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Embattled 52nd Precinct Commander Replaced
March 24, 2011
By Alex Kratz
The commanding officer of the 52nd Precinct, Deputy Inspector John D’Adamo, was suddenly replaced this month, less than 17 months after taking over the job and less than a month after his wife was caught lying to Clarkstown police about being attacked on Valentine’s Day.
The 40-year-old D’Adamo — a rising star in the NYPD who took on his first commanding role as head of the 50th Precinct in 2008 at the age of 37 — will be replaced by Deputy Inspector Joseph Dowling, formerly the commanding officer of Manhattan’s 33rd Precinct, which covers Washington Heights.
Last week, Dowling introduced himself at Community Board 7’s general board meeting at Scott Tower in Bedford Park. Dowling said he spent more than five years at his last post.
A series of unfortunate events led up to D’Adamo’s departure. Read more
Hopes for a Harlem River Park Tied Up in Red Tape
March 24, 2011
By Alex Kratz
Regatta Park does not exist. It is an idea. A collective vision — shared by Harlem River enthusiasts, Bronx water access advocates, a community board and a local politician — to see a public, usable green space on the Harlem River waterfront right here in the northwest Bronx.
Ozzie Brown can see what Regatta Park is now from his Fordham Hill apartment, which looks down at the Harlem River waterfront, just north of the historic University Heights Bridge. “It’s a dump,” he says of the area, which is also known as Fordham Landing.
The creation of Regatta Park is called for in the city’s recently released comprehensive waterfront plan and is a vital cog in advocates’ dream of creating a continuous greenway that would travel along the Harlem and Hudson rivers from Westchester County to the south Bronx.
But the city money once allocated for Regatta Park has all but evaporated, forcing residents like Brown and other park advocates to keep hope and the vision of waterfront access alive.
Last year, City Councilman Fernando Cabrera gave Community Board 7 and Brown, a board member, $15,000 to work on redeveloping the Harlem River waterfront in his district, which includes Fordham Landing. Previously, the Board had worked with Columbia University to come up with a grand vision for transforming the area into a resource for the community.
The transformation would be built around Regatta Park, which was set to receive a $1.6 million infusion from the Parks Department, thanks to the deal that put the Croton Water Filtration Plant in Van Cortlandt Park. That money would not have covered the construction costs, but it would have been a good start.
But the Parks Department used the majority of that funding — all but $97,000 — to mitigate lead contamination found during the construction of Harris Field in Bedford Park. Now, Brown and the Board want to use its $15,000 to get the Regatta Park ball rolling again, but are not getting any response from the Parks Department.
“There’s been a lot of feet dragging,” said Brown. “I don’t think anyone takes it seriously enough to really give an answer to the community that would indicate their intentions for the future.”
The Board wants to give the Parks Department Cabrera’s money to help kick off a scoping hearing — an open forum that allows the public to have input on the Regatta Park project.
In December, Cabrera’s office sent a letter to the Parks Department, cosigned by Community Board 7, formally requesting that they hold a scoping and offering to provide $15,000 to help fund the effort. Nearly four months later, there has been no response from Parks. The $15,000 would be returned to the city coffers if it isn’t used by July.
Jesslyn Moser, a Parks spokesperson, said in an e-mail that Parks has not made a decision on whether to begin a scoping for Regatta Park. “The decision to hold a scope meeting is determined by the overall feasibility of the project (including whether the available funding is adequate),” Moser wrote.
But Parks is hoping to recoup the lost Regatta Park funding when the Office of Management and Budget approves the next round of Croton-related funding, Moser said. The Department of Transportation currently controls the city-owned land designated for the park, but aside from a few stacked guardrails and wood pallets, the lot, which extends out over the Harlem River, is empty.
In a meeting last fall, according to Cabrera’s Chief of Staff Greg Faulkner, the DOT’s Bronx commissioner, Constance Moran, told Cabrera’s office and Board representatives the DOT would give up the space if Parks comes up with a plan to redevelop it. That means Parks would need to commit to a scoping hearing.
“It’s frustrating,” said Faulkner, who first began pushing for Regatta Park as chairman of Community Board 7 a couple of years ago. “It seems like such a no brainer.”
Dart Westphal, a member of the Bronx Council on Environmental Quality, said Regatta Park would give Bronxites river access for boating and other recreational activities.
The river used to be more of a resource for residents. In the mid-19th century, according to Bronx historian Lloyd Ultan, steamboats stopped at Fordham Landing on their way down to Wall Street. Underneath the Highbridge, a major tourist attraction, there was an amusement park. A yacht club used the river for boating.
Today, while the Manhattan side has seen some development, the Bronx side of the river is mostly used for commercial purposes. On the south side of University Heights Bridge, a dairy company stores massive semi-trucks on a huge lot zoned for residential buildings. North of the bridge and the space sited for Regatta Park, there is a storage facility, the headquarters of a scaffolding company and a cement factory.
Between the storage facility and the city-owned Regatta Park site is a small wooded waterfront patch owned by Con Edison that is literally being used as a dump. In between random piles of hardened concrete, there are beds, clothes, empty detergent bottles, even half of what looks like a jeep. The jagged wood remnants of Fordham Landing pier poke through the water.
Brown, who’s been tied to the Fordham Landing redevelopment since the 1990s, said he wants to start doing beautification projects at the site. “The community is quite interested, but our hands are tied.”
Bronx Pols Push Cuomo On Rent Reform; Jeff Klein’s Name Absent
March 24, 2011
By Jeanmarie Evely
A number of local elected officials are urging Gov. Andrew Cuomo to renew and strengthen rent regulation laws, in favor of renters, as part of his budget negotiations with the legislature this month.
Last week, about 90 lawmakers signed a letter to the governor pressing the issue, which requested that he not only renew the existing Emergency Tenant Protection Act that expires this spring but that he include provisions to repeal vacancy decontrol — the law that lets landlords hike rents of stabilized apartments once tenants vacate them, essentially deregulating the city’s housing market.
Every Bronx state representative put his or her name on the letter with the exception of one: State Sen. Jeff Klein, whose district covers parts of the Bronx and Westchester. Klein, who recently formed a four-member Independent Caucus among centrist Senate Democrats, has been a target of housing advocates’ campaigns in the past, criticized for his inaction on pro-tenant legislation and for receiving substantial campaign contributions from landlord and real estate groups.
“Jeff Klein is an operative for the real estate lobby,” said Michael McKee, of the Tenants Political Action Committee. “He works behind the scenes to make sure that pro-tenant legislation does not pass.”
Klein’s camp, however, said that the senator was never given the letter to sign.
“We don’t have a record of receiving the letter,” said spokesman Rich Azzopardi. Read more
Local Council Members Accused in Daily News Probe
March 24, 2011
By Jeanmarie Evelly
A series of New York Daily News articles published this week highlighted the alleged misdeeds of a number of New York City Council members, including several local Bronx representatives.
Councilmen Fernando Cabrera, Joel Rivera and Oliver Koppell were among those mentioned in the series of stories, which the paper called “Above the Law.”
According to the report, Cabrera claimed a home he owns in Westchester County as his “primary residence” on tax forms, a move that scored him a $1,513 tax break. Although Cabrera himself would not comment about the finding, his office confirmed its accuracy.
Cabrera’s camp said the listing of the Westchester property was an “honest oversight” and that Cabrera did not know the tax relief credit would be automatically renewed each year. The councilman is in the process of paying the money back and does, indeed, live in his Bronx district, as required by law, his office said. Read more
PS/MS 280 Burglarized
March 24, 2011
By By Lulaine Compere
On March 10, burglars broke into PS/MS 280 at 3202 Steuben Ave. in the Norwood section of the Bronx and stole new desktop computers, laptops, lunch money and other items in the school.
The burglars left with about $25,000 worth of equipment, said Frenchie Muniz of the PS/MS 280 Parents Association.
The burglars caused a lot of damage, leaving broken windows and slashed doors in their wake.
Police are conducting an investigation and dusted the scene for fingerprints. According to Muniz, the burglars destroyed some of the video surveillance cameras that were installed prior to a similar incident that happened last year.
This incident happened just before the school found out it had won a grant that will give the school’s 5th-grade students brand new take-home computers. “This does not replace what happened, but at least something good came out of the situation.”
Muniz has appealed to local politicians to get help for the school so they can try to replace the stolen computers in spite of the budget cuts set to happen. He has not heard back from anyone yet.
Bronx Building Workers Reach Deal With Landlords
March 24, 2011
By Jeanmarie Evelly
A union representing apartment building workers across the Bronx reached a contract agreement with their management last week, narrowly averting a strike that would have kept some 3,000 superintendents, janitors, handypersons, porters, firepersons, doormen, elevator operators and garbage handlers in the borough from heading to work.
32BJ, the union representing the workers, had been in contract talks with the Bronx Realty Advisory Board (BRAB) since February, and had already rejected one proposed contract that they said cut needed healthcare and retirement benefits.
The two groups came to an agreement on March 14, just a day before the workers’ current contract expired. The tentative agreement, if approved, will provide a roughly 6 percent wage increase and maintain employer-paid family healthcare and pension benefits.
“We were able to keep what’s most important to our families, affordable healthcare and pensions,” Angel Ortega, a Riverdale super said in a statement. “It was a tough few months, but we’re glad we didn’t inconvenience the residents and are eager to keep serving the Bronx.”
Last summer, hundreds of maintenance workers in Co-op City went on strike for a week during contract negotiations with their management group. Garbage and debris piled up outside the sprawling 35-building housing complex, to the dismay of residents there.
Be Healthy! Q&A: New Study Looks at Housing’s Link to Health
March 24, 2011
By Jeanmarie Evelly
Fordham University and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine are collaborating on a study that examines the connection between housing and health in the Bronx. The Affordable HOME Study, which launched last year, is looking to find out how different housing environments affect the health outcomes of the borough’s Latino population. This week, Be Healthy! sat down with Einstein’s Dr. Earle Chambers, a principal investigator on the study, to find out more.
Q: What, exactly, is this project looking to find out?
A: This particular study is looking at how section 8 housing vouchers allow you to live in different kinds of neighborhoods, and people who use these kinds of vouchers. If you’re able to take advantage of these affordable housing opportunities, does that correlate to differences in certain health behaviors compared to people who live in public housing projects or in the private market?
Q: Was there anything that inspired you to study this particular topic?
A: I’ve always been interested in studying obesity, and looking at its relationship to heart disease and cardiovascular risk. The issue of housing is always something on everyone’s mind, as far as affordable housing and choosing where you want to live, especially in New York.
Q: How is the study being conducted?
A: We have a sampling frame, in the south and west section of the Bronx—Community Districts 1 through 7. Our population is restricted to Latino families who live in the Bronx and are eligible for low-income housing.
We’re knocking on doors and trying to convince people to participate. It’s just a one-time sit-down—we do the interview at the time of recruitment, and it takes about an hour and a half. The questionnaire asks about the characteristics of your housing and a number of different health indicators.
Q: Is there a reason you’re conducting this in the Bronx?
A: The Bronx definitely has a unique housing environment, and is really at high risk for a lot of different health outcomes. It has the highest rates of obesity of the five boroughs. Einstein and Fordham are both in the Bronx, and we’re committed to the health of the people of the Bronx.
Q: Do you have any predictions about what your research is going to find?
A: The hypothesis is that people from section 8 housing end up having better health outcomes than people who live in either a housing project or private market rent…that there are benefits of getting to use section 8 to move to better neighborhoods, and have access to better resources. It’s not clear if that’s [the case]. Even though the housing voucher gives a lot of people the opportunity to move out of poverty concentrated environment, it doesn’t mean it necessarily correlates to healthier behaviors.
Q: Over the past few years, the city has drastically cut the number of section 8 vouchers it gives out. Do you hope your study could have an effect on this?
A: I think the overall goal is to provide evidence that including more affordable housing options can be beneficial. Hopefully we can inform policymakers that these types of things can have health benefits.
Local Teens Master Their Trades
March 24, 2011
By Norwood News
A group of teenagers at The COVE (Community Organized with a Vision of Excellence) after-school program started their own businesses projects this year, and showcased the fruits of their labor to family and neighbors earlier this month. The kids, aged 14 to 17, created and marketed their own T-shirt, pastry and entertainment production companies. The groups offered treats for the audience to sample, sold T-shirts they designed themselves and screened videos to the crowd that they created and produced. The COVE is a youth program run by the Knox-Gates Neighborhood Association, on Gates Place in Norwood.
Local Tennis Enthusiast Dies on Court
March 24, 2011
By Jeanmarie Evelly
Mike Ferebee
Michael Ferebee, a Norwood resident and tennis aficionado who played regularly on the courts at Williamsbridge Oval, died last Wednesday after suffering a massive heart attack during a match there. He was 63 years old.
Ferebee was such a regular sight on the oval’s courts that he was given his own key to them, said sister Cheryl Ferebee. “He was always there,” she said. “When tennis season started, they would find him there early in the morning and late at night.”
“He was a competitive player, a good player,” said Robert Tilitz, Ferebee’s regular tennis partner. “Mike usually got the best of me, but we never exchanged a cross word. He was a gentleman and a sportsman.”
Ferebee is survived by his father, Anthony U. Ferebee, former wife Hyacinth Ferebee, two sons, Michael A. Ferebee, Jr. and Galaal Maliek Ferebee, brother Carlton E. Ferebee, sister Cheryl A. Ferebee, three grandchildren, two nieces, three nephews, three grandnephews, two grandnieces, aunts, cousins, and other relatives and friends.
New Day Church Turns 2
March 24, 2011
By Alex Kratz
New Day Pastor Doug Cunningham (Photo by Jomo Stewart)
New Day Church church celebrated its second year in the Bronx during a service held at the Academy of Mt. St. Ursula in Bedford Park. In an e-mail, Pastor Doug Cunningham said the New Day congregation has grown steadily, mostly by word of mouth. “Most people who come are attracted to our uniqueness, connecting with God authentically, questions welcome, crossing boundaries of race, class, sexual orientation and age, getting involved in the community,” Cunningham wrote.
A Year After Tragedy, Megan Charlop’s Work Endures
March 17, 2011
By Jeanmarie Evelly
On the day she died, Megan Charlop was riding her bicycle to PS 55 in Claremont, on her way to the elementary school’s summer camp fair.
The event was one of many projects Charlop spearheaded as the director of Community Health at Montefiore Medical Center’s School Health Program, and one close to her heart, her colleagues say—part of an effort to set local children up with free or low-cost camp programs.
“She was extremely enthusiastic about the summer camp campaign,” said coworker Laura Messing. “She’d be bouncing off the walls, ready to talk to anyone and everyone about it.”
But Charlop never made it to PS 55 that day: she was struck and killed by a city bus as she biked there along Crotona Avenue, after she’d swerved to avoid an opening car door.
Charlop’s sudden death, at the age of 57, dealt a devastating blow to those who knew her. Her death also left a gaping hole in the public health community, which lost one of its fiercest advocates that day, one who had pioneered and fought to maintain countless programs and projects in the Bronx and across the city.
“What are we going to do?” Dr. David Appel, director of the School Health program, recalled his grieving staff asking one another in the days following Charlop’s death. “It was both the energy to keep the programs going, but also that Megan was the glue that kept everybody going.”
Charlop, a longtime Norwood resident, had spent her decades-long career fighting to improve the health and well-being of Bronx residents, tackling everything from lead poisoning to childhood obesity to teaching children to ride bicycles—her preferred mode of transportation.
“She was like an octopus,” said colleague Cymetra Williams. “She had a hand in so many things.”
Her coworkers say they’ve spent the last year determined to see all of Charlop’s beloved projects stay afloat, and that she would be proud of how so many of them have grown and flourished. Read more
At 30, Lehman Center Mixes Old School Values With New School Outlook
March 17, 2011
By Alex Kratz
Tap dancer extraordinaire Savion Glover performs at Lehman Center in early March. Glover joined the center’s diverse and popular 30th anniversary lineup. (Photo by Adi Talwar)
Eva Bornstein is enjoying one of her finest and most successful seasons at the helm of the Lehman Performing Arts Center. It is the center’s 30th anniversary and Bornstein was just featured in the New York Times’ Sunday Metropolitan section. Attendance is up during a down economy. Life is good. But she is concerned. The antics of madcap actor Charlie Sheen are consuming all the country’s media attention. “It’s disgusting,” she says, both of the coverage and Sheen’s behavior.
“We are from the old school,” she says, attempting to explain her disgust.
Indeed, Bornstein, the face of Lehman Center for the past six years, seems almost a castoff from a different era. Her deep, luxurious Polish accent could have been plucked from a Bond movie starring Sean Connery. You can imagine her being perfectly comfortable rubbing elbows and smoking long cigarettes with Billie Holiday at a Harlem night club.
“Old school,” however, does not mean stuck in the past. She has adapted to the changing demographics in the Bronx by providing more Latin music than her predecessors and putting together a wildly diverse group of acts. This year, that lineup has included the entire gamut from salsa legends Ruben Blades and Gilberto Santa Rosa to Chinese acrobats.
“Eva brought a new energy and expanded the offerings,” says Andrea Rockower, who was associate director of programming at the center from 1985 until she retired in January (she continues to work there as a consultant). Read more
Vagabond New State Senator Rivera Doing Business on the Run
March 17, 2011
By Alex Kratz
State Senator Gustavo Rivera, the new representative of the northwest Bronx’s 33rd District, called a reporter last week from his cell phone while sitting in an office in downtown Manhattan. That’s life for a vagabond freshman politician in the senate’s minority party who is still trying to nail down a district office more than two months into his term.
While Rivera said he’s being proactive in his district — visiting community groups and constituents, holding meetings at his local New Capital diner on Kingsbridge Road — he admits, “it’s frustrating.”
Rivera is hoping to set up shop in a building on the Grand Concourse, just below Fordham Road and across from the Loew’s Paradise Theater, but the deal is caught up in red tape.
“The State Senate process is unfortunately a lengthy one,” spokeswoman Conchita Cruz said in an e-mail. “We have been told it will be resolved in the next few weeks.” Read more
State of the Borough: Diaz Praises ‘One Bronx’
March 17, 2011
In response to recent derogatory portrayals of the borough by “American Idol” and Glenn Beck, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. went on the offensive last month, highlighting the positives and success stories of the Bronx during his second state of borough speech.
While continuing to press his mantra of borough residents and workers coming together to form “One Bronx,” or “Un Solo Bronx,” Diaz spent a great deal of his nearly 90-minute speech at DeWitt Clinton High School hyping his accomplishments and all of the great things the borough has to offer.
“It is time to let the world know once again that the Bronx is a place of success,” Diaz said.
Toward the beginning of the speech, Diaz unveiled a new hip hop video, produced by Derek Woods for Bronxnet and featuring musicians Opera Steve, Silkedeezy and Steve Kane, that extolled the virtues of the borough through rap lyrics and snippets of interviews with famous Bronxites, including author Mary Higgins Clark and seminal Bronx rapper Grandmaster Mele Mel.
Aside from highlighting Bronx success stories, Diaz spent much of his speech talking about the state of the borough’s economy and what his office was doing to improve it. Despite investment and other efforts, by his office and others, to bring in new developments and cultivate “green jobs,” Diaz acknowledged that the Bronx still has the highest poverty rate of any urban county in the United States.
To combat that poverty rate, Diaz said he supported a new City Council bill that would require developers to guarantee living wages ($10 an hour, plus benefits, or $11.50 an hour without) if they receive significant city subsidies. The “Fair Wages for New Yorkers” legislation currently has 29 supporters in the City Council, but needs five more to overturn a sure veto by Mayor Bloomberg, who says the bill will discourage city development.
“Not only is this the right thing to to lift our people out of poverty,” Diaz said, “it is sound economic policy.”
The living wage bill was born out of the 2009 fight over the development of the Kingsbridge Armory. The Council killed a Bloomberg-backed plan to turn the Armory into a shopping mall when an agreement couldn’t be worked out over wage guarantees.
Last year, Diaz created a task force full of big names to figure out a new plan for the Armory. And last week, he revealed a few of the groups — the YMCA, two production studios and New York Arena Management, a sports arena developer — that the task force has spoken to about using the monstrous and vacant 575,000 square-foot building.
Diaz said he would make recommendations on possible uses of the Armory in April and called on Bloomberg to release another RFP for the long-vacant Armory.
Like borough presidents in the past, Diaz vowed to bolster the Bronx’s tourism industry by bringing a world-class hotel to the area near Yankee Stadium. He talked about transforming one of the struggling parking garages into deluxe accommodations for visitors.
Diaz touched on other issues — improving schools, getting guns off the street, standing up against hate crimes, saving Bronx trees — and made several pop culture references (Snooki, from “Jersey Shore,” made an appearance on the video screen backdrop) during his speech, which ended where it started.
“We will not listen to those who say that poverty is an inevitable part of life in the Bronx,” he said. “We will show them that those chains can be broken.”
MMCC Hit Hard By Government Budget Cuts
March 17, 2011
By Alex Kratz
Major cutbacks in government spending, on both the local and federal level, have left several community centers in the northwest Bronx struggling to make ends meet this year.
Mosholu Montefiore Community Center (MMCC) in Norwood, which runs dozens of after-school sites, a senior citizen center, and other programs serving more than 28,000 Bronxites each year, has been appealing to neighbors for donations over the last few months in an effort to keep the center afloat.
“Bottom line, we are probably close to a million dollars in cuts,” said Executive Director Donald Bluestone. “We’ve been closing programs, laying off staff. It’s a serious problem.” Read more
New DOE Plan Could Ease Crowding
March 17, 2011
By Layza Garcia
The Department of Education’s revised five-year plan for school construction includes an increase of more than 1,600 new seats within School District 10 in the northwest Bronx. But it is yet to be determined where the remaining seats will go.
District 10 is the most overcrowded in the city. A report by the City Comptroller’s office last September said that primary schools in the area operate at 112 percent of capacity, while intermediate schools are at 103 percent.
Marvin Shelton, president of the district’s Community Education Council, said he is glad that the DOE is recognizing the desperate need for new school space in the community.
According to the plan, District 10 will get a total of 2,897 class seats over the next five years, Shelton said.
In the last Capital Plan of 2005-2009, there were 2,520 seats to be created in District 10 and only 1,765 of those seats were sited. There were 755 seats that were unaccounted for that were then carried over to the 2010-2014 plan.
Among the projects is the construction of the new school PS/IS 177 on Webster Avenue, which going to hold 640 seats. It is expected to be completed in September 2014.
The School Construction Authority (SCA), which manages the design, construction, and renovation of the city’s public schools, creates a proposed Capital Plan every five years for new developments in school construction. Every year they amend it, based on need.
The most recent revisions to the plan include a request for additional funding for various projects, including $8.8 billion for 50,000 new classroom seats in an estimated 87 buildings citywide. The DOE said it hopes the new additions will accommodate the city’s growing student body, alleviate overcrowding, and reduce class size as well as the number of temporary classrooms.
The SCA has also requested $7.4 billion to improve already existing school facilities.
The plan is up for approval in June or July, according to DOE spokesman Jack Zarin-Rosenfeld.
Webster Ave. Rezone Now in Hands of Council
March 17, 2011
By Alex Kratz
The rezoning of a long, auto shop-strewn stretch of Webster Avenue between Fordham Road and Gun Hill Road is now moving into its final stage — scrutiny from the City Council, which must sign off on the plan.
Over the past few years, Community Board 7 has worked with the office of City Planning to up-zone Webster Avenue to encourage more residential and retail development and, at the same time, down-zone select neighborhoods in Norwood and Bedford Park.
Over the coming weeks, the Council will hold three meetings to discuss the Webster rezone plan:
• March 15, 9:30 a.m., 16th floor Hearing Room – Zoning Subcommittee (Hearing & Vote)
• March 16, 11 a.m., 16th floor Hearing Room – (Full) Land Use Committee (Hearing & Vote)
• March 23, 1:30 p.m., Emigrant Savings Bank (49-51 Chambers St.) — Stated Meeting (Vote)
The public can sign up to speak at the March 15 Zoning Subcommittee hearing. The actual vote on the plan will be on March 23.
Norwood Home to ‘Weekend Walks’ This Summer
March 17, 2011
This summer, East 204th Street, from Bainbridge Avenue to Hull Avenue, will be closed to cars for three consecutive Sundays as the area will host Weekend Walks, a program co-sponsored by Community Board 7 and the Department of Transportation.
Organizers stress that it’s not a typical street fair. Merchants on the closed streets are encouraged to promote their businesses and sell goods and services, but the event won’t be open to outside vendors.
The program has been successful on Burnside Avenue, said Board 7 District Manager Fernando Tirado, where live entertainment, food demonstrations, and distribution of free bike helmets and health information were on the agenda.
“We want to do things very similar to that,” Tirado said.
The dates for Weekend Walks are July 24, July 31 and Aug. 7.
For more information, call Community Board 7 at (718) 933-5650.
Arsenal Found in Villa Ave. Drug Raid
March 17, 2011
By David Greene
A raid organized by the NYPD’s gang unit has shut down a Villa Avenue drug distribution operation, police said, taking a cache of dangerous weapons off the streets of Bedford Park in the process.
Acting on a tip, police raided an apartment at 3081 Villa Ave., just off Bedford Park Boulevard, on Feb. 23. Cops discovered small amounts of cocaine and marijuana, drug paraphernalia, scales and a money counter — items needed for a sophisticated drug operation.
Police also confiscated a total of 12 guns, including five assault rifles and seven handguns, as well as ammunition, M-80 explosives and “blasting caps.” Police also recovered night vision goggles and a bulletproof vest.
Police charged Victor Miri, 29, with multiple counts, including drug and gun possession. Bail was set at $200,000. His brother, Tonin Miri, 30, who, according to the authorities, spent time in federal prison, was released after posting $15,000 bail.
A 40-year resident of the building who identified himself as “Tom,” said he saw the suspects being escorted out. “I was going in and the two men were coming out,” he said. “They were handcuffed.”
Tom called one of the two suspects, “a nice guy,” who often said “hello.”
D & S Management Corporation, which oversees the building, refused to comment on the raid or information on the brothers.
Editorial: Foodtown’s Welcome Return
March 17, 2011
By Norwood News
The absence of Foodtown in Norwood for the last 15 months has been deeply felt by thousands of local residents. The elderly, who were able to walk to the supermarket before the store burned to the ground in December 2009, were particularly burdened by the loss.
But the store has emerged bigger and better with a much wider array of offerings and more room for residents with walkers, strollers and shopping carts to maneuver.
The Katz family, comprised of astute businessmen who own 13 other stores, has occasionally rankled local residents, as when it tried to buy and close a rival Bedford Park market in the 1990s. Ensuing protests, particularly among senior citizens, made them reverse course.
But to the family’s credit, they have deep roots in the community and ensured that staffers were employed at their other stores after the fire. The Katz’s investment in the Norwood store — they say their expenses for the rebuilding outweigh their insurance settlement — appears to be significant and the decision to offer many things too few Bronx supermarkets have, such as organic foods and a robust produce section, is a vote for quality in a community that deserves much more of it. Entrepreneurs all over should take heed.
As Noah Katz told a customer on Tuesday who expressed appreciation for the new store: “You deserve a first class store at low prices.”
The Katz family has earned the plaudits it has been receiving for rebuilding in style in a relatively short amount of time. There’s still the large lot across the street made vacant by another fire just two months earlier, but the rebuilding of Foodtown sends the message to prospective developers that Norwood is still open for good business.
New, Improved Foodtown Rises From Ashes
March 17, 2011
By Lulaine Compere and Jordan Moss
Customers explore the new expanded Foodtown. (Photo by Adi Talwar)
Norwood’s popular Foodtown supermarket which was razed in a suspected incident of arson at the end of 2009 is back in business.
The store, now 50 percent larger with many more offerings, has taken up two neighboring storefronts that were home to a diner and a dental office that were also destroyed in the blaze.
“We expanded the store, we have a bigger seafood department, bakery department, produce department, and we have expanded the deli,” said Noah Katz, a member of the family that has owned the store since 1956 Read more
Bedford Park Seniors Facing Loss Of ‘Second Home’
March 10, 2011
Proposed budget cuts could shut down 105 senior centers citywide this year, 22 of which are in the Bronx, including the Sister Annunciata Bethel Senior Center, also known as the Bedford Park Senior Center, and the Van Cortlandt Senior Center.
Local politicians are gearing up for a fight, while regulars at the Bedford Park center, on East 204th Street near Mosholu Parkway, emphasized how devastating the loss would be.
Erneszstin Bakos, an 89-year-old member and volunteer for the center, works at the front door, greeting the 60 to 70 seniors that attend the center daily. “I love this place,” she said. “It’s my second home.”
“I’m so happy here! You get to meet people and make friends. It gets you out of the house and keeps you connected,” Isabel Cales said, adding that she has learned how to use the computer at the center. “Where else would I get the chance to do that?”
In addition to computer classes, the center offers a variety of activities and programs for seniors, such as bingo, movies, crochet, knitting, painting, and exercise classes.
“This is the only place where I’m not depressed,” Ramonita Marrero said. “Here you get to enjoy company, express yourself, play games, and ease your mind.” Read more
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- Wednesday’s Bronx News Links Wed, Feb 22 at 3:17pm
- Local Initiative Puts Focus on Teens’ Reproductive Health Wed, Feb 22 at 12:33pm
- Bicycles and Basketballs Could be in the Armory’s Future Wed, Feb 22 at 5:58am
