Fighting Pediatric Asthma With a Personal Touch in the Bronx

By SÍLE MOLONEY

A new asthma-free Bronx program aims, within five years, to reduce asthma-related emergency room visits by 50 percent and asthma-related hospitalizations by 30 percent among children aged 5 to 17 at three of the Bronx’s public hospitals – North Central Bronx (NCBH), Jacobi, and Lincoln hospitals, which collectively serve about one third of all Bronx kids with asthma, a borough hardest hit by asthma. Each year, approximately 20,000 children in New York City end up in the emergency department or are hospitalized due to asthma. About 40 percent of these children live in the Bronx with black and Latino communities

By SÍLE MOLONEY

Picnics and yoga? Forget about it. It’s more like an open-air rave each weekend at the Gun Hill Meadow inside Van Cortlandt Park, which stretches along West Gun Hill Road and Jerome Avenue. After years of filing 311 noise complaints, residents at Knox Place, Gates Place, DeKalb Avenue, and West Mosholu Parkway say the late-night open-air sprees have gotten progressively worse each year, and are already untenable as the summer surpasses its halfway mark. After 165 noise complaints were logged for the area this year alone, the majority between June and July, 98 residents penned and signed a formal letter

KNIC Project Lumbers Along, New Deadline Set

By DAVID CRUZ

The owner behind the beleaguered and virtually dormant Kingsbridge National Ice Center (KNIC) project, revealed a new start time for the plan, telling the Norwood News he intends to see the ambitious project through despite ongoing delays and legal follies. “I’m very confident we’re gonna get there, it’s just not a straight line, nothing ever is in life,” said Kevin Parker, KNIC’s owner, in a phone interview with the Norwood News. “but we’re not going away and we’re here we’re battling and we’re putting one foot in front of the other taking the steps to get this thing done and

By PROFESSOR ANTHONY RIVIECCIO, MBA PFA

Peace, obviously, is a very subjective term. This will be based on your own individual thoughts. Tranquility for one may be silence and/or scary for another. But your “peace” will be at a price! After all, we do live in a capitalist society, right? But again, based on your own definition, it does not have to cost too much. Peace for me, for example, started in the early 1990s, just graduating college and starting on Wall Street as an investment analyst. During those years, there were many early days and late nights. After 15-hour days, I wanted to be in

Twin Children Die After Left in Car for Hours, Father Taken Into Custody

By DAVID GREENE and DAVID CRUZ

A pair of twin babies’ lives was cut short after they were left behind in a vehicle for hours in Kingsbridge on a day when temperatures reached the mid-80s, according to police. The one-year-old victims, identified as Mariza and Phoenix Rodriguez, were found in a Honda Accord that had stopped at the corner of Kingsbridge Road and Kingsbridge Terrace at around 4:08 p.m. after the victim’s father discovered his children inside. The vehicle’s rear windows were tinted, preventing anyone from seeing inside. Then father was identified as Juan Rodriguez, 39, a Rockland County resident and social worker for the James

Torres: Home Seizure Program Has Sights on Black and Hispanic Homeowners

By DAVID CRUZ and MICHAEL TURAY

A city program that takes away distressed homes from owners is doing more harm than good, robbing its owners of its home valued at millions of dollars in market assets, according to an investigation by the New York City Council. And their findings have found the Bronx is among those hardest hit. “Our investigation found that out of 420 properties, 210 of them had no financial distress. The legal standard for financial distress is a 15 percent lien-to-value ratio, those 210 properties on average had a 3 percent lien-to-value ratio,” said Councilman Ritchie Torres at a news conference outlining his findings

Neighborhood Notes: Free Immigration Service

Cellphone Thefts Police have reported eleven linked incidents of cellphone theft from June 8 to July 7 happening within the 52nd Precinct. One of the thefts occurred on 3222 Bainbridge Ave. and was captured by surveillance cameras (below). The suspects also roam East 207th Street, Reservoir Oval, and Perry Avenue, all within the Norwood area. Police are looking for the individuals, who are males and females between the ages of 15-18. Nabbed Necklaces On June 29, a nineteen-year-old was approached by two men on a scooter, who then snatched his necklace. A similar instance occurred on July 4 when two

Empty for More Than a Decade, Developer Looks to Build on Perry Avenue Lot

By CHRISTY RAE AMMONS

The empty lot at 3067 Perry Avenue has been vacant for over a decade, taking up 2,500 square feet of the Norwood neighborhood. At a time when developers have swept into Norwood and its adjacent neighborhoods, building at a rapid clip during this construction boom, the demand for space is critical. The owner, Joe Quintessenza, purchased the lot with a plan to construct a seven-story apartment building with 32 units and a parking garage on the ground floor. But when zoning laws downsized the area, Quintessenza’s plans fell through. “We were planning on building 32 units eleven, ten years ago,

Montefiore Wakefield Campus Hails Decade in Neighborhood (Web Picture)

By JOSÉ A. GIRALT

As the thermometer hit 96 degrees, visitors to the Montefiore Wakefield Community Health Fair on July 20, were glad to see plenty of bottled water, cooling fans, and an invitation by hospital officials like Toni Hayes to rest inside the air-conditioned lobby. “Be sure to stay hydrated,” Hayes reminded visitors. The oppressive heat, however, did not keep elected officials and hospital administration from celebrating Montefiore’s 10th anniversary managing the Wakefield campus. The hospital located at East 233rd Street near the Bronx River Parkway was formerly known as Our Lady of Mercy Medical Center. Montefiore officially took over the former hospital