A new gourmet supermarket is planned in Melrose.

Owner says shoppers will pay more, but will eat healthier

An entrepreneur is set to bring a gourmet market to Melrose, hoping to take a bite out of fast food culture with healthier alternatives.

Developer DeVon Prioleau says the Fresca Gourmet Market he is planning to open in the new Boricua Village complex on E. 161^st St. and Third Ave. will help provide the community with the same access to high-quality food more affluent parts of the city have long enjoyed.

“The Bronx can ill afford another liquor store or sneaker store,” Prioleau said.  “I want to give people other options.”

Prioleau, 29, said the  supermarket will be “reminiscent of a Fifth Avenue store rather than a Third Avenue deli.”

In 2008 the Department of City Planning conducted a citywide “Supermarket Shortage” study, in which it identified the South Bronx as one of four underserved high-density population centers severely lacking in fresh food venues. Over a quarter of all adults said they don’t eat any fruits or vegetables on any given day, according to a follow-up study released in November.

That report – called “FoodWorks” and issued by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn – cited the lack of healthy options, coupled with rising prices for nutritious foods and steadily low prices for unhealthy alternatives, as factors contributing to soaring rates of diabetes and other diseases caused by poor eating habits.

The report recommends increasing financial and zoning incentives for grocery stores that open in underserved communities, as part of the city’s Food Retail Expansion to Support Health (FRESH) project.

Over 13 percent of South Bronx residents suffered from diabetes in 2009, and 70 percent of its adults were considered overweight or obese, according to a report released by the city’s Department of Health. But according to a report issued that same year by the Bronx District Public Health Office, 40 percent of respondents said it was difficult to find fresh and affordable produce in the area.

May May Leung, who teaches public health at Hunter College, said chronic illnesses like diabetes and obesity can be reduced by making nutritious food affordable and easily accessible for the city’s lower-income residents.

“Modifying the environment is an important component” to help people change their eating habits, she said.

Prioleau, a Bronx native, says he saw a business opportunity in his “untapped and unexposed” home borough, combined with financial incentives for increasing the availability of fresh, nutritious food through the FRESH program.

He says he has secured nearly a million dollars already, through loans from private sources, as well as from the city.

The young entrepreneur says South Bronx residents regularly put up with “ghetto fabulous supermarkets with bread that’s a day old and food that’s expiring,” and adds that while the neighborhood will benefit from higher-quality food, he has no choice but to pass higher costs on to customers. He said prices will be 50 cents to a dollar per item higher than what local shoppers are accustomed to paying.

Mercy Cruz, 41, has lived in the neighborhood for 22 years.  “Food here is spoiled and old.  It’s just not good,” she said.   Cruz would welcome the new supermarket in Melrose, but said she worried low-income families “might have a problem with higher prices,” then added, “sometimes you have to pay a little extra to get better quality.”

Raymond Arias, 50, who has been selling fruits and vegetables from a nearby stand for the last five years, doesn’t think his small operation will be impacted by the new gourmet market. “Maybe I can go work for them,” he said, laughing.

Prioleau says he is going through the certification process so the market can accept food stamps, and added the store will carry over 4,000 products that reflect the tastes of the area’s diverse ethnic groups. In addition, he says other services, such as cooking classes, will be offered.

Fresca Gourmet Market is slated to open its doors later this year,  and Prioleau would like to see three more stores open in the next five years.

“The wheels are in motion,” he said.

Harvest Dome, as the artists hope it will look. Photo illustration by Bronx River Crossing

Thwarted by wind and water in their effort last fall to float a huge dome built of discarded umbrellas from Hunts Point to the Harlem River and upriver to Inwood, the artists behind Harvest Dome have launched an effort to rebuilt their sculpture.

Using the Internet fund-raisng site Kickstarter, Amanda Schachter and Alexander Levi are seeking to raise $7,500 by March 10 to rebuild the dome. The first dome foundered at Rikers Island in October and was destroyed by jail personnel.

The pair intended the dome, constructed of umbrellas and floated on pontoons of soda bottles, to call attention to how much debris is found in New York City’s waterways.

Because the currents in the East River off Hunts Point were so unkind to the first project, the artists are planning to build the new dome nearer its final destination in Inwood Hill Park.

Among the rewards offered to contributors are remnants of the wrecked dome.
For more information or to make a contribution, visit http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/481224446/harvest-dome-20.

The Port Morris gantries. Photo by Alexandra Corrazzo

New use sought for rusting Port Morris towers

The word “gantry” doesn’t mean anything to longtime bakery owner Errol Bier, but when he sees a photo of the rusted, towering structures that stand next to his Port Morris shop, he nods.

“That’s where I used to ride the ferry,” said Bier, who owns Miss Grimble on 135th and Locust Ave. 

Bier, who has been coming to the neighborhood since he was a child, recalled a time when the gantries were filled with passengers going to visit family members interned at Rikers Island. Today, the massive structures stand desolate in a fenced-in field of weeds, surrounded by construction cranes and “No Trespassing” signs.

But the local community group Friends of Brook Park has big plans for the site. Its members want to turn it into a waterfront recreational area in a neighborhood starved for open space.

Earlier this month, the Historic Districts Council, an advocacy group that fights to preserve New York City neighborhoods, put the site on its highly selective annual list of historic sites in need of protection. The council says it will collaborate with the Brook Park group to try to get the gantry site on the National Register of Historic Places.

“We don’t often visit places like this that are so visually striking and make you feel as though you’re experiencing a different time in history,” said Simeon Bankoff, the preservation group’s executive director. “It really brings us back to our foundation and reminds us that New York is a city about water. It’s a really evocative space to think about new opportunities for the community.”

The two structures were built a century ago to load cargo and passengers onto ferries that sailed to Queens and back.

Randall Comfort, in his 1906 book “History of the Bronx Borough, City of New York,” described the opening of the ferry station. “The beautiful, tastefully, and practically arranged ferry house became the talk of the whole Borough of the Bronx, and now especially on a fine summer day, it is a great sight to see the throngs go over the ferry to North Beach,” he wrote.

After the private company that owned the gantries and ferries dissolved in 1918, the city cut service, opting to run ferries only to Rikers for inmates and their families, and to North Brother Island for patients at the sanatorium.

The ferries continued to operate until the mid-1960s when the Francis Buono Bridge, better known as the Rikers Island Bridge, was built and the North Brother hospital was mothballed, making ferry service to the islands unnecessary. North Brother is now a protected bird sanctuary owned by the Parks Department, which has worked with teens at The Point Community Development Corp. to restore native plants.

Harry Bubbins, director of Friends of Brook Park, has been working with architects from City College’s School of Architecture to attain historic preservation status for the site, and envisions turning it into an educational hub that would combine art and ecology lessons for the public, similar to a site in Queens that turned its rusted gantries into a public education space. Bubbins sees the Historic Council’s ’s selection of the site as a first step.

“There’s six miles of shore where there’s no waterfront access,” said Bubbins. “It’s an absolute tragedy.”

The project has received support from Congressman Jose Serrano, who in a June 2010 letter to the state’s Office of Historic Preservation said, “The Morris Gantries are the last historic vestige of the South Bronx’s once thriving industrial waterfront. The gantries have been in existence for many decades and remain a striking visual reminder of a time when our waterways were utilized by substantial numbers of New Yorkers.”

Bubbins says local residents should be encouraged to visit the gantries, but some Port Morris residents don’t agree. John Lekas, who lives in the neighborhood and owns the Locust Restaurant, is skeptical a recreational space in this isolated industrial neighborhood can succeed.

“This isn’t the kind of neighborhood where people come and sit outside with a magazine,” said Lekas. “People come here to work, or for temporary residence.”

Errol Bier, whose bakery has existed for almost as long as the gantries, thinks a park would be uplifting, and would be good for businesses like his and Lekas’s.

“It would beautify the neighborhood,” said Bier. “And maybe then people will stop building recycling plants here.”

The Kingsbridge Armory awaits a developer. Photo by Karsten Moran/The Riverdale Press

The battle to require businesses that receive city subsidies to pay their workers a living wage began with a bang when Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. led a fight to reject the creation of a shopping mall at the Kingsbridge Armory if retail workers weren’t paid enough to make ends meet in this most expensive of cities.

The battle has ended with a whimper.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn has gutted the bill sponsored by Bronx Council members Oliver Koppell and Annabel Palma. Developers to whom taxpayers give $1 million or more will be required to pay a minimum wage of $10 an hour. Their tenants, however, can continue to pay $7.25.

So when the Kingsbridge Armory is redeveloped, those who work there will be stuck with the same low wage as before. And citywide, according to Quinn, no more than 500 workers will be helped by the new law.

In the time-honored manner of politicians, Quinn and the proponents of the measure that would have extended a decent wage to retail workers are hailing this travesty as a compromise.

Borough President Diaz’s statements saluting the deal and the revival of talks to develop the armory expose him as an empty suit.

And Speaker Quinn’s measure re-emphasizes how powerless rank-and-file members of the body she heads are. Like Diaz, all they can do is fall into line and issue face-saving press releases.

Hard-working New Yorkers can’t make ends meet. They need food stamps and the help of food pantries.

Small wonder that those who are seriously concerned with the growing inequality in our city stand aloof from conventional politics, and would rather occupy Wall Street than support the occupants of City Hall.

This editorial reflects the opinion of The Hunts Point Express, Mott Haven Herald, Norwood News and The Riverdale Press, and appears in all four publications.

Residents are eager to know how their decisions will impact the spending of $1 million in tax revenue this winter in Mott Haven and Melrose.

Last fall, City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito announced her constituents would be able to decide how the money should be spent, as part of a new initiative known as participatory budgeting. Residents of Mark-Viverito’s district, which includes Mott Haven and Harlem, have met several times since the fall to consider what local projects to finance. 

Proposals can call for capital funding for infrastructure-related projects only, not for expense requests, which would require the city to hire new workers.

About 70 budget delegates have started to sift through the projects residents proposed in October and November public meetings.

“Everybody who’s involved seems very enthusiastic about it and they’re happy to be part a process like this,” said John Johnson, a member of Community Board 1 who was elected by his peers to serve as a Mott Haven budget delegate.

Johnson said he would like to see the money go to an increase of closed circuit cameras in the Millbrook public housing projects to help reduce crime.

Carmen Aquino, a resident who attended the first meeting, said she would be disappointed if the more populous Harlem segment of Mark-Viverito’s district ends up overshadowing Mott Haven initiatives.

“This is a needy community.  We need a lot of services here,” she said.

Aquino said public lighting, increased security and housing for seniors are issues that should be addressed with the new funding.

In all, residents submitted more than 550 proposals, at the meetings and online.

Budget delegates were split into seven different committees at the fall meetings, including parks, education and housing. Since then, committee members have had to consult city agencies to learn which of the proposed projects are eligible for capital funding.

Budget delegates have until early February to finalize the wish list. More neighborhood assemblies will follow, at which the delegates will present their findings, before residents get to cast a final vote on the projects of their choice in early March.

Anyone who lives or works in the area can still apply to be a budget delegate by contacting Mark-Viverito’s office to arrange to attend an orientation session.

Mark-Viverito said her constituents’ proposals don’t differ greatly from projects she considered supporting during last year’s traditional budgeting process. Nevertheless, she said, direct community participation is what makes the new initiative special.

“Seeing people want to be more involved in their community is really rewarding and illustrates why this process is important,” she said.

She said her office is getting to hear from people who wouldn’t have otherwise gone to community board meetings, and that residents will be heard at a time when the public has little faith in government.

“This is a way of saying ‘What you have to say matters. This is your money. You should have a more direct say and involvement in that process,’” she said.

Students from PS 132 in Morrisania posed in front of a mural they made of the neighborhood. The school is one of five in the area that teaches using an acclaimed, arts-based curriculum.

Five Morrisania charter schools are among 15 in the city that have been honored for using a curriculum that improves student performance through hands-on teaching and the arts.

PS 132, also known as the Garrett A. Morgan School, and 14 other city schools were lauded for using a teaching method that focuses heavily on music, theater, visual art, dance, cooking and games to help raise learning levels among students, many of whom have had little prior exposure to the arts. 

The Carl C. Icahn Charter School on Brook Ave., the Carl C. Icahn Charter School #4 on E. 174th St., the School for Inquiry and Social Justice on Morrison Ave. and JHS 22x are the other Morrisania schools that use the arts-intensive method.

A New York University study concluded a specialized curriculum called Active Learning Leads to Literacy helps raise test scores and strengthens students’ literacy and reasoning skills regardless of socio-economic levels. About 35,000 thousand students are enrolled in schools that use the arts-based program nationwide.

The arts-intensive method devised by the non-profit Learning through An Expanded Arts Program (LeAP) is funded with grants from private foundations and the federal government.

Among other findings, NYU researchers found:

• K-2 students in schools that stress the arts curriculum outperformed their peers almost 90 percent of the time in many of the literacy skills tested.

• Although 50 percent of kindergarten students in the selected schools started the year below grade level in 2011, 81 percent ended the year testing above grade level.

• Over 40 percent of the 6th through 8th grade English Language Learners who scored a level 1 on the state’s English language test improved to levels 2 or 3, compared with only 26 percent of students from other schools.

To learn more about LeAP, visit the organization’s website at www.leapnyc.org.

Magician David Blaine holds 2-year-old Aziyah Hopper. Young people from the unit looking on are Janiyah Jeffrey, Amber Marrero, Natalie Morales, David Richardson and Daniel Murray.

Children meet world-famous performer

Internationally renowned magician David Blaine performed magic and card tricks for children at Lincoln Hospital’s pediatric unit during the holiday season.

A modern-day Houdini, Blaine has built his reputation on such achievements as freeing himself from handcuffs while holding his breath under water.

Every year, Blaine travels around the country performing magic for children’s hospital wards, burn units and juvenile detention centers.

In happier times, Yolanda Gonzalez (wearing sunglasses) was joined by a galaxy of Bronx politicians at the dedication of a street in honor of her mother, Nos Quedamos founder, Yolanda Garcia.

New director takes reins of pioneering housing organization

Nos Quedamos, the advocacy organization that has served South Bronx residents for nearly two decades on issues ranging from housing to immigration, is on the verge of a comeback, after nearly a year in limbo.

The agency has maintained a low profile since allegations emerged last winter that former executive director, Yolanda Gonzalez, who is also the daughter of the organization’s founder, Yolanda Garcia, had provided Nos Quedamos funds to family members without authorization from the board.

In response, last February, the board locked Gonzalez out of Nos Quedamos’ Melrose Ave. office and laid off about a dozen staff members. It closed entirely for a brief period, then reopened on a shortened schedule as it sought to continue to serve the public without a chief executive.

The State Attorney General’s office is conducting an investigation of Gonzalez. A spokesman for that office, Fernando Aquino, declined to comment on the investigation.

Nos Quedamos’ board has named former board chair Jessica Clemente the agency’s new volunteer executive director, while announcing that about five new staffers will be hired when the agency returns to a regular schedule in January.

Clemente says the organization is poised to put the recent dark chapter in the past and has nothing to hide. She maintains the group is eager to continue serving the community’s housing, public health and social justice needs, and to resume its long legacy in the neighborhood.

“We want to reestablish that same community morale,” said Clemente in an interview while hanging photos on the wall near the office’s entrance highlighting the agency’s past endeavors and its local folk-hero founder, Yolanda Garcia, who died of a stroke in 2005. “We want to connect to the real essence of what community building means.”

For now, Clemente said, the organization is holding project funds in an escrow account while it evaluates internal accounting practices. She added that the Attorney General’s “investigation is of an individual, not of the organization.”

Clemente is a product of the neighborhood. She was raised in the Millbrook Houses on East 137th Street and St. Ann’s Avenue before receiving her Masters in Urban Planning at NYU, and going on to lead a public health project monitoring air quality and asthma problems for South Bronx residents between 2000 and 2006.

While she helped Clemente arrange photos and award plaques on the office wall, long-time board member Sandy Quilico said she is confident Nos Quedamos can quickly return to the status it previously held as an advocate for needy Bronxites, recalling that “under Yolanda Garcia, we were doing phenomenally well.”

Photo by Kamana Shrestha. Sylvia Matos, who has lived in the St. Mary's Park housing projects most of her life, is one of many seniors NYCHA says will have to leave their apartments to make way for bigger families.

Short of apartments for bigger families, NYCHA tells elderly “we need your home”

In late September, 78-year-old Sylvia Matos opened her mailbox only to find an alarming letter from the city’s housing authority, asking her to vacate her apartment of almost half a century. The reason: she lives alone in a three-bedroom apartment that is “too large” and “under occupied.”

“It’s crazy they are asking me to leave,” said Matos. “This is my home, I raised my children here, my grandchildren grew up here too and we are used to the area,” said Matos, who emigrated from Puerto Rico in the 1960s.<!–more–>

Matos is one of many seniors in the St. Mary’s Park housing projects on Westchester Ave. and in the city who have received these letters. There are currently 55,000 people – half of whom are seniors – who the New York City Housing Authority has identified as living in apartments that are “under utilized.” The number of occupants that reside in an apartment determines the number of rooms assigned to them, based on NYCHA occupancy standards.

“To serve more families in need, it is critical that NYCHA utilize this scarce public resource as it was intended: to assist the greatest number of families eligible for affordable and subsidized housing,” said NYCHA Communications Officer Sheila Stainback.

These families make up the 161,000 people currently on NYCHA’s waiting list for public housing, according to a NYCHA statement.

A citywide affordable housing organization, Metropolitan Council on Housing, echoes NYCHA’s dilemma to find scarce public housing that has now brought homelessness to a new high.

“With too few affordable units for the vast numbers of low income people in New York, the homelessness crisis is at its worst with no end in sight,” states the organization’s website.

As of October, there is an all-time record of 41,200 homeless people, including 10,000 homeless families with 17,000 homeless children in the city’s shelter systems. In addition, the number of homeless New Yorkers in shelters increased 37 percent from 2002 to 2010, according to the Coalition for the Homeless.

Although the statistics show the need for available space is urgent, the question remains – where do these seniors who need to downsize go?

NYCHA says they are helping seniors move into smaller units by working with Metropolitan Council, which is developing new senior housing in Flushing, Queens. Nineteen of the 78 units in the new development will be designated for NYCHA seniors, according to Stainback.

However, relocating seniors has been met with much resistance from the community.

“If the government is going to downsize the seniors, they should keep them in the same building or in the same area, because this is the place where they’ve lived for so many years,” said Wanda Abeyllez, program director of E. Roberts Moore Senior Center on Jackson Avenue, which Matos frequents. “And this is what they know.”

About 10 others at the center have received similar letters and have come to Abeyllez seeking advice. Like Matos, these seniors are divorced or widowed and still live in the large apartments where they raised their families.

The ordeal has left them frustrated and fearful they will be evicted from their apartments and moved to other boroughs, as NYCHA has not guaranteed them a smaller apartment in the same neighborhood.

“The seniors that have come to me have been panicked and angry,” said Abeyllez. “They are upset because they say they pay their rent on time, never owed any rent and these have been their apartments, some for over 40 years.”

But the administrator says she can also see NYCHA’s point of view: “I understand that NYCHA sounds like the villain but we need to realize other families are raising their children and are in need of these apartments.”

Matos and many other seniors said they won’t go down without a fight. Some are seeking legal action to keep their homes.

In the letter addressed to Matos, NYCHA offered her $350 for moving expenses and wrote, “It is time to give another family who needs a larger apartment the chance to get one.”

“And I said, ‘What? They are throwing me out for $350? That’s all I am worth?’” said Matos.

Desperate to keep her home, Matos included her granddaughter in her new lease to show her apartment was no longer under occupied. However, this action only resulted in a rent increase, from $233 monthly to $644. Matos will have to pay the increased rent starting this month if she wants to stay.

She cannot afford the steep increase; she receives a monthly fixed income of $637 from social security.

Matos has made regular visits to the St. Mary’s housing offices to plead her case, without much luck. She recently went to Congressman José E. Serrano’s office in hopes that he can help.

“I’m going to keep fighting this,” said Matos. “They can’t take away my home.”

Members of Friends of Brook Park canoe on the Harlem River, but it's not easy to get to the shore. That may change.

The Harlem River was once one of the city’s great playgrounds: colorful boathouses dotted its banks; riders on horseback promenaded and raced along the Manhattan shore; the bluffs above the river were home to an amusement park, as well as the Polo Grounds, which later became the home of the New York Giants, and, of course, to Yankee Stadium.

As the river was industrialized, though New Yorkers turned their backs on the Harlem.  Now, with much of the industry gone, Bronxites hope to reclaim the river.

For years, organizations like Friends of Brook Park and the Bronx Council on Environmental Quality have looked at the Harlem and seen a necklace of green the length of the borough. A greenway would connect existing parks, like Mill Pond and Roberto Clemente, along with new parks built on unused land.  Some of them would include fishing piers, places to launch kayaks and canoes, eco-classrooms and gardens.

Pie in the sky? Not really. To see the future, just look at the Bronx River. Not so long ago, it was an open sewer and garbage dump. Today, thanks to the hard work of volunteers whose efforts led to the formation of the Bronx River Alliance and the investment of millions of federal dollars, wildlife has returned, fish thrive, ospreys soar and egrets nest. People play in new parks, stroll and bicycle on the shore and canoe in the water.

Five years ago, Harry Bubbins of Friends of Brook Park urged the formation of a Harlem River Alliance, drawing on the experience of the Bronx River Alliance. Now the federal government has given advocates’ efforts a boost.

Last month, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar visited Roberto Clemente State Park to announce that the Harlem River would be one of a hundred projects nationwide aimed at restoring neglected rivers to the people who live near them. Rep. Jose Serrano, the chief benefactor of the Bronx River, who accompanied the secretary, pointed to the lessons of the Bronx River.

There are plenty of obstacles. Ways have to be found for a greenway to wind through or around a maze of industrial facilities. The city or state will have to seize junk yards. Thusfar, the state has not even been persuaded to designate the Harlem a sensitive area protected for recreation, turning down a request to do so from the Bronx Council on Environmental Quality in a blizzard of bureaucratic initials.

The city’s 2009 Lower Concourse rezoning, which envisions riverside promenades, has yet to attract the development that would yield them, and the boundaries of the newly-zoned area left out the southern end of Park Avenue, where Friends of Brook Park hopes to see a boat launch built.

But the pledge of federal assistance is a game-changer. The Bronx Council on Environmental Quality, which completed a comprehensive plan for a Harlem River Greenway from Highbridge to Spuyten Duyvil four years ago, has also formed a Harlem River Working Group, which has enlisted community organizations and parks groups the length of the river. Energized by Salazar’s visit, it envisions the Harlem Greenway joining the South Bronx Greenway at the bridge to Randalls Island, says its coordinator, Chauncy Young.

The effort to revive the Harlem River can bring jobs and economic development opportunities to the area, give Mott Haven residents a larger role in deciding how waterfront development will proceed once the economy improves and, above all, offer parks-starved Bronx communities a place where they can find beauty and ease at their doorstep.