Important Board Half Empty

July 27, 2006

By Editorial

Did you know that there is a public board comprised of community residents that meets regularly to designate priorities for $450,000 in federal funding known as Community Service Block Grants?

If you did, you’re among the very few. The meetings of these entities, known as Neighborhood Advisory Boards (NAB), are not advertised, nor is the fact that almost any community resident age 18 or above can apply for the volunteer posts.

So, it’s not surprising that half of the seats on the local NAB (they are contiguous with community boards) are empty. Half of the 12 members of each NAB are appointed by local elected officials; the other half are picked by the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development (DYCD) which oversees the distribution of the CSBG money.

Bronxwide, only 60 of the 144 total NAB seats are occupied. That’s only 42 percent. And 80 percent of the seats that elected officials are responsible for are vacant.

The consequences of low participation are significant. In 2004, the NAB in Community District 7 distributed funds to organizations focusing on issue areas that many community leaders felt were not as needy as senior and immigrant services. The Bedford Park Multi-Service Center for Senior Citizens, and the community it serves, is still smarting from the NAB’s decision; it lost funding for its “friendly visiting” program that many seniors relied on, as well as transportation for the elderly.

DYCD told us it is in the process of a massive “recruitment drive” to fill all the NAB seats. We’ve yet to see any evidence of that. But we hope they take a multi-faceted approach by staying on top of politicians and educating the public in a number of ways about the existence of the NABs. They should issue press releases about meetings and application deadlines, encourage local politicians to put information in their newsletters, and talk about the role of NABs at community meetings.

Meanwhile, we’ll do our part to inform our readers about upcoming NAB meetings (there was one on July 25). If you’re interested in serving on the local NAB, call (212) 442-5880 or go to www.nyc.gov/dycd to download an application (just click on Neighborhood Advisory Boards at the left of the screen).

Dissing Bronx from Distance

Michael Hart, the Liberal Party candidate for state parliament in Burleigh, Australia, “has rejected suggestions that Burleigh is becoming the ‘Bronx’ of the city,” according to a local paper there.

“We are certainly having some trouble with out-of-control youth gatherings, but I don’t think we have reached that stage yet,” he told the paper.

It does sound like Bronxites touring Australia might want to steer clear of Burleigh rather than the other way around — who knows how out of control their youth are after all —but we know better than to disparage a community we’ve never been to.

This tired use of “Bronx” as a synonym for “crime” is all too common in the foreign media. A year ago, a Swiss paper ran an article about training sessions for people concerned about rising crime in Swiss cities. The headline was, “Safety lessons in a virtual Bronx.”

Obviously, the Bronx still has some work to do in updating a stale image that last resembled reality 25 years ago. But it would also be nice if journalists and politicians took a moment to do a little research before they insulted a borough of 1.3 million people that they’ve never visited. They could even learn a thing or two from us about public safety. The Swiss, the article said, are catching on to the idea of installing car alarms.

We look forward to hearing how that works out for them.

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Armory Caretaker Knows Every Nook and Cranny

July 27, 2006

By Alex Kratz

With the city’s late-August deadline for presenting design requirements – in the form of a Request for Proposal (RFP) – for the redevelopment of the Kingsbridge Armory fast approaching, Community Board 7 members recently took a tour of the massive landmark.

While Economic Development Corporation (EDC) officials were present, the unofficial tour guide of the event was Charlie Braswell, who once called the Armory home.

Throughout the early to mid-1990s, the diminutive Braswell spent his days running the streets, being cool and consuming all the drugs he could get his hands on, mostly marijuana and speed, because cocaine was too expensive.

At night, Braswell and his friend “Shorty” would find their way into the Armory and catch a few hours of sleep. The routine began to wear on Braswell and he needed a way to break the cycle. One day in 1999, EDC staffer Ronald Day found Braswell with a broom in his hands, sweeping, and referred him to a contractor who hired him to work at the Armory.

Ever since, Braswell has been the primary caretaker of the vacant Armory. Now sober and disciplined, Braswell has turned his life around. He works six days a week at the Armory and lives in an apartment on Eighth Avenue.

Braswell, eyes twinkling like he’s keeping a secret, knows every winding stairway, dusty hallway and moldy closet in the cavernous urban castle. Walking across a concrete floor, Braswell points out that there is small crawl space directly below. Down a long hallway, Braswell says thousands of 60- to 90-year-old military documents lay unclaimed and unaccounted for.

There are still mysteries hidden in the Armory that Braswell has yet to unearth. He believes that somewhere underneath the Armory — he’s not sure where — there is a secret tunnel stretching all the way to the Hudson River that even city engineers can’t locate.

Braswell still spends most of his time at the Armory, but now he gets paid for it. He says he still sees Shorty out on the streets sometimes, getting high, still trying to be cool. He feels sorry for him.

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Frustration Over Lack of Filter Jobs for Bronxites

July 27, 2006

By Alex Kratz

Once again, jobs were the hot topic at the Croton Facility Monitoring Committee meeting last week held across the street from the gaping hole that will one day house the Croton Water Filtration Plant.

And once again, committee members and local residents were disappointed with the number of jobs going to Bronx residents. Ever since the city began digging, the level of Bronxites employed for the job has hovered around 25 percent, not once jumping above 30 percent.

Officials from the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), the city agency running the project, said at the meeting that the number of Bronx jobs will remain steady until at least January 2007. Then, they said, construction of the actual facility will begin and the numbers may change, but maybe not for the better. There is a possibility that the percentage of Bronxites employed for the job might actually fall below previous levels, officials indicated, because of the skills that are required.

At the meeting, committee chair Greg Faulkner said the current levels are “unacceptable,” but acknowledged that he believed the DEP was putting in a good faith effort.

Lyn Pyle, a former representative on the committee from Community Board 7, who attended the meeting, said she was “disappointed” on several fronts following what she described as the “intense” meeting. Mostly, she’s disappointed with the lack of plan to add more local jobs to the tally.

Pyle and Faulkner say the city promised to put Bronxites to work in exchange for allowing the DEP to site the filtration plant on parkland surrounded by residents and not at an industrial site in Westchester County.

With the next, much larger, facility construction contract being awarded in September, Faulkner wants assurance that the new contractor will hire more Bronx residents. He wants the contractor to come to a committee meeting in October with a plan to hire a “significant” number of Bronxites. The current level of 25 percent will not cut it, he said.

Faulkner said he thinks the DEP will make every effort to make it happen. “I’m optimistic until I have a reason not to be,” he said.

The October deadline should be plenty of time to come up with a local hiring plan, Faulkner said.

“This [meeting in October] will tell us whether this is a serious process or just window dressing,” Faulkner said. “If we’re given a line or they don’t come, then it means they don’t take us seriously.

“We [the Bronx] have one of the highest youth unemployment rates in the city. And here we have this great public works project that seriously affects our community, but we’re not getting any of the benefits.”

If the committee’s demands for more Bronx jobs aren’t being satisfied by October, Faulkner said he’s prepared to become more aggressive in voicing the community’s displeasure about the project.

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Motel Opponents Plan Protest for August 2

July 27, 2006

By Alex Kratz

Displeasure over plans to build a motel on Webster Avenue will spill onto the streets Wednesday, Aug. 2.

Members of Community Board 7 and others are planning to voice their opposition during a noon demonstration in front of the motel construction site at 3070 Webster Ave., a tiny slice of land wedged between a private home and an auto shop.

Construction has yet to begin, but plans to build a five-story motel were approved by the Buildings Department in late June.

Residents and Board members say the proposed Comfort Inn, which even the Buildings Department is calling a “transitional motel,” will attract undesirable clientele, including drug addicts and prostitutes. In Wakefield, just on the other side of the Bronx River Parkway, are about a dozen short-stay motels, which critics call “hot sheet motels” because they are often used for illegal activities.

Compounding the controversy is the fact that the site is half a block from PS/MS 20. Demonstration organizer Barbara Stronczer, who heads the Bedford Mosholu Community Association and serves on Community Board 7, said a group of concerned PS/MS 20 parents and faculty will attend the rally.

Though not officially sponsoring the demonstration, Board 7 members are “outraged” by the proposed motel, said Chair Greg Faulkner. The Board has appealed to Borough President Adolfo Carrión for help, but to no avail thus far. After initially saying she would answer questions e-mailed to her from the Norwood News about the motel, Carrión spokeswoman Ronnie Sykes didn’t respond to numerous attempts to contact her.

At the least, Faulkner would like the motel’s developer, Sam Chang, to reassure the community that the motel will not be sold and turned into a homeless shelter. Not offering short-stay options, or hourly room rentals, would also help quell the community’s fury, Faulkner said.

Comfort Inn’s parent company, Choice Hotels, did not return phone calls requesting comment.

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Grace Lutheran on the Block

July 27, 2006

By Jessica Cabrera

After years of declining membership, Grace Lutheran Church and School has finally called it quits in Bedford Park.

Just last week, church officials quietly put the Grace Lutheran complex at 2930 Valentine Ave. — which includes a church, school and rectory — up for sale on craigslist.com for $3 million.

“It’s hard to keep a church running and heated when there are few members,” said a member of the church who didn’t want to be named.

The church relies on donations from their congregation, which has fallen to only 50 to 60 members.

This will be the last summer session at the school, and all signs indicate that it’s ready to shut down. Outside, the gates on the church are closed. Inside the school, offices, hallways and most classrooms are empty. A couple of teachers instruct the few students who are left, while other kids put books away in boxes.

Even church insiders were surprised by the Internet posting. “I had no idea that the church was being sold on craigslist,” said George Ramsudh, Grace Lutheran’s pastor. He has been directing all questions regarding the church to the Atlantic Division of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. The Atlantic Division did not return calls for comment.

Last year, in what is now looking like a sign of things to come, the church sold one of its school buildings on the Grand Concourse for $625,000.

“This case is not isolated. I have sold seven churches before,” said Victor Weinberger, a broker working to sell the church. “Membership dwindles and usually that’s the case.”

“This is a one-of-a-kind opportunity for the right purchaser,” reads the ad on craigslist.

Already, Weinberger said, there are a couple of churches expressing interest in purchasing the $3 million complex.

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After 30 Years, Veteran Korean Grocer Shuts Doors

July 13, 2006

By James Fergusson

Last November, a well-known Korean supermarket on East 204th Street between Mosholu Parkway and the Grand Concourse quietly closed its doors for good. Suzie’s Oriental Food Market — or Suzie’s as it was commonly known — had been in the neighborhood since 1974.

The grocery store was founded by Il Yun Kim, but since the early 1980s, his son, Tae Kim, had been in charge. Kim, 54, said that bringing the curtain down on something his father had created was tough. “It took me two years to do it,” he said in a telephone interview.

In the end, however, Kim was left with no choice; business had fallen away alarmingly. “I couldn’t make a living anymore,” he said.

Kim blames Suzie’s plummeting sales on competition from other Korean stores in Flushing, Queens, and elsewhere in New York and New Jersey. Once upon a time, he said, Suzie’s was the only Korean grocery store in the city and “you couldn’t even pass on 204th Street because of the cars … people would come from all around.”

Those days are now a distant memory, and when Suzie’s closed, Kim breathed a sigh a relief. “I’m out of a headache,” he said. “I was working 16 hours a day. A couple of times I was burglarized. A lot of stealing … and I had to argue with [kids] every day."

According to the 2000 Census, Bedford Park’s Korean population numbers more than a thousand, making it the largest Korean community in the Bronx. Reverend Christopher Ponnuraj of Bedford Park Congregational Church, which shares its space with a Korean congregation, believes it’s “still growing.” Kim, however, thinks it’s declining.

“It’s getting smaller,” said Kim, adding that people are leaving the neighborhood to find careers for themselves and better schools for their kids. “This also hurt my business,” he said.

Suzie’s last day of operation was Nov.15. Kim and his father then sold the property to Shin Yol Kim, a New Jersey-based businessman, for $675,000. He’s converted the building into three separate stores and is renting them out.

One is occupied by a 99-cent store. Another, the store closest to Mosholu Parkway, is currently vacant. A piece of Suzie’s dark green awning still hangs above its window front. The new owner said he hopes to attract a deli or a restaurant.

The middle store, however, has a distinctly Korean feel. A video rental store, Yung Hwa Saw Sang, specializing in Korean movies, has made its home here. Suzie’s used to do a sideline in Korean movies and, for locals with a penchant for such films, Yung Hwa Saw Sang must be a welcome addition to the neighborhood.

Suzie’s demise has also led to activity on the opposite side of the street. “[With Suzie’s shut] we could not really buy any fresh produce… or spices and sauces,” said Jan Wejin, whose family runs Hae Korean and Japanese Restaurant. And with this in mind, the family opened a small Korean grocery store in one half of their restaurant, ensuring that Bedford Park’s Korean population, shrinking or not, still has access to a ready supply of old favorites.

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In New Orleans, Residents Rebuild From the Inside Out

July 13, 2006

By Jordan Moss

In the back room of the New Orleans office of ACORN, a national grassroots community organization, grows a culture in a Petri dish.

A young organizer named Elliot told me, with only a little hyperbole: “It’s going to save the world.”

Well, maybe not the world. But if it works, it could help 200,000 families return to their Crescent City homes.

When ACORN volunteers rip out the mold-stained drywall from a house, they need to stop the mold from making its way into the wooden frame. Bleach, in many cases, isn’t toxic enough to stop the mold. The hope is that the culture will kill the mold by stealing its food.

ACORN’s science experiment is a pretty good metaphor for the state of New Orleans 11 months after Katrina. With colorful yet clumsy politicians tripping over each other and the levers of power, ordinary people have taken it upon themselves to find their way out of one of the greatest catastrophes brought upon an American city.

I went down to New Orleans with the New York Press Association, the state organization of community newspapers, which decided to turn its annual board meeting into a fact-finding mission in the Big Easy.

The joyous, raucous heart of the city in the French Quarter is still beating hard.

But venture just a little further and you’ll witness an entire city gasping for air.

The day after I arrived, I showed up at the ACORN office to volunteer in their house-gutting program. ACORN is one of a few nonprofits that has taken on the awesome task of ripping hundreds of soggy moldy houses down to their bones in the hopes of one day seeing them resurrected and occupied. It costs about $7,000 to empty and gut a house. ACORN and its volunteers do it for free.

I shared the sun-battered sidewalk with several other people from several other places as we got our assignments for the day.

I went with a group to the house of Dan Thompson, a 74-year-old former crane operator, at the foot of Lake Ponchartrain in an area called New Orleans East. Thompson, whose 21-year-old son recently gave him a kidney, greeted us in his driveway with prayerful gratitude.

Later that day, I saw the devastation in the Lower Ninth Ward — the houses on top of cars, on top of each other, on their sides, inside out. While I won’t ever forget what I saw there, in some respects it was Thompson’s situation that was more reflective of the greater tragedy because his house, like thousands of others, looked on the outside like it could be just fine. But a foot and a half of toxic water slushed into his neat, spacious house and wallowed. It made its way into the walls, bringing mold and toxins with it. Every bit of floor, drywall, ceiling, carpeting had to come out. There were some signs of neighborhood revival, but most homes were empty, and most families that had returned were living in white FEMA trailers. Schools are closed and only one supermarket is open within miles.

Thompson has been living with his family in Houston since the storm and hopes to be back in his house early next year. Like almost everyone else I talked to, he was tangling with his insurance companies to get the money he needs to rebuild.

The next day I went with the NYPA group to the home of New Orleans Times Picayune copy editor Kuumba Kazi. We came to gut his home with about 20 of his colleagues. His house looked mostly fine on the outside, but inside it was much worse off than Thompson’s. The water line was well over my head and under it was blotchy green mold. Kazi’s house had virtually not been touched since Aug. 29 and was still packed with a lifetime of memories and belongings. We threw it all — a wonderful book collection, dishware and cutlery, bedding and clothing, a treadmill – into a giant dumpster. Much of it was ruined, but those who had done this before, said most Katrina victims just want a clean start.

As I went about my task – taking down the drywall with a crowbar, and removing the nails from the studs – I discovered a startling difference. Most of the nail heads disintegrated as I tried to pry them out of the wood with the claw of a hammer. Even the nails were soggy.

Three hours after we arrived, Kazi’s house was stripped to its bare bones, just like Thompson’s the day before. Eighteen inches of floodwater or 84, the result was the same.

Think of these two men and their interrupted lives and try to fathom the other 199,998 families that are still not in their homes 11 months after Katrina. Someone told me that the footprint of the destruction in New Orleans is eight times the size of Manhattan.

Speeding back from Thompson’s house the 15 miles or so into the center of the city, I began to register that scope of absence. Mile after mile of empty, destroyed houses, apartment complexes, gas stations, strip malls, auto part stores — all mixed in with surreal signs of an America with few worries, like billboard advertising for Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune and a Monkees reunion concert.

But beyond the toll on the physical city, there’s the greater toll on people. “You can see the physical damage, but you can’t look at a human being and see the psychological damage,” Darryl Durham, the ACORN staffer who runs the rebuilding program, told me.

There is not room here to go into how our government failed to protect a major city like New Orleans when there were so many predictors of Katrina’s devastation. Much has been written about that.

But Bronxites who have been around a while should be able to empathize with New Orleanians’ sense of abandonment. Our borough was left to burn for a decade in the 1970s when 12,000 fires blazed a year and hundreds of thousands of households were destroyed. And much more damage would have been done were it not for those who stayed and fought, particularly here in the northwest Bronx, to save their neighborhoods. They demanded that the city put the Bronx back in its portfolio of responsibilities.

New Orleanians are demanding to be heard, too. In the absence of any clearly articulated governmental plan, people are fearful that their neighborhoods will be planned out of existence. They are getting mixed messages from the mayor and other officials. Public housing that many residents thought was salvageable was destroyed last month without any serious attempt to rehabilitate it. ACORN members have started planting “Do Not Bulldoze” signs in front yards all over the city in a bid to prevent demolition before they get straight answers from the politicians about what the long-range plan is.

What can we do to help New Orleans? A Wisconsin chef, who volunteered with me at ACORN, put it succinctly: “By swinging hammers and spending money.” Our colleges, high schools, and religious groups can organize service trips and help with house gutting and, eventually, the rebuilding. You can “adopt a home” through ACORN, by donating money to help with gutting and rebuilding. We can also study what happens when government chooses not to govern, and do what we can to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

New Orleans will never be the same, but even at its weakest, it’s still a vibrant, unique city. We had a lot of fun in New Orleans, too. We ate well and heard great music, and while I felt a little guilty, every local we encountered was grateful we had come down to lend a hand and help the economy.

At dinner one night, Lolis Elie, a terrific Times Picayune columnist, summed up what went wrong: “This is a lack of American will, not a lack of American ingenuity,” he said.

We clearly can’t expect our government to demonstrate that will on its own. It will need to learn from, and follow the lead of, the people it governs.

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Mayor: South Bronx Stops at Cross Bronx

July 13, 2006

By Editorial

At the Chamber of Commerce luncheon during Bronx Week, the mayor announced a new task force to create a plan for the south Bronx. Many of us remember other plans for the south Bronx; some of them have gone a long way toward being implemented. What interests us is, that in this case, the area to be reviewed is Community Districts 1 to 4. The term ‘South Bronx’ has referred to the area below Fordham Road or Districts 1 to 6 since, at the latest, the work of the South Bronx Development Office, which started in the late 1970s.

Some communities always disagreed. Many in Mount Hope, Belmont and elsewhere always denied being in the south Bronx. People and organizations in Hunts Point and Mott Haven also see the south Bronx in narrower terms, or use “South South Bronx” for emphasis. Maybe it was the blackout in 1977 — the Summer of Sam — or the exodus of NYU, or the fight over a new Fordham Hospital and the massive demolition that was to no avail. Whatever the reason, the name South Bronx came to include neighborhoods never envisioned in perhaps the earliest plan, the South Bronx Model Cities area of 1965. That plan, developed during the Johnson administration, only included Districts 1, 2 and 3.

Neighborhood and community names are not solid in the Bronx. Lots of people identify with a street name: “I live by Bainbridge.” When we started using Norwood to refer to the whole triangle, some old-timers argued that the west side was really “Jerome Avenue.” And, in truth, “Norwood” originally referred to an 1888 real estate development east of the Oval.

Where does Bedford Park end and Fordham (north) begin? Whatever happened to south Fordham? What is the boundary between University Heights and Kingsbridge Heights? And whatever happened to the Jerome Park neighborhood? There’s no Bain Bridge but there was a William’s Bridge and a Gun Hill. Who gets to say? Maybe the mayor gets to call a particular collection of neighborhoods the South Bronx, but if history is any guide, there is no guarantee it will stick.

Armory Clock Anniversary

A year ago, we started running the Armory Clock after local elected officials and the governor toured the Kingsbridge Armory. We said we’d run it until the officials identified an alternative site for the National Guard units that remain at the facility. That was the major stumbling block at the time.

But in May, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff promised the city would issue a request for proposals (RFP) by the end of August, even without a new Guard site in mind. A year ago, it was thought that a Guard site needed to be identified by the city or state before an RFP was issued. But that, thankfully, has proven not to be the case.

If an RFP is indeed issued next month, that will get the ball rolling. Prospective developers may then identify their own sites for the Guard, as one already has. The city may also help scout a suitable location.

Whatever the final outcome, we should all keep our eyes on the ball – getting the RFP issued in August. We will keep the clock running until that happens.

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Impact’ Returns After Rise in Shootings

July 13, 2006

By Alex Kratz

After a year’s hiatus, highlighted by a sharp rise in gun violence, the 52nd Precinct is once again becoming an Operation Impact precinct – gaining 70 fresh recruits to police three designated hot zones over the next six to eight months.

Though crime remains down two percentage points overall, the increase in shootings, including a recent bloody incident on Creston Avenue that left one person dead and three hospitalized, prompted the call for reinforcements.

Already, there have been 21 shootings in 2006, compared to 14 during the same period last year when the Five-Two was still an Impact precinct.

Operation Impact has a history of success in the area, but critics say the temporary program’s absence leaves the neighborhood vulnerable to a resurgence of violence. In other words, Impact works until it moves on to other areas.

“It’s like putting your finger in a dam that’s leaking,” said resident John Garcia, who has lived in the crime-addled North Fordham neighborhood since 1979 and now runs Fordham Bedford Children’s Services.

“It works for the two or three months and then [the cops] leave after crime goes down,” Garcia said. “We need more of a presence in terms of beat cops and it has to be consistent, not a fly-by-night type of thing.”

Two decades of intermittent policing initiatives in the area gave way to Operation Impact in 2003, which put more officers on the street and focused on the south end of the Five-Two. This will be the first time Impact officers will patrol above 198th Street.

A month ago at a community meeting, Deputy Inspector Joseph Hoch, the precinct’s commanding officer, explained to a concerned group of residents that the rise in shootings was due, in large part, to a lack of police manpower. He added that he had put in a request for 100 new recruits to police five new Impact areas – or trouble spots.

Instead, Hoch is getting 70 new officers for three Impact areas (see map). “It’s going to be more spread out than we wanted,” Hoch said in an interview at precinct headquarters on Webster Avenue. “But it’s going to have an effect on all other areas of crime [like robbery and assault].”

Though the spike in shootings over the past year coincided with the absence of Operation Impact, Hoch said it’s not that simple. Sometimes, even when shootings go up, crime goes down. “Besides shootings, the statistics haven’t borne that out,” Hoch said to critics who say there is a general rise in crime once Impact leaves.

For example, Hoch said, pointing to recent statistics, there were 44 shooting incidents in 2003. The Five-Two became an Impact command in the middle of that year when Hoch took control of the precinct. They didn’t see the results of the program until 2004, when shootings in the area fell to 23 for the entire year — the biggest drop in New York City. Overall, however, crime dropped only 2 percent.

In the first half of 2005, when the Five-Two was still an Impact command, there were only nine shootings. But crime overall stayed the same as the year before. Then, after the departure of Impact, shootings doubled in the second half of the year, but overall crime dropped 9 percent.

Shootings and overall crime statistics are both indicators of a precinct’s effectiveness, Hoch said, but they put him in a priorities bind. “Do you worry about shootings or do you worry about crime overall?” Hoch asked, holding his hands up.

Just a month ago, the Five-Two was down to 210 cops. Now, with the influx of rookies and 10 backfill patrol officers, Hoch said he now has 295 total officers — the most he’s ever had. Historically, precincts retain all their Impact officers after the program ends, but those officers are assigned to other duties.

Hoch has already been at the helm of the Five-Two for almost three years, an eternity for city police commanders, who are usually transferred after about two years. But he said he will stick around to see through the coming Impact program.

Former 52nd Community Precinct Council president and now vice president, Steve Bussell, praised the “creative” work being done by Hoch’s crew and said the extra manpower is badly needed.

“It’s getting a little too close for comfort,” Bussell said about the recent rise in violent crime.

Bussell said six months is enough time to get crime under control.

“Six to eight months isn’t a short amount of time,” Bussell said. “So that will take us through the summer and, as they say, the policeman’s best friend is the cold and the snow.”

As always, Hoch said, most area shootings are narcotics-related — with much of the gun play the result of marijuana turf battles.

The presence of Impact officers, who walk the streets in tandem and enforce loitering and public nuisance laws, pushes the drug dealers indoors, which leads to less conflict between rivals, Garcia and Hoch said.

“The reason Impact works is because there are more officers on the street,” Hoch said. “They have more of a presence. It has a trickle-down effect.”

Since the Impact officers left the neighborhood in 2005, Garcia said he’s noticed a troubling change in residents’ attitudes. Without the police presence, Garcia said, there is a trickle-down effect in the opposite direction. Ultimately, it leads to an environment where drug dealers flourish and conflict reigns.

“Violence is definitely up, truancy is up, we see it all the time,” he said. “There’s more of a disregard for your neighbor. People don’t care. … Regular officers are not enforcing [loitering laws]. That’s what the dealers want, so they can operate carte blanche,” Garcia said.

That’s not the case when Impact floods the streets with officers. “They’re like an occupying force,” Garcia said. “They roll deep.”

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Discomfort Over Plan for Webster Comfort Inn

July 13, 2006

By Alex Kratz

On a recent Friday afternoon, Korean War veteran Harold Hekimian pointed to the side of his house where sand from the construction site next door has spilled onto his property, under his porch, into his basement and onto his backyard.

Wearing a linen bathrobe and sporting a shaved head — the result of a four-year battle with stomach cancer — Hekimian loudly laments the imminent arrival of his new neighbor: an 80-room Comfort Inn.

A plywood fence runs suffocatingly close alongside Hekimian’s house on Webster Avenue between East 202nd and 203rd streets. He can only imagine how intrusive a five-story motel will be on him and his sister, Virginia, both in their 70s.

“They’re taking away my oxygen,” Hekimian says, putting his hand to his chest. “I won’t be able to breathe.”

That same day, June 30, the hotel’s developer, Sam Chang of Floral Park, received design approval from the Buildings Department for a five-story, 80-room motel on the slender plot of land wedged tightly between Hekimian’s house and an auto body shop to the north. Chang has yet to apply for a building permit, but that’s mostly a formality, said Jennifer Givner, a spokesperson for the department. All Chang needs is the proper insurance documents and the permit will almost certainly be granted, Givner said.

Queens architect Michael Kang, who designed the motel and has worked with Chang for 12 years on other New York hotel projects, refused to offer any details about the hotel without the developer’s permission. Chang specializes in low-cost hotels and has constructed more than 30 in New York, mostly in Manhattan. As of publication, Chang failed to return several calls from the Norwood News.

Because the area is zoned for heavy commercial buildings, Chang’s development company, McSam LLC, has a right to build the hotel regardless of community opposition.

“They have an ‘as of right’,” said Rita Kessler, the district manager for Community Board 7, talking about the developer’s “right” to build on commercially zoned Webster. “But we’re going to fight them.”

At a Board 7 Land Use Committee meeting two weeks ago, Chang sent his lawyer, Patrick Jones, to discuss the project with Board members. Kessler and other members peppered the lawyer with questions.

“He had no answers for anything,” Kessler said.

Instead, the lawyer jotted down questions in his notebook and said he would bring them up with his boss. Kessler also gave Jones something else to give to Chang — a copy of a petition, created by the Hekimians, with more than 800 signatures of people opposing the new motel.

With PS/MS 20 just a stone’s throw away, Kessler and others are concerned about who will inhabit the rooms and what they will be used for. The motel will be available for short-stay rentals, Kessler said, meaning customers will be able to rent rooms for less than four hours at a time.

“Webster certainly is not a tourist attraction,” Kessler said, adding that she’s concerned the hotel will also be used to house the homeless.

Father Richard Gorman, chair of Community Board 12, sympathizes with the community’s plight. He’s fought against what he describes as “no tell motels” or “hot sheet motels” for more than a decade.

Gorman says a motel like Chang’s in an area like Webster Avenue is only designed for two types of people — drug addicts and prostitutes looking for a private place to conduct illegal activities or homeless families sent there by the city because there is nowhere else to put them. The city pays out of the way motels up to $90 a night to house homeless families, Gorman says.

Recently, Gorman says, there was a brutal murder in one of the dozen motels in his district in the northeast Bronx. The community has been cut out of the approval process, Gorman says, even when motel developments directly affect the community surrounding it. “To have it across the street from a school, I would be very concerned,” Gorman says.

Barbara Rondon, who has worked at PS/MS 20 for the past 10 years and lives in the area, agreed. “We don’t need that [a motel] here,” she said. “We’re trying to bring this area up, not bring it back down.”

Back on Hekimian’s porch, Harold says “hello” and smiles to everyone passing by on the sidewalk. Both he and his sister were born in this house. Their parents, Armenian immigrants, fled Turkish death squads in 1915 and ended up here in Norwood in 1927. The Hekimians remember when Webster was a narrow cobblestone road trafficked with horse carriages. Virginia points to where the family’s lush green lawn spread out to what is now gray concrete.

Harold Hekimian looks out from his porch and sweeps his hand over the neighborhood – a place where the siblings now have myriad immigrant friends, mostly young families, from places like Ghana and Chile. They could be the next Hekimians.

“We’re used to it here,” Hekimian says. “Where are we going to go?”

“But Harold,” Virginia says, “you’re not going to like it here when the motel comes.”

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