Lockers belonging to nearly 200 members of the 145th Maintenance Company were quietly placed onto two military trucks on Saturday and delivered to Staten Island as the National Guard unit slowly moved out of the Kingsbridge Armory to its new base on Manor Road in Staten Island.

In an effort to satisfy an increasing demand for off-site parking, the New York Botanical Garden is in the final stages of purchasing a site to build a $37 million, 784-car garage on the corner of Webster Avenue and Bedford Park Boulevard.

We’ve learned there’s another difference between the Mets and the Yankees that has nothing to do with payroll or their relative performances in the post-season. While both teams succeeded in wrangling deals for new stadiums, only the Mets seem to have recognized that, along with some public financing, comes a degree of community responsibility.

Thousands of local eighth-graders, with their parents’ help, will soon be deciding where to spend the next four years of their young lives and they need all the information they can get. Most schools will be opening their doors to prospective students with open houses and other events (see sidebar), but this will give parents and kids a head start.

For years, PS 246 held phys-ed classes and recess in a concrete lot behind the school, but on July 24, construction workers broke ground at the school at 2641 Grand Concourse school to make way for a brand new student-designed playground. It’s slated for completion this December.

New York City finally delivered on its promise to release a Request for Proposals (RFP) for the redevelopment of Kingsbridge Armory last week. The milestone marks the beginning of the end of a 12-year community crusade to transform the vacant 575,000 square foot former military complex into a valuable community resource.

From the time it was clear the state would hand over the landmark Kingsbridge Armory to the city in 1993, it took 13 years for the city to issue a request for proposals (RFP). With the help of the Norwood News archives, here’s a look at what happened along the way.

When the city and local politicians tried to sell Norwood residents on a plan to build the massive Croton Water Filtration Plant in Van Cortlandt Park, they offered two benefits in exchange for years of traffic interruptions, lost parkland, and increased air pollution – $240 million in Bronx park renovations and the promise of jobs for local residents. The park renovations are under way now.

Mosholu Preservation Corporation (MPC), the nonprofit group that puts out this newspaper, celebrates its 25th anniversary this week. MPC was formed in 1981 by the trustees of Montefiore Medical Center to combat widespread housing deterioration in Norwood.