet, a Staples Superstore with 18,000 square feet and a Rite Aid with 16,245 square feet. Related is also renovating a 273-space parking garage.

Though the developer won the RFP floated by the Economic Development Corporation in 2003, the $53 million job just got under way. "It's a challenging site to lease out to various retailers," said Glenn Goldstein, an executive vice president at Related. "You need to have a significant project like this pre-leased."

There are still 15,000 square feet to lease, he said, which will be housed on the first floor of the garage. Related is also revamping the Bronx Terminal Market near Yankee Stadium, which will boast 970,000 square feet of retail.

Located on 156th Street across from the Related site is a privately-funded project by Procida Development, which has yet to break ground but will consist of housing and retail.

Though national chains have arrived, bringing their sense of sameness, the local outlets can offer an element of charming seediness. Several buildings are fully rented on the ground floor but are clearly vacant -- even dilapidated -- up top. One large green sign on 149th Avenue advertises a pawn broker.

"It's not quite the Fulton Mall, and the arrival of national chains is not happening so quickly, but retailers do quite well," said Mario Procida, Procida Development's head. "Over the next few years, the change will be significant."

Though the Hub is happening, two other Bronx locations, Fordham Road and Bay Plaza at Co-op City, take in more money, though that may change. Within spitting distance of the intersection of Third Avenue at 149th Street, rents exceed $100 per square foot, said Nicholas Burns, director of sales at Massey Knakal Realty Services. In contrast, rents on Manhattan's major retail corridors average around $330 a square foot, according to a spring report by the Real Estate Board of New York.

"Some very small spaces get $200," said Burns. "But the farther away you get from the main drag, retail rents drop dramatically."

The Related project may single-handedly boost rents to new heights.

"It will extend economic activity from the core center and it will add 225 jobs to the area," said Burns. "Across the street from the site, one ground-floor tenant who paid $20 to $25 a square foot was struggling, so when the lease expired, the owner signed up a national tenant in the $40-square-foot range. That's just the beginning."

Despite the presence of stately buildings with good bones that are at least 80 years old, the office market has yet to catch up with retail, but Burns sees that changing as well. He points to government programs that offer tax incentives and other bonuses, including a task force created several years ago by Sen. Charles Schumer, named the Group of 35, to create ancillary business districts to house back-office functions for companies that don't require inviting retail spaces, such as computer and printing firms. Back on the retail side, the city's Industrial and Commercial Incentive Program has also helped, spurring Thor Industries to build a large complex at 2914 Third Avenue.

The activity in the Hub is one of the most significant signs that the Bronx' building boom has only just begun, said Goldstein. "We're actively looking at other things," he added. "The borough is in a resurgence and is under-retailed, so we strongly believe in the future."

Procida shares that optimism: "We've been based here since the mid-1970s and have been bullish on the Bronx for quite some time."

Copyright © 2003-2005 The Real Deal

krulltime

July 24th, 2006, 01:57 AM

Vacant Lot Was Their Paradise

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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