Bedford Park Officer Laid to Rest

August 24, 2006

By Alex Kratz

A Bronx police officer who lived in Bedford Park was laid to rest after a tearful farewell at St. Brendan’s Church on Thursday, Aug. 17.

Three days earlier, Eric Concepcion, 29, a native Bronxite and officer with the 42nd Precinct, was killed in a collision with an off-duty volunteer fireman while riding his motorcycle along the West Side Highway.

Concepcion, a five-year police veteran, once worked as a counselor at the Mosholu Montefiore Community Center. It was there that he met his future wife, fellow summer day-camp counselor Melissa Vicens. They had two young daughters together.

“He loved everything about his job and loved helping people,” said Vicens, who is a teacher at PS 56 on East 207th Street in Norwood. “He was a good man,"

After the funeral, Vicens recalled Concepcion’s love for his motorcycle. “I wasn’t too keen about it,” she said, “but I had no choice, it’s what he wanted to do."

Family friend Victoria King, 27, summed up the tragedy. “[Vicens] had the perfect life, they both worked for the city…and now her whole world is shattered,” King said.

Robert Derian, 23, of Saddle River, NJ, was driving his utility vehicle after a night of drinking in Manhattan, when he struck and ran over Concepcion on the Henry Hudson Parkway on Aug. 14. Derian has been charged with second-degree manslaughter, vehicular homicide, driving under the influence and unauthorized use of emergency lights.

Ululy Martinez, a cousin of the victim and the current deputy chief of staff to City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, said that a trust fund had been established for the family. Those wishing to make a donation should send it to: Melissa Vicens, c/o The Patrolmans Benevolent Association of the City of New York, 40 Fulton Street, New York, NY 10038.

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Armory Plan Final Push

August 24, 2006

By Alex Kratz

Community leader Ronn Jordan has big ideas for celebrating once the city begins its official search for a developer to take over renovation of the Kingsbridge Armory, set for early September.

He wants a bash held right on the Armory’s 600,000-square-foot drill floor. It would be a well-deserved reward for Jordan and other local officials and activists, whose tireless work over the past decade turned the Armory renovation, a huge, multi-million-dollar mixed-use redevelopment, from pipe dream to — keep your fingers crossed —imminent reality.

But there is still work left to do. Jordan and others on the Kingsbridge Armory task force – a loose group of local leaders and elected officials that is advising the city’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC), which manages the Armory and is writing the Request for Proposals (RFP) – still have one more meeting, on Tuesday, Aug. 29, to voice their hopes and concerns about the project.

After touring the facility on May 4, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff vowed an Armory RFP by August. The EDC now says the RFP will be released to the public shortly after the task force meeting sometime in “early September.”

Regardless, Jordan says the officials at the EDC have been “very receptive” to input from the community as it has gone about drafting the RFP, which outlines design requirements for contractors looking to take on the development project.

“They know what our position is on many of the details,” Jordan said.

At the final meeting, members of the task force are looking to emphasize two very important sticking points, which they want included in the RFP. They want ample and affordable space that will be accessible to the community. And they want jobs for Bronxites, both during and after construction, that pay solid, livable wages.

Recently, Council Member Oliver Koppell, who’s also a member of the task force, has voiced skepticism about the city’s commitment to including enough community space. He’s said he’s worried that the city’s RFP will neglect community space in favor of commercial space.

Community Board 7 Chair Greg Faulkner, another task force member, said he wants to see 80,000 to 100,000 square feet of community space, but admits the city will probably do whatever it wants to do.

“I don’t want to walk into the Armory and feel like I’m walking in to a big department store,” Faulkner said. “I want a place you can come in to and just hang out without feeling like you have to buy something.”

Jordan agrees, but says that might not be realistic.

“You don’t want [the Armory] to be like the Chelsea piers, where you need to have a membership just to go in,” Jordan said. “We can say that that’s what we prefer, but that puts a restriction on the developer.”

Jordan, who is president of the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition (NWBCCC), a community group and catalyst in pushing the Armory project, said a developer might not be willing to take on the renovation if too much free community space is required.

A design created by the Atlantic Development Group — based largely on the ideas of its partner the Richman Group (which were themselves influenced by the NWBCCC, who brought the Richman Group into the process) — presented to Community Board 7 in May, allocated only 13,000 to 25,000 square feet of community space. The design also includes plans for a 57,000-square-foot YMCA. That could be considered community space, but the YMCA requires a membership fee.

Commercial space, on the other hand, will not be scarce. Most everyone involved with the project admits a large “big box” retail store will almost certainly set up shop. In its proposal, Atlantic said it had already lined up a deal with Lowe’s, a home improvement outlet.

Buoyed by a Chicago City Council resolution requiring big-box retailers, like Wal-Mart or Target, to pay workers $10 an hour and $3 an hour in benefits, Jordan’s group is pushing for similar wages from Armory retailers.

Pointing to the success of Target in Kingsbridge, Jordan argues that a wage requirement will not prevent retailers from moving into the Armory because the Bronx is such a hot commercial market.

“This is going to have to be the cost of doing business in the Bronx,” Jordan said. “The Bronx is the poorest urban county in the United States and we’re in the richest city in the country.”

Faulkner says he’s for a living wage as long as it doesn’t prevent the community from receiving cheap goods and services, which people in the suburbs take for granted.

In 2002, the City Council passed Initiative 66-A requiring anyone employed, contracted or sub-contracted by the city be paid a minimum “living wage” of $10 an hour by 2006. But that doesn’t include private employers. The current minimum wage in New York City is $6.75.

“We are aware that those issues [community space and a living wage] are important to the task force,” said Janel Patterson, a spokesperson for the EDC, who wouldn’t comment further because she said her agency was still working out the language for the RFP.

After the EDC releases its RFP in September, Patterson said the city will give contractors two or three months to submit proposals. Once all the proposals are in, Patterson said the EDC will exercise “due diligence” in choosing a contractor with the help of the task force. She declined to give any kind of a timetable for when the EDC would choose a developer.

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Motel Plans Continue Despite Local Protest

August 24, 2006

By Alex Kratz

Despite stiff community opposition, underscored by a protest rally attended by several prominent Bronx politicians and the teachers union, developers say they will follow through on plans to build a five-story, 42-room Comfort Inn on Webster Avenue.

Critics contend that the community has no need for a motel that community activists and elected officials say will become a “hot sheet” motel and a breeding ground for illegal and unsavory activity, including prostitution and drug abuse.

Across the Bronx River in Wakefield there are already a dozen such motels, which offer hourly rates and no questions asked. Opponents are especially concerned about the location of the planned motel, which is a half block from a school, PS/MS 20, and will neighbor private residences.

“The borough president is unalterably opposed to this development,” said Deputy Borough President Earl Brown at the Aug. 2 protest, which was poorly attended by residents, partly due to temperatures reaching triple digits.

“There are a million worries, no one wants this,” said Andy Pallotto, a representative for the United Federation of Teachers.

Meanwhile, officials at Choice Hotels, Comfort Inn’s parent company, and a lawyer for the developer, McSam LLC, said they had no idea there would be this much opposition. They insisted that a new Comfort Inn will, in time, actually benefit the run-down commercial corridor on Webster Avenue.

Officials from Choice and McSam said the Comfort Inn would not offer short-stay or hourly room rentals. “The belief is that the hotel will be successful in that area,” said Pat Jones, a lawyer for McSam, two weeks after the protest.

David Piekin, a spokesman for Choice Hotels, echoed Jones, saying his company would not put the Comfort Inn name on a development that could possibly be considered “hot sheet” lodging.

“We have what we feel are very lofty standards,” Piekin said in a phone interview. “We go through a rigorous process of researching and making sure a site is viable.”

According to Jones, McSam officials assumed there would be no complaints from the community because the Webster Avenue corridor is zoned for heavy commercial building, which includes hotel developments. When they learned about the adverse reaction, first reported by the Norwood News in June, Jones said they did their best to engage the community.

Board 7 Chair Greg Faulkner disagrees. Before the protest, Jones twice sat down with community representatives, once with the Community Board and then again at borough president’s office. Both times, Faulkner said, Jones failed to adequately address the community’s concerns.

Instead of sending a proxy like Jones, an in-house lawyer with McSam, Faulkner said he would have preferred to hear from McSam’s principal, Sam Chang.

“Because the developer [Chang] has refused to come talk to the community, they are basically saying, ‘to hell with them,’” Faulkner said.

Jones said he often represents Chang in front of community groups. With more than 30 hotels in the New York area currently in the works, the prolific developer can’t be everywhere, he said. Jones points to Chang’s successful track record of building hotels in other working-class neighborhoods, in Queens and Brooklyn, as proof that a Comfort Inn can thrive on Webster Avenue.

Specifically, Jones mentioned the welcome reception McSam’s new Holiday Inn Express received in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. But over the past year, Brooklyn has been written up as a tourist destination in both USA Today and the Los Angeles Times, which would warrant new hotel developments. The same is not true for Webster Avenue, opponents say. Also, Brooklyn residents complained that the Holiday Inn Express was forced on them without their knowledge or approval, according to an article in the brooklyn papers.

The Comfort Inn on Webster is hoping to attract business travelers not tourists, Jones said.

Every elected official at the Aug. 2 rally, including Brown, Assemblyman Jose Rivera, Council member Joel Rivera and Assemblywoman Naomi Rivera, all said they would continue to fight the development.

Undaunted by nearly unanimous opposition, Jones said he understands the area has been burned by sleazy hotel developments before. But he maintains that the new Comfort Inn will not be more of the same.

“Certainly, the great hope is that once this is constructed and you have a new building and it’s lit up and it’s safe, then the community will see the benefits,” Jones said.

Protest organizer Barbara Stronczer doesn’t doubt the developer’s intentions; she just thinks they’re wrong about how successful it will be.

Piekin, from Choice Hotels, says the company signed a franchise contract with McSam that allows for mutual escape options every five years — meaning that if either the developer or the hotel company decides they aren’t making enough profit, they can sell it.

Community leaders like Stronczer say it’s not the Comfort Inn that troubles them, but what it could potentially turn into if Choice Hotels and McSam abandon it.

“Our concern that if it doesn’t work out as motel/hotel, and they don’t get long-term guests, then it’ll get sold,” Stronczer said.

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