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A Changed Landscape
May 19, 2005
By Jordan Moss
It’s no longer a theory, a plan or a proposal. After more than a dozen years of controversy, with residents repeatedly foiling city officials determined to build a water filtration plant in the Bronx, the city has finally gotten its wish. While three lawsuits are still pending, contractors are well into their work of excavating dirt and rock from the former Mosholu Driving Range in Van Cortlandt Park. The project is expected to take at least seven years. Here are some images from the initials stages of transformation from parkland to filtration plant.
All photos by Jordan Moss
Trees, Not Trash Cans
May 19, 2005
By Editorial
The Department of Environmental Protection, which has been doing a better-than-expected job working with the community around the filtration plant, thought it was doing local residents a good turn by providing them with hundreds of garbage cans like the one pictured on the left.
We aren’t going to lambaste the agency for this. At least they’re trying to win some points with the community. But they seem to have a tin ear when it comes to really understanding what residents want.
First of all, the garbage cans have nothing to do with the filtration project. The DEP has other more substantial means of disposing of the tons and tons of bedrock it will be blasting out of the park over the next two years. We’ll be reminded of that as we watch giant trucks filled with the stuff enter and leave the park at two-minute intervals every day.
The DEP would do better to address actual local concerns that are well established, particularly worries about the exacerbation of asthma among community residents.
We urge the agency strongly consider Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz’ suggestion to plant hundreds of trees in the communities surrounding the filtration plant, particularly in Norwood. That would be a much more genuine expression of concern for the community.
The city should also take it a step further and closely monitor area residents, especially children, who suffer from asthma. Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión has requested that the city Health Department take such action, but he’s still waiting for an answer.
Raw Meals Deal
May 19, 2005
By Editorial
Seven months ago the city debuted Senior Options, the Orwellian name for a program that we now know gives seniors the “option” of eating inedible food or not eating at all. In pushing Senior Options, which drastically transformed the universally popular Meals on Wheels program, the city said seniors would have the choice of getting one weekly shipment of frozen meals that they could reheat themselves or getting daily delivery of hot meals. But when the food is this bad — we tried it ourselves — it doesn’t matter whether the food is frozen or reheated.
Program supporters, including Borough President Adolfo Carrión, who originally opposed the program, assert that the program must be working because complaints are minimal. But, as Council Member Oliver Koppell said, “How often can you complain?”
The perpetuation of this program is an example of politics at its worst — of local politicians offering their support for a program they know is wrong. We don’t fault the officials for accepting campaign contributions from one of the program’s main beneficiaries. For better or worse, that’s simply how our political system works. We do condemn them, however, for doing the bidding of political supporters when a policy is not in the best interest of their constituents.
Mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer’s close supporters in the Bronx should follow his lead. The Ferrer campaign has received $2,000 from Louis Vazquez, the executive director of RAIN, the agency that got most of the Senior Options contracts. But the former borough president has called the changes to the program “shameful” and “just this side of immoral.”
We suggest Bronx elected officials take the same taste-test we took. Would they be able to honestly say that they would allow an elderly relative to eat these “meals” on a daily basis?
We doubt it, and if they can’t, then they should withdraw their support for the program and urge the Bloomberg administration to change course.
Oliver and Risse Progress Toward Parkland Goals
May 19, 2005
By Heather Haddon
There is some progress to report on efforts to remake two overgrown and neglected public spaces. Officials have recently renewed attempts to make the Risse Street Triangle, an overgrown plot at the top of the Grand Concourse, more usable.
The Parks Department acquired the space from the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development in 2002, a move that residents and Community Board 7 (CB7) had pushed for. But efforts to make improvements stalled. While $250,000 was allocated to beautify Risse Street in 2003, the money sat untouched.
The city has cut the Triangle’s grass in the meantime, but the green space is generally overgrown and inaccessible. “The way it’s set up now isn’t too inviting,” said Barbara Stronczer, who chairs CB7’s Parks Committee.
A fence runs around the perimeter of the nearly one-acre plot, and the gate is rarely unlocked. Another gate divides the north side — an open grassy area with benches, trees, and concrete blocks from a previous redesign intended for seating — from the overgrown southern tip. This portion was home to a community garden during the 1980s, but was later abandoned.
The park is rather isolated, surrounded by busy streets and is not a destination in and of itself. Children from the Bronx New School previously utilized Risse as a playground, which the Bedford Park school lacks. The school now blocks off Van Cortlandt Avenue East as a play street during the day.
The Parks Department is holding a scoping meeting this week to start planning how to use the allocated funds. Bob Nolan, the budget director for Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión, says that CB7 and residents will play a large role in deciding what work is done at the Triangle. Once a design is selected, Nolan promised that improvements will progress rapidly.
“There is a contractor that’s waiting to work on this,” he said. “We expect a quick turnaround.”
Stronczer would like to see Risse’s sitting area enhanced, along with some additional landscaping. “As the gateway to the Grand Concourse, it should be attractive,” she said.
The park is actually named after one of the Concourse’s original designers, Louis Risse, who helped plan the stately thoroughfare in the early 1890s.
Oliver Place Inches Forward
Efforts at transforming another neglected public space, Oliver Place, are not as far along, but making progress nonetheless. Advocates have pushed for years to transform the hilly eyesore into a park, but the city’s Department of Transportation must first hand the street over to the Parks Department. This process, known as the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), is still in the early stages.
“We are preparing the required paperwork,” said Sam Goodman, an urban planner at the borough president’s office.
About a year ago, advocates convinced that office to work on de-mapping the street. Goodman said the process takes time, but promised they were still on top of it. “[The project] is not dormant by any means,” he said. “It’s definitely going somewhere.”
Members of the Masjid-Hefaz Mosque on East 198th Street have campaigned to make Oliver Place a park since 2002. Rafeek Khan, a mosque leader, said that things are progressing, albeit slowly. “It is not going at the speed we would like, but you have to be patient,” he said. “The distance we have gone is very, very far.”
But there are still some miles to go. Once the paperwork is submitted to the city, Goodman estimates it will take another year-and-a-half before improvements begin. Funds also must be raised for the project, which is slated to cost $800,000.
Designs prepared last year by the City College Architecture Center, working with mosque members and the Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation, include a playground at the top of Oliver Place. A sitting area would be built at the bottom plateau.
“It’s pretty straightforward,” said Pat Logan, a Fordham Bedford staffer who oversees the group’s parks initiatives.
That work would still dramatically transform Oliver Place, a fenced-in slope wedged between Decatur and Marion avenues. The street has always been strewn with litter, tires and other junk.
“People come and dump stuff here in the night,” said John Whyte, who has lived next to Oliver Place for 25 years. The street is also used as an informal car repair shop.
Whyte says he often calls the Sanitation Department about the mess, but little is done to rectify it. “They just give me tickets,” he said.
The mosque, spearheaded by its youth group, organized a cleanup of Oliver Place last weekend as part of It’s My Park Day.
If Oliver Place successfully becomes a park, it will be the fourth time that the street has gone through a transformation. Oliver Avenue, named after a prominent family who lived nearby, once extended into what is now the New York Botanical Garden. It was renamed as Oliver Street, and then finally became Oliver Place in 1893 after it was truncated.
They Repeat: Housing Bubble May Burst
May 19, 2005
By Jordan Moss
Sometimes you need to sound the alarm more than once to get attention.
In the summer of 2003, University Neighborhood Housing Program (UNHP), an nonprofit advocacy group based on the Grand Concourse, held a forum at Fordham University’s library to warn of a potential real estate bubble inflated by exploding purchase prices for multi-family dwellings. Through its research, the group learned that landlords were paying a great deal more for the buildings than they seemed to be worth. Purchase prices had escalated since 1996, but there was no net increase in building revenue, known as net operating income.
That worried UNHP, because recent Bronx history has shown that a speculative market can lead to neglected buildings and the threat of foreclosure.
Fast-forward 18 months. A very similar group of housing advocates, bankers, community organizers and public officials gathered on March 30 just across the Fordham campus in the McGinley Center for an update of UNHP’s warning.
The bubble hasn’t burst but it’s getting bigger.
Landlords have been paying as much $67,000 per unit even though net operating income remained the same through 2002 and expenses rose, UNHP reports in its study, “Rising Values in a Highly Subsidized Market.”
All this could make good sense if northwest Bronx neighborhoods were on the verge of becoming the next Williamsburg, DUMBO or Alphabet City. But the available indicators tell a different story.
Buildings where 30 to 40 percent of tenants are paying more than 50 percent of their income on rent, or whose apartments had at least five maintenance deficiencies are heavily concentrated in a few Bronx neighborhoods, including University Heights, Fordham and the upper Concourse. UNHP also found that while there has been an increase in this trend since 1999 in the Bronx, the trend is going in the opposite direction in the other boroughs.
Separating these two variables from each other, UNHP found that the highest concentrations in both categories were on the west side of the Grand Concourse.
Adding fuel to the fire, 9 percent of Bronx apartments, the most in any borough, are subsidized by Section 8 housing vouchers, but the federal program is embattled in Washington. Congress is targeting the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development for steep cuts, and the agency’s head, Alphonso Jackson, has been critical of Section 8.
And, of course, the devastating effects of overvaluing multi-family Bronx properties are not just a theory. In the 1980s, Freddie Mac (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation) provided dozens of mortgages on northwest Bronx buildings for sale prices that went way beyond what the landlords could pay back. As a result, many of the buildings drastically deteriorated and ended up in foreclosure. At the time, UNHP was in the forefront of identifying the troubling trend.
In 2003, UNHP proposed the idea of a Mortgage Foreclosure Prevention Clearinghouse. The idea didn’t get much traction. Jim Buckley, UNHP’s executive director, thinks the term “foreclosure” may have spooked bankers, who are central to the project, so the group is renewing its call for the clearinghouse, newly christened as the Multifamily Assistance Center.
UNHP sees the Center as a pilot project that could expand to the rest of the city if successful. Banks with properties in bad shape physically or financially, owners of buildings, or community organizations, could seek assistance from the Center.
The group sees the Center as moving “troubled properties quickly to either new ownership or critical rehabilitation money to avoid further deterioration of services or building conditions while also avoiding lengthy and expensive legal procedures that could include foreclosure.”
Buckley said the group will spend the next few months fund-raising for the project and that it would initially be housed at UNHP.
Guard Soldiers Get Their Footlockers
May 19, 2005
By David Greene
After a delay of over a month, nearly 200 footlockers belonging to Bronx soldiers based out of the Kingsbridge Armory arrived at the Tallil Air Base in southern Iraq on May 14.
After the Norwood News reported on April 21 that the footlockers were stuck at Ft. Benning in Georgia, local members of Congress wrote to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Commanders at the base subsequently felt the heat and took action.
“My general got really energized behind the guys at Ft. Benning to get the footlockers shipped out,” according to Lt. Colonel Richard Steele, who contacted the Norwood News after reading previous reports on the paper’s Web site. The lockers contained personal belongings as well as National Guard equipment.
Explaining the snafu, Lieutenant Colonel Rick Riera, the Garrison Commander of Ft. Benning, said that commanders in the field were operating under a “change in instructions,” where members of the 145th Maintenance Company were directed to use equipment from another unit rotating out of Iraq.
But once the order came down to find the soldiers’ footlockers, it took some time to locate them on the huge military base. “The challenge is getting the stuff to them,” Riera said. “And going back and forth [with the units in Kuwait and then Iraq], it took a while to identify what property we were talking about.” The footlockers were stored in giant 20-foot containers at Ft. Benning, which processed 4,500 troops for Operation Enduring Freedom.
Though one member who asked not to be identified said he and his fellow soldiers had been frustrated by the situation, he added via e-mail, “We’re just glad we got our stuff and thank everyone back home for their support.”
Some Progress on Tracey’s Elevators and Security
May 19, 2005
By Heather Haddon
Conditions at Tracey Towers continue to take small steps forward with elevator work and security staff changes under way. But many worry that some problems are endemic at the building and that Tracey will never run as smoothly as other Mitchell-Lama developments.
Following a large rent increase last year, R-Y Management, the company that oversees Tracey, has begun over the last several months to address Tracey’s many problems. The Tenants Council now meets monthly with R-Y’s Bronx manager, Daniel Durante, to discuss short-term improvements for the building. Durante joined R-Y 18 months ago and has years of prior housing experience.
“He has been very responsive,” said Diana Walters, president of Tracey’s Tenants Council, who estimated that a third of the targeted improvements have been completed.
Major repairs are a different story. R-Y finally started replacing Tracey’s notoriously dangerous elevators last month, with work wrapping up on the first of 12 elevator lines. The city Department of Housing, Preservation and Development (HPD), which oversees Tracey through the Mitchell-Lama housing program, says that two elevators serving the lower floors and one for the higher levels will be completed by the summer.
Estimates have varied about how long the total rehab will take, but Virginia Gliedman, an HPD spokesperson, firmly said last week that work will conclude by May 2007.
Tenants had hoped for quicker results. “They’ve got to split them up two at a time, otherwise it will be 12 years before it’s finished,” Walters said.
Tracey’s elevators are over 30 years old, and they shake, race past floors, and stall. This was acutely highlighted last month when Ming Kuang Chen, a Chinese food delivery man, was stuck in one of Tracey’s elevators for almost four days. The building’s security cameras proved useless and staff inattentiveness didn’t help.
The extreme mishap renewed scrutiny of Tracey’s conditions. Durante admitted last month during a tenants meeting that some of the maintenance and security staff are not up to snuff. Durante did not return calls for comment.
The Tenants Council recently told Durante which security agents were inadequate, and a few were fired. “Some of them were sleeping, eating, or up in people’s apartments,” Walters said. “They couldn’t wait to get a job at Tracey Towers.”
Not all Mitchell-Lamas are burdened with such problems.
The conditions at Scott Tower, just around the block on Paul Avenue, offer a stark contrast. “It’s always been a well-managed building,” said Stuart Davis, a 35-year Scott resident. When one of the building’s three elevators gets stuck, Davis says an alarm audibly sounds and management responds immediately.
Scott’s elevators were modernized several years ago. Tenants paid additional charges over their monthly rent to fund the improvements.
After Tracey started a multi-phase rent increase last year, R-Y was able to get a $1.6 million loan to repair the elevators, along with the roof and façade. The building had not raised its rents since 1991, when tenants successfully sued R-Y to stop collecting more money until numerous repairs were made.
HPD and R-Y contend that the long delay in a rent increase is both unusual and detrimental. “The rents really were not covering the expenses,” Gliedman said. Companies that own buildings created through the Mitchell-Lama program, started by New York State to provide housing for middle-income residents, are mandated to put aside some money. It’s not enough, however, to cover capital expenses, according to Gliedman.
Tracey’s owners have only paid interest on the mortgage, and not the actual principal, on the building, according to an annual state report on the Mitchell-Lama program. The mortgage’s interest rate is at a substantial 8 percent. Many other Mitchell-Lamas refinanced their mortgages during the 1990s when rates plunged, according to the report.
The rent increase is not enough to fund an overhaul of Tracey’s boilers, which provided inadequate heat and hot water last winter. R-Y is now looking for assistance from a state energy program.
Tenants, however, have been unhappy with R-Y’s service for years. “It doesn’t feel like you make it an obligation to do what you need to do, said D’Ann St. Paul, a tenant, to Durante during the meeting. “Someone in management has to care.”
But others blame Tracey’s issues on its size. The complex is the second largest Mitchell-Lama in the Bronx, and reportedly the tallest one in the entire city at 41 stories. At that size, providing proper heat and elevator services becomes difficult.
“It’s not that other Mitchell-Lamas are better maintained than Tracey,” Gliedman said. “A complex of this configuration is just costlier and harder to maintain.”
Council Member Oliver Koppell, whose district includes the towers, thought Tracey was burdened by its size, but also believes that its initial construction was shoddy.
Tracey is owned, and was built by, the DeMatteis Construction Corporation, a large and powerful developer. Some think the company hasn’t done its share. “Clearly, Mr. DeMatteis is not doing his job,” said Sheila Reinhardt, a resident, during the tenants’ meeting.
Koppell is meeting with R-Y and HPD this week to discuss Tracey’s issues. Gliedman said that, despite the hurdles, the agency is committed to making progress. “We are definitely committed to making this thing work,” she said.
Complaints Drop but Meals Still Unsavory
May 19, 2005
By Heather Haddon
Complaints may have tapered off since the Bronx’ Meals on Wheels program was overhauled last October, but John Whyte is still not a fan. “It’s garbage,” said Whyte, 75, staring at a plastic tray of reheated meat and limp green beans, as he sat outside his Marion Avenue house.
The city and most Bronx officials contend that, after some initial bumps, the transition to the Senior Options pilot program has been smooth. The controversial change consolidated the Bronx’ meals providers from 17 to two, and substituted frozen meals for hot ones. A percentage of seniors receive reheated meals daily, while others get a stack of frozen ones weekly.
RAIN, the area provider, was plagued by delivery problems when it first took over the program. But as the months rolled on, the criticism quieted.
“We haven’t heard any complaints in months,” said Christopher Miller, a spokesperson for the city Department for the Aging (DFTA). “Lots of issues have been sorted out.”
Louis Vasquez, the director of RAIN, also said that the pilot was a success. “[There have been] no complaints. None,” he said firmly after a budget press conference with Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión.
Officials, including Carrión, Council Member Joel Rivera, and Council Member Oliver Koppell, all say that complaints have dwindled. “They are down to a small trickle,” Carrión said after his press conference.
But Koppell contends that seniors still aren’t satisfied, and have given up trying to get their criticisms heard. “How often can you complain?” he asked.
Koppell believes that seniors are especially upset with the food quality. “One woman said it was inedible,” he said. “It’s completely different than they got [before].”
A taste test of one frozen meal of meat, carrots and potatoes, by the Norwood News found that the food was almost inedible. The carrots were rubbery, the sauce on the meat was watery, and all the food had a somewhat sour taste. (The friend of a senior who doesn’t like the food gave the meal to the paper.)
Ashley Geleta, a home attendant who works for Whyte and other area seniors, says many of her clients throw away the meals and just drink the milk and juice. “It’s terrible,” she said. “A lot of people complain.”
Whyte, who is diabetic, also said that the meals lack variety. “It’s lasagna every day,” he said.
Rivera, who supported the pilot, said that frozen meals have been successfully used in the city’s weekend meals program. “We never had a problem with this before,” he said.
The pilot will run until this fall, and then undergo an assessment by independent evaluators. If approved, the city had said that the Bronx program will be renewed and implemented citywide.
But whether the pilot will expand, or just remain in the Bronx, remains a question. The mayor’s revised budget released this month restores $17 million to senior services, including meals programs. A projection of the budget until 2009 holds funding for general senior services at these levels, according to data provided by the city comptroller’s office.
The budget predicts that the city will save $8 million in fiscal year 2006 through the pilot program, but doesn’t indicate that the savings will expand. This could signify that the program won’t expand citywide this year, if ever.
“The mayor has abandoned plans to expand the program, or at least postponed it,” said Koppell, an outspoken critic of Senior Options. Koppell said that Mark Page, the director of the city Office of Management and Budget, told him the expansion wasn’t happening now.
But DFTA contends that the expansion was never on the table, and it will only be considered after the evaluation this fall. Miller was deliberately vague about what senior services would have been cut in the original budget.
“Senior services would have been maintained,” he said repeatedly.
Senior Options was originally touted as a necessary measure to increase efficiency and save the city money. The mayor and most Bronx Democrats have rigidly stood by the overhaul, though it ignited a firestorm of criticism. Some critics allege that the pilot began in the Bronx because Vasquez has close ties with Assemblyman Jose Rivera and other Democratic regulars.
Vasquez and city officials have repeatedly denied the charge.
Council Speaker Gifford Miller, a new ally of Koppell’s and a mayoral candidate, has spearheaded a postcard campaign demanding the return of hot meals. “The speaker sees it’s a vulnerability of the mayor’s,” Koppell said.
Park Group Drops Suit Against Plant
May 19, 2005
By Jordan Moss
The Friends of Van Cortlandt Park has decided not to appeal a state Supreme Court judge’s Dec. 3 ruling dismissing their lawsuit, which argued that the city failed to rezone the park for industrial use.
The move eliminates one of the last remaining hurdles for the city, which is already well into site preparation and has just begun blasting into bedrock.
“I think at this point, it’s really unlikely that we’re going to prevail, given the fact that the courts haven’t acted in our favor so far,” said Jane Sokolow, who heads the Friends’ board of directors, in explaining the group’s decision.
Ora Holloway, a Norwood resident and Friends board member, agreed, and added that even if the courts made the city jump through additional hoops involved in rezoning the park, it was unlikely to keep the plant out of Van Cortlandt.
“The zoning challenge is not likely to stop the construction,” Holloway said.
The organization’s board of directors informed Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe of their decision. Benepe offered to arrange a meeting with DEP Commis-sioner Emily Lloyd to address the group’s concerns, according to Sokolow.
But she said they still needed to closely monitor the city’s work to make sure that “whatever DEP does, they do correctly and according to law.”
Holloway said it was now imperative for her and her neighbors to keep a close eye on the project. “We will try to get this community involved in helping to monitor what is going on with the construction,” she said. “Especially air quality, since so many people in the community are asthmatics. We will try to be as vigilant as we possibly can.”
The Friends, an advocacy organization that sponsors many programs in the park, successfully beat back city efforts to build the plant in the park in 2001 when the state’s highest court ruled that the city could not build in the park without the approval of the state legislature.
But in 2003, the borough’s state Assembly delegation accepted a Bloomberg administration promise of over $243 million in water bond money, to be used for improvements to parkland throughout the borough, in return for letting the city build in the park. Of that money, $43 million is earmarked for improvements to Van Cortlandt, including the southeast corner in Norwood. Aside from Jeffrey Dinowitz, a staunch opponent of the plant whose district includes the park, the rest of the borough’s Assembly delegation went along with the deal.
Meanwhile, three other suits are pending. Supreme Court Justice Marguerite Grays has been considering since January a suit by a group of Norwood residents calling themselves Bronx Environmental Health and Justice. That suit charges that the city’s environmental study unfairly minimized the projected impact of the plant construction on the densely populated and largely minority community of Norwood in order to avoid using an industrial, city-owned site in Westchester County.
Justice Grays initially issued a temporary restraining order halting the city’s work, but an appellate court lifted that order.
Additional suits by the Westchester town of Eastchester, which would have to build its own filtration plant if the Croton facility is built downstream in the Bronx, and the Croton Watershed Clean Water Coalition are still pending. Lawyers for all three of the groups are frustrated that the cases are proceeding so slowly.
BCC Film Program is the Reel Deal
May 5, 2005
By Heather Haddon
Navigating the basement of Bronx Community College’s Meister Hall, with its warren of subterranean corridors, could easily give one the jitters. After all, criminal activity, of a sort, does take place there. But have no fear: all the shooting is digital.
The basement is home to the college’s Media Technology Program, which trains students in everything from audio engineering to creating award-winning films. It’s a lofty goal, but the passion of staff and students actually make it plausible.
“Teacher Wisotsky told me not to forget about him when I’m off to the Oscars,” said Maryam Gidado, 25, a Norwood student who just finished her first film.
Jeffrey Wisotsky, a Bronx native with a long career in film and TV production, is the driving force behind the program and its budding Scorseses and Kubricks. A graduate of Evander Childs High School, Wisotsky returned to the borough in 1992 to reshape the college’s media program.
“I took a bed sheet and hung it up, and asked if we could show class films,” said Wisotsky, a brash and enthusiastic man.
Every year, seasoned faculty teach over 100 aspiring filmmakers from the Bronx and beyond to use the program’s state-of-the-art equipment and broadcast-quality studio. “It’s stuff to drool over,” said James Creque, the program’s engineer, standing among rows of video editing computers. “It’s the best I’ve seen in any community college.”
For the $320 college students pay per class, fancy cameras and sensitive microphones are freely available. All program participants make a short film, working from conceptual sketches through the final edits. Many students are initially drawn to urban or violent themes, but Wisotsky pushes them to expand their metaphors, immersing his classes in cinematography ranging from foreign to the experimental.
Gidado’s new film is a ghost story inspired by a 1950s film from Bollywood, India’s version of Hollywood. Felipe Silvestre, an immigrant from Uruguay, is drawing on his observations of American culture. “It’s about two people … competing to be number one,” said Silvestre, 31.
The students may be greenhorns as directors, but many come with other talents. Silvestre was a pianist and sound engineer in Uruguay, and writes his own film scores. Michael Witter, 43, was an actor and comedian before moving on to TV production. Jamal Johns, 28, has created animated videos since he was a kid.
“We come with lots of different experiences,” said Johns, who is swapping his animation skills with another student who has a knack for cutting through red tape for city permits.
Such resourcefulness is vital given the films’ tight budgets (usually around $300). “In the Bronx, we make our own blood,” said Wisotsky, noting that peanut butter, Ajax, and red coloring create a particularly realistic imitation.
Students often tap friends and family members to act in their films and scenes are set in local apartment buildings or parks. Gidado’s film, “Dream Scheme,” is shot in Van Cortlandt Park, stars her cousin, and was written by her younger brother.
But getting free laborers to shine on camera isn’t always easy. At a production meeting, for one film there were multiple takes of a “criminal” who couldn’t remember his lines, or stop laughing.
Wisotsky assigns readings from filmmaker’s biographies, like Spike Lee’s, to show that even the greats struggled. He also brings working directors, writers, and cameramen to speak at the college.
But students seem to get the most inspiration from their professors, and each other. “Professor Wisotsky is like the godfather,” said Witter, a Loring Place resident. “He sets the standard and lets us know we’re all one big family.”
That solidarity peaks during the annual film festival, where student films are screened. The festival has far surpassed its humble beginnings, and is now hosted at a Manhattan cinema every June with a big reception and mini-Oscar awards. Richard Martinez, 23, enrolled in the program after hearing about the festival.
“This is what I’ve always wanted to do with my life,” said Martinez, digital camera in hand.
Many students in the program gain the technical experience necessary to work on film crews, while others go on to internships and four-year schools in film.
Gidado will study film production at Hunter College next fall. Her film, “Dream Scheme,” was selected from over 150 movies submitted to a national film festival last February. After graduating, she hopes to return Nigeria, where she lived until 1995, to start her own production company. When she looks back on her two years in the program, she can hardly believe how far she’s come.
“When I was making my first movie, I was just taking a risk to do something different,” Gidado said. “Now I see we’ve really learned how to do film in the real world.”
Students Might Soon Disappear from Jerome
May 5, 2005
By Heather Haddon
A new program to be implemented at DeWitt Clinton High School as soon as this fall will keep thousands of students from buying lunch and other items on Jerome Avenue.
The merchants have a complicated relationship with the students. Many complain about student behavior and general hanging out, but they rely on teen purchasing power to sustain their businesses.
Clinton intends to expand its cafeteria this summer to accommodate all 4,500 students. The school, located on Mosholu Parkway South in Bedford Park is introducing a “captive lunch,” following the trend among large high schools that bar students, due to safety concerns, from leaving school property at lunchtime. The move will dramatically change the troubled, but profitable, symbiosis between area merchants and students.
Students may sometimes irritate Ana Justiniano, manager of a Burger King on Jerome Avenue, but she’d rather have them around than not. “It would be good if they behaved better, but they are most of our business,” she said.
But Eun Sook Kim, manager of the Twin Donut on Jerome Avenue, says he won’t miss the Clinton students. He thinks the kids deter business from adults, who tend to buy more. “They are very disrespectful,” said Kim, who speaks Korean, through a translator. “They are so bad, why even have them come in?”
Kim, who has managed the store for four years, says teens often act out, prompting him to call the police five times a day.
Edgar Carallo, manager of Caruso Pizza up the street, also calls the cops occasionally. “I tell [the students] I need the tables, but they just stay for two or three hours,” Carallo said. “They see me call the police and then they leave.”
Instead of calling the cops, Justiniano retains a security guard during school hours.
But for all the headaches, Clinton students are a driving force behind the robust local economy. “A lot of the merchants benefit from a non-captive lunch,” said Roberto Garcia, executive director of the Jerome-Gun Hill Business Improvement District (BID). In addition to restaurants and delis, Garcia said students also make a lot of visits to apparel stores. “Kids may be irritating, but they are consumers,” Garcia said.
Geraldine Ambrosio, Clinton’s principal, emphasized that fact. “If each of my kids spends a dollar, that’s $4,500 going to the community,” she said. Ambrosio estimated that just under half of students eat the school lunch, which extends for six periods beginning at 10 a.m. City figures, however, state that only one-fifth of students remain inside.
In a small survey of Clinton students, not one said they ate the school lunch regularly. “I don’t eat [in the cafeteria]. No one I know does,” said Jacquelle Morgan, 16.
Students said the lunch lacked variety and was improperly cooked. “You’ve read Fast Food Nation … it’s not sanitary,” said Salem Mohamed, 17, referring to the food industry expose. Mohamed says he and most of his friends eat at home.
Most students, though, prefer the pizza, fast food, and Chinese restaurants lining the commercial strip, which runs between Mosholu Parkway and Gun Hill Road. “I haven’t eaten school lunch since I was in elementary school,” said Crystal Morel, 15.
The lunch menu is out of Clinton’s hands, and Ambrosio wasn’t surprised to hear about student complaints, though a sample menu did include plenty of variety, including sandwiches, salads, and other entrees, along with the fast food options that teens tend to prefer.
But the cafeteria’s inadequate space is something the school can address. Beginning this summer, the school will shift some of its classroom space to build a larger facility, according to Ambrosio. Most other large high schools in the area, such as Evander Childs and Walton, already have one in place. In general, safety concerns at Clinton, a leader among local high schools in graduation rates, have not been as serious as at other schools. But gangs are reportedly more of a factor lately, grimly highlighted last month when a teen attacked and killed a Clinton student with a machete on the No. 4 train. The teens were allegedly in rival gangs.
Clinton will probably install metal detectors this summer. The borough president has also allocated funds to install surveillance cameras at the school.
As for now, Ambrosio says school security more frequently patrols the merchant strip and the path leading to it from Clinton. Merchants say they’ve also seen more of a police presence in the area lately.
Surveillance cameras installed in the area by the BID seem to be helping, said Garcia. (Disclosure: The BID is managed by the Mosholu Preservation Corporation, publisher of the Norwood News.) The cameras feed directly to the precinct.
Though the focus might be on current Clinton students, almost everyone agrees that problems in the commercial area are also fueled by teens who have dropped out and adult vagrants congregating inside stores. Drug dealing is also a problem, according to Garcia, evidenced by small, empty marijuana pouches that can sometimes be found lying in the street.
Most merchants will admit that the percentage of Clinton students who are problematic is small. “It’s two groups who come and make trouble,” Carallo said. “Most make a line, sit and eat for 10 minutes, and leave.”
But, when the captive lunch debuts, the issues on Jerome Avenue will almost certainly take a different turn, one that won’t make either side happy.
“It’s going to be a serious economic loss to Jerome Avenue,” Ambrosio said.
Out of the Woodwork
May 5, 2005
By Editorial
… If you’re interested in getting Henry Stern’s newsletter (referred to above), e-mail him at starquest@nycivic.org
… In looking for a last-minute brisket for Passover dinner, we went to the Web site for Fairway, the big specialty food supermarket just down the West Side Highway at 125th Street to see what time they closed. Here’s the information we found there about the communities they deliver to: “$5.25 for deliveries between 181st and 210th streets. Riverdale customers add $4.00 toll. No deliveries to the Bronx area.”
Uh, and Riverdale is in what borough?
Out of the Woodwork is an occasional collection of editorial odds and ends.
MTA Madness
May 5, 2005
By Editorial
Lest there be a sliver of doubt that the MTA is not prioritizing the rehabilitation of its most dilapidated stations, including the disastrous 205th Street stop on the D line, just consider this:
The agency is spending close to half a billion dollars (not a typo) on the South Ferry subway station just so passengers can board or disembark from an additional five subway cars.
“For access, 10 is better than five, but the difference is not worth half a billion dollars, which is probably less than the sum the reconstruction will end up costing, “ writes Henry Stern, the former city parks commissioner turned civic gadfly, in his e-mail newsletter.
Stern also points out another capital project boondoggle.
The Fulton Street station rehab (notice the Manhattan theme here) will require at least a billion dollars, Stern says, for a “minor rerouting of existing lines, with an arcade to the former World Trade Center. Yes, some work should be done here, but the whole nine yards is unnecessary. It is a scheme that idle engineers design when there is no imminent construction work facing them.”
So, that’s $1.5 billion for two stations on the southern tip of Manhattan that are in much better shape than ours.
Meanwhile, stations here in the north Bronx crumble. The 205th Street D Station, with its stalagmites, missing tiles, and water damage is downright disgusting. The Kingsbridge D station is little better. The stations on the 4-line are, mercifully, finally in the process of rehabilitation. The worst of them, the Mosholu station, is slated for renovation beginning in 2006, but we’ve been promised this for so long, it would be foolish not to hold the MTA accountable.
How do we do that? Every which way we can. Bemoaning the situation to neighbors and fellow commuters, or even in editorials like this one, won’t be sufficient. The proof of that is in the state of the stations. Instead, we need to press our elected officials, particularly our state legislators, to put the screws to the MTA to prioritize disintegrating outer-borough stations and other transit priorities like extending lines over building fantasy stations in lower Manhattan. (As we report on p. 2, Borough President Adolfo Carrión has renewed his call for the renovation of Bronx stations.) We need to write and call the governor and the mayor, who control the agency, and get our neighbors to do all of the above.
The MTA’s priorities are misplaced, but it’s not enough to point that out to each other. We’re not going to get better stations without demanding them.
Construction Projects Stalled
May 5, 2005
By Heather Haddon
Two local construction projects have stopped mid-development due to permit problems, violations and inadequate financing. Demolition of the former Grace Lutheran School, located at 2950 Grand Concourse, ceased two months ago, and a construction site at 301 E. Gun Hill Rd. has remained idle for weeks now.
The projects have separate developers, but Attivel Management, a construction company, has worked on both of them. John Morales, president of the Westchester Avenue firm, said demolition of the Grand Concourse site should resume this week.
Attivel’s demolition permit expired at the end of March, and they did not immediately reapply. Earlier in March, they were issued four violations by the Department of Buildings (DOB) for failure to erect adequate pedestrian safeguards and signs, and to notify the city about the demolition.
The city inspected the site after receiving a complaint that “debris was flying about and hitting pedestrians,” according to DOB records.
Attivel was mandated to stop work until they fixed the violations on the site, located at the corner of Bedford Park Boulevard, and obtained the necessary permits. Since then, the brick building has sat with part of its roof missing, the windows open, and debris piled up inside and out. Firefighters visited the property last month to check for signs of building instability, like holes in the floors or missing stairwells, that could jeopardize them if there was a fire. Marks painted by the Fire Department on the structure denote “hazardous conditions,” a Fire Department spokesperson said.
Morales acknowledged that Attivel hit some snags in the demolition. The company has done construction for four years, but this is their first demolition project. “We weren’t aware of some of these issues,” he said.
Jennifer Givner, a DOB spokesperson, said the rules are quite clear. “The requirements are spelled out right in the building code,” she said.
Morales said he fixed the problems, and was getting a renewed work permit this week. Yoel Movtady, the project’s developer, also thought the permit was pending, but Givner wasn’t yet aware of it.
Movtady intends to construct a 10-story, middle-income apartment building with some professional space. This is his first development project, and Movtady said he will need more capital before going ahead with construction.
“When we finish the demolition, then will we start to do more financing,” said Movtady, who works for a Long Island mortgage company. Several banks have expressed an interest, according to Movtady.
Cash also seems to be an issue with the other stalled project, located on the corner of East Gun Hill Road and Perry Avenue. Attivel started excavating the site, but stopped work after the developer, Perry Avenue Realty, ran out of funds.
“He’s looking for better prices,” said Morales about Victor Luciano, Perry’s president. Luciano didn’t return calls for comment.
The project has had other problems. Earlier this year, DOB issued four violations for construction problems, like missing plans and permits. The developer did not rectify the problems in time, and has accrued fines. Attivel was also issued violations for demolition problems similar to those incurred at the Grand Concourse site.
Additionally, DOB rejected Luciano’s plans for the development last week. “It happens, but it means there are some serious issues we couldn’t proceed with,” Givner said.
Luciano intends to build a nine-story mixed use building on the site. For now, the only sign of those plans are a large pit and the beginnings of a foundation.
Parks Undergo Renovations Throughout Area
May 5, 2005
By Jessica Glazer
Throughout Community District 7, local parks are undergoing renovations. Following is a rundown of each of the projects:
Williamsbridge Oval Park
Renovations to the northern entrance of Williamsbridge Oval Park should begin early this summer, according to Warner Johnston, a Parks Department spokesman. The project includes reconstruction of pavements, fencing, curbing and paths, as well as a handicapped-accessible entrance at the entrance, which is on Reservoir Oval between Putnam Place and Reservoir Place. All this will cost $450,000, which was secured by Council Member Oliver Koppell.
Sirio Guerino, a longtime parks advocate and volunteer welcomed the news. “It would be nice if they redid the paths because there is lots of flooding and erosion and the stones are coming up,” he said.
St. James Park
There are two projects at St. James Park. The renovations to the park house, which were delayed last fall due to a contractor default, should be completed by the end of September, according to Johnston.
Replacement of the park’s central staircase, which is unusable and literally crumbling, should begin within the next two months.
Poe Park
A long-planned $351,000 renovation to the Poe Park bandstand is under way. The funding includes an $88,000 grant from the state Office of Parks and Recreation and Historic Preservation and is matched by funds from the borough president and the City Council. According to the Parks Department, the columns and stairs will be replaced, railings will be installed to mirror the original design, and a power source for lighting and equipment will be installed for performances. In order to accommodate summer programming, the project is scheduled to be completed by June 30. According to Pat Logan, who spearheads Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation’s (FBHC) Poe efforts, there will be an opening concert to celebrate the re-inauguration of the bandstand.
“We are very excited to see them working on it,” Logan said. “We look forward to a real opening.”
As for the digital visitors center planned for Poe, a design consultant has been selected and a fee negotiation is pending. The $2 million project will include a visitors hall, bathrooms and an office.
Devoe Park
The reconstruction of a playground, as well as landscaping and drainage improvements are planned for Devoe Park. Work on the project, slated to cost $1.7 million, should begin construction in late fall 2005.
The project is one of those on the list of parks improvements promised to the Bronx in exchange for siting the Croton filtration plant in Van Cortlandt Park. The funds will be provided by the Department of Environmental Protection and the Municipal Water Finance Authority.
MPC, Horticulture Intern
Plan Gardens for Parks
Mosholu Preservation Corporation, the nonprofit that publishes the Norwood News, is working with an intern from the School of Professional Horticulture at the New York Botanical Garden to plant gardens in local parks such as Williamsbridge Oval, Mosholu Parkway, Devoe Park and Poe Park.
The intern, Grace Martinelli, has begun laying the groundwork for her plantings and has already designed gardens for Williamsbridge Oval. She hopes to plant a butterfly garden at the playground near the Oval’s southern entrance. Butterfly gardens contain plants that attract butterflies to their nectar and bright colors.
Tall grasses, such as zebra grass, and drought-tolerant plants will be planted at the park’s entrances. Martinelli, 30, prefers gardening organically, which focuses on planting without herbicides or pesticides. This type of gardening also uses disease-resistant plants whenever possible, Martinelli said.
“By improving parks by creating gardens it would improve the neighborhood,” Martinelli said. “Many people walk in [Oval] Park and it would be nice to have gardens for people to enjoy.”
As an intern at MPC, Martinelli will create guidelines for park volunteers to follow so that the plantings can be maintained. Her maintenance plan will cover things such as when plants are supposed to bloom, if they bloom after being cut and so forth.
The project is funded by the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation in partnership with the Vinmont Foundation. “Our job,” said Dart Westphal, MPC’s president, “is to make this a nice place for Montefiore and for everyone. [Planting gardens] will be a useful way to direct the [volunteer] energy.”
Work at Poe Park is under way where preparations are already being made for plant beds. Work at the Oval and Mosholu Parkway will begin in the next few weeks and work on Devoe will start in June. “This is an idea whose time has come,” Westphal said.
Volunteers are welcome to help with the general project as well as at It’s My Park Day on Saturday, May 14. Those interested in volunteering should call Dart Westphal at (718) 324-4461.
Tracey Tenants Raise Issues With Management
May 5, 2005
By Heather Haddon
Tracey Towers tenants fired off a fusillade of complaints to a management representative last week during their first meeting since the buildings’ dangerous conditions received international attention.
“We tried to be very understanding, but this is an unsafe environment,” said D’Ann St. Paul, a longtime tenant, in a packed community room. “We need someone active enough to take an interest in Tracey.”
That became obvious when Ming Kuang Chen, a Chinese restaurant delivery man, was stuck in one of Tracey’s elevators for almost four days last month. (Chen was seen back at work last week, pedaling his delivery bicycle back to the Happy Dragon on Jerome from the direction of Tracey.)
Residents of the Mosholu Parkway development said the incident only highlighted for the outside world the problems they’ve experienced for years. “This is not about Chinese food tonight,” said Diana Walters, president of Tracey’s Tenants Council. “It’s about Tracey Towers’ needs.”
The representative from R-Y Management, which oversees Tracey, seemed open to addressing concerns. “This building has problems,” said Daniel Durante, R-Y’s manager of Bronx properties. “I’m going to do what I can on a daily basis.”
Durante, who has worked at R-Y for a year-and-a-half, started working with the tenants’ council last fall to develop 25 short- and long-term improvement goals. These include additional cleaning in the hallways, stairwells, and outside the building. Durante reported that progress has been made in these areas.
But he conceded that momentum has been hampered by a lack of motivation among maintenance staff. “We found that there was a certain amount of complacency that had settled in,” he said. “There are some things [maintenance] needs to be able to perform at an optimum level.”
Durante did not elaborate what those things are, but said he’s looking to replace some employees. He has also met with the maintenance workers’ union about performance issues and getting more coverage on nights and weekends.
Mona Misra, who called maintenance daily for weeks to get a leak fixed in her apartment, wants more guarantees. “They have to be courteous to us,” Misra pleaded.
Durante acknowledged that the complaint process was flawed, and intends to put tracking numbers on work orders. Tenants whose jobs are not completed can then call R-Y to complain.
Durante said he also met with Copstat, the company that provides Tracey’s security, but didn’t seem very optimistic about squeezing better performance out of them. Tracey’s security is reportedly paid not much above the minimum wage, but Durante wouldn’t comment on whether that might deter staff motivation. However, the Tenants Council now has input into the hiring and firing of security staff.
Bigger capital improvements for the buildings, such as the elevators and boilers, will not move as quickly as tenants hope. The elevators are now being replaced, but work won’t conclude until 2007 if they are replaced one-by-one, as is R-Y’s intention.
“I’m going to be dead and gone by the time they are finished,” said Jean Hill, a tenant. The city told the Norwood News last month that the elevators would be done in about a year.
Tracey’s boilers, like the elevators, came with the building and desperately need to be replaced. “There are parts with a 10-year life span that have been in there for 20 years now,” Durante said. “[Engineers] don’t know why they are still working.”
Tracey was plagued by shortages of heat and hot water this winter, and Durante said the boiler system will be shored up before fall. Due to financial constraints, a full rehab won’t be possible until next year.
Tenants and Durante repeatedly locked horns over why capital improvements must wait. Beginning last February, R-Y successfully secured a rent increase that will total 29 percent over three years. The hike allowed R-Y to finance a $2 million loan for rehabbing the elevators, along with Tracey’s leaking roof and chipped façade. R-Y is looking for assistance from government weatherization programs for the heating system.
Durante reiterated that there is no reserve money. “It’s not like management is hiding millions of dollars,” he said. “That would be criminal.”
Tenants remained skeptical. “They weren’t doing repairs when they were getting rent increases,” said Sam Gillian, a longtime tenant. Rents rose periodically until tenants sued R-Y in 1991, refusing to pay more rent until repairs were made, according to Gillian.
Durante disagreed. “It’s not like work hasn’t taken place,” he said after the meeting. “If not, why would there be tenants who have been here 30 years?”
Some tenants didn’t seem satisfied with his promises. “Don’t tell me any more stories,” Hill said. “You got a 29 percent rent increase a year ago. We want results.”
Durante said he would bring a breakdown of Tracey’s finances for next month’s tenant meeting. Though he took a bit of a battering during the course of the evening, he tried to remain positive.
“I’m on your side,” Durante said in exasperation at one point. “I don’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘How can I do disservice to Tracey Towers.’”
Guard Troop Footlockers Said To Be on Way
May 5, 2005
By David Greene
After a long delay, footlockers containing personal and military supplies belonging to members of the Army National Guard’s 145th Maintenance Company are said to be on their way to Iraq, after several local officials joined the letter-writing campaign started by Norwood resident Vivian Hernandez.
As the Norwood News recently reported, Hernandez began her letter-writing campaign after receiving e-mails from a relative in the unit, currently stationed at the Tallil Air Base in Iraq.
Members departed the Kingsbridge Armory with footlockers in tow and headed to Ft. Benning in Georgia for extensive training.
Members then headed to Kuwait on Jan. 7, and were promised that the lockers, some containing important supplies like steel-toed boots, safety goggles and hearing protection, would arrive in March.
After reading about the problem in the Norwood News, Congressman Jose Serrano sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Serrano wrote that members were “experiencing equipment deficiencies as they await the arrival of footlockers containing mission-critical equipment.”
Serrano, who represents the district the armory is in, added, “As the 145th is currently contributing to the often hazardous mission of providing security for the reconstruction effort, I believe that ensuring the speedy delivery of these footlockers would be a relatively small undertaking that would greatly bolster the safety and morale of these troops.”
In his own letter to Rumsfeld, Congressman Eliot Engel wrote: “I urge you to make immediate arrangements to send these footlockers to the troops. There have been reports of U.S. soldiers lacking lifesaving protective equipment in Iraq since the start of the war, and it is disturbing that such supplies, whether military or personal items, would be sitting in Georgia when they should be with the New York National Guard unit in Iraq.”
Congressman Joseph Crowley also wrote to the Defense Department and the National Guard, according to spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki.
A member of the unit, contacted through the Internet, explained how leaders of the battalion were upset that soldiers printed out 100 copies of the Norwood News article and distributed them all over the camp.
The source wrote: “Everyone here is thrilled that we are finally getting our footlockers. They are scheduled to be here in two weeks,” adding that a convoy has already been set up to retrieve the lockers when they arrive. The contact also stated that a chief warrant officer had said, “It was because of the letters that we are getting the footlockers.”
Filter Blasting Set to Begin
May 5, 2005
By Jordan Moss
Blasting was scheduled to begin this week in Van Cortlandt Park in order to make a giant hole for the Croton water filtration plant.
There will be anywhere from two to six blasts per day over a two-year period, according to the Department of Environmental Protection.
The blasting can take place anytime between 7:30 a.m. and 6 p.m.
According to a flier distributed to residents in the vicinity of the project, one long whistle will sound three minutes before each controlled blast; two short whistles will indicate ready to blast; and three short whistles will signal that all is clear.
Residents who have questions or concerns about the blasting or anything else related to the filtration plant construction, should call DEP’s Croton Community Office at (718) 231-8470 weekdays between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Or call 311 seven days a week. The DEP community office is located at 3660 Jerome Avenue.
Meanwhile, a state court judge is still studying a lawsuit brought by community residents to stop the construction.
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