Fourteen years after the National Guard handed the city its keys to the Kingsbridge Armory, we are finally at a point where something positive may happen there.

A developer has been selected, the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition is tenaciously fighting to make sure that its priorities are realized in the final plan, and a newly invigorated Community Board 7 is taking seriously the advisory role given it by the City Charter.

This is great news. But we hope these two community entities can maintain a united front despite apparent tensions.

The Coalition wants the Kingsbridge Armory Redevelopment Alliance (KARA), an umbrella group it formed, to negotiate a solid community benefits agreement with the developer, The Related Companies. Community Board 7 chair Greg Faulkner has requested that there be Board participation on KARA’s negotiating team. The Coalition has rejected that request and has generally not shown interest in working with the Board.

We understand why the Coalition would want to forge ahead on its own. But shutting the door on CB7 is counter-productive.

Believe it or not, a recession, slowdown, downturn, or whatever you want to call our sluggish economy, can be a blessing in disguise for a well-managed small business. Though no one would prefer the present economic climate, weathering the current storm may be the best thing that can happen to many small companies because it can give them an opportunity to test the value of their products and services, and the effectiveness and resilience of the strategies they have developed at a time when they are forced by the oppressive market economy to be flexible.

In the Bronx the sky is much wider and one can always see the stars or watch the sun go down bedaubed in copper and saffron. In the Bronx a sleepy lump of isle breathes the brine of the bay into your lungs, and lulls your being with the sights and the sounds of a New England town. In the Bronx, against all odds, a primeval forest stands eternal and a resurrected river cleanses its muddy banks for the March of Kayaks and Canoes and yellow water-ribbons. -by Carmen D. Lucca  

The Ursuline Sisters of Bedford Park are once again using land to fuel their mission of service. Back in 1892, the Sisters acquired a plot of farmland in northwest Bronx County, an area now known as Bedford Park. They kept some of the crops on the land and sold them to provide for the all-girls high school they had started, The Academy at Mt. St. Ursula.

Now the Sisters are using their underutilized land for another purpose that will subsidize the Academy: the creation of a 240-unit affordable senior housing complex called Serviam Gardens.

A listing of arts and entertainment events in the northwest Bronx and beyond.

A listing of community events, services and programs for our readers in the northwest Bronx.

On Feb. 7, 2008, The Pinnacle Group, a real estate firm, added 10 Bronx buildings to their 420-building New York City portfolio. This was the most recent in a spate of Bronx property acquisitions by landlord groups backed by what tenants and organizers are calling “predatory equity.”

Local residents came out in force last week to vigorously oppose a city plan to blast away rock with explosives at the Jerome Park Reservoir. The controversial plan is the latest chapter in the ongoing saga of the Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) contentious Croton Water Filtration Plant project currently under way in Van Cortlandt Park.

When Norwood artist Ibrahim Gonzalez met film maverick Melvin Van Peebles in the Bronx three years ago, the two offbeat characters felt a strong connection and became immediate friends.

For Gonzalez, who dabbles in several artistic media but is best known as a conga-playing Bronx bandleader, the encounter also produced a sort of mid-life artistic epiphany that he hopes will propel him to new heights in his career.