Donald Bluestone, Executive Director of MMCC to Hang It Up in 2017

Bluestone leaves legacy 27 years in the making The Mosholu Montefiore Community Center (MMCC) embodies an energy that courses throughout its three-story building on DeKalb Avenue and East Gun Hill Road in Norwood. Kids in MMCC summer camp T-shirts walk single file within the halls while a crowd of teenagers is ushered into a room to fill out forms for the city’s Summer Youth Employment Program. At the entrance to the center, senior citizens chitchat over what’s next on their agenda. For all intents and purposes, the building is constantly breathing, with the community serving as its lifeblood. At its

By DAVID CRUZ

Jose Cotto, living a seemingly solitary life on Decatur Avenue for the last several years, replays the circumstances leading to his mother’s death, Santa Torres, at a hospital in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. She died June 6, 2014, a day after undergoing simple surgery on a fractured hip from a fall while seeing her daughter in Puerto Rico. But after receiving several multiple doses of morphine Torres, 89, passed away from a heart attack. Torres’ main residence was in the Bronx. Living with her son for several years, the two were inseparable. These days, the apartment she lived in

This week we asked readers their thoughts on the recent shootings of police officers and black men across the country. I believe that no matter what race, religion or sexuality, we are all at the end of the day human. Racism has always been a big issue in this society. We shouldn’t harm or hate one another just because we are different from each other. I personally believe if we stopped this nonsense and just accept the fact that that we’re all different, but at the same time we all still breathe, eat and feel the same things, then maybe

By ADRIANNA LOMBARDO

A quintet of musicians forming the Bardekova Ensemble put on a free performance at the Poe Park Visitors Center in Fordham on July 10. The music troupe is a non-profit organization funded through the Bronx Council of the Arts. They bring free or low priced concerts to the Bronx community, an area lacking in music performances when compared to the rest of the city. These free concerts are open to the public. Members from the Bardekova Ensemble have performed with members of the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera. Members of the Bardekova Ensemble include Richard Parately (flute), Akari

With more than 2,300 housing violations and a muddled reputation, the time had come for New York City’s worst landlord to take his place on the hot seat. Ved Parkash, long dubbed the worst landlord in New York City by the Public Advocate’s annual worst landlord’s watchlist, finally met with some of his residents in a Q&A forum at the Concourse House at 196th Street and the Grand Concourse in Bedford Park on July 12. For his part, Parkash sat in the center by his lonesome, left to answer tough questions from raging tenants. The Parkash Tenant Coalition, a

Hello Faithful Readers, The month-long edition of the Norwood News is out with plenty of Bronx community news you can use. With our July-August edition, are some interesting stories intended to pique your interest. We first begin in Bedford Park with a tenants meeting involving Ved Parkash, dubbed the city’s worst landlord. Hear what tenants living in his buildings had to say about conditions, which have drawn the ire of city officials. Also, hear what Mr. Parkash had to say of his buildings. Moving into the pages of the edition you’ll read up on Mosholu Montefiore Community Center‘s respected executive director,

By DAVID CRUZ

Police have a visual on a suspect wanted for robbing a cell phone, and they need the public’s help tracking him. The suspected thief (pictured), allegedly grabbed a 27-year-old victim of her phone while she was sleeping on board the uptown 4 train at the Woodlawn subway station on May 29. The suspect fled and the victim was left without a phone. She did track it down to a cell phone store at 1286A Southern Blvd. near Soundview, thanks to a cell phone tracking app. The suspect was last seen wearing a black t-shirt with white roman numeral numbers and a

The fate of a well-respected management firm that’s provided services to a Mitchell Lama complex in Kingsbridge was put on hold by the building’s board of directors who seek to replace them. For some 60 years, Amalgamated Houses has been tethered to Park Reservoir, the first Mitchell Lama cooperative in the Bronx. It offers amenities that include community get-togethers, and custodial services such as pre-dawn snow shoveling during the winter season. Tenants fear those services will be diminished should a new management firm be hired. “The board felt there was a lot of confusion and anger at them so they

By DAVID CRUZ

An enormous but barren parcel of land at the southwestern tip of the Bronx is one step closer towards development by the city, testing interest in the waterfront while advancing Mayor Bill de Blasio’s overall vision for the South Bronx. The 158,000-square-foot property, settled at the shadow of the Major Deegan Expressway and Bronx Terminal Market near 149th Street, represents one of the city’s larger available spaces in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx. The city, through a Request For Expressions of Interest (RFEI), is envisioning a whopping 40-story, mixed-used affordable housing complex overlooking the Harlem River. RFEI’s are a precursor