City planners hope apartment houses and a hotel will replace some of the businesses along the Harlem River waterfront.

Where auto shops and empty factories now predominate, apartments and a hotel would rise

By Maria Clark
maria.clark@motthavenherald.com

The lower section of the Grand Concourse is almost entirely dedicated to the auto industry. The road is lined with busy auto repair shops, a gas station, a newly revamped car wash and a car dealership.

Apartment houses and a hotel may replace these businesses, if a rezoning proposal for the area passes. But although opposition has been muted, it has critics among policy-makers and planners who say the city should preserve manufacturing jobs.

When the plan was first proposed, former Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, said that the zoning could jeopardize more than 230 jobs in the four-block area between E. 144th street and E. 138th street on the Grand Concourse.

Amy Anderson, the Project Associate for Sustainable Initiatives at the New York Industrial Retention Network, testified at the April 1 New York City Planning Commission hearing and reiterated Carrion’s concern.

“Manufacturing business located in such areas face increasing real estate pressures associated with nearby real estate development, resulting in displaced companies and jobs. Now is not the time to be displacing businesses and risking job losses,” she said.

Business owners have chosen to focus on their work, rather than worry about city plans that may or may not threaten their future on the Concourse.

“I have heard rumors that the city is planning to relocate us. Whatever happens, happens,” said Epifanio Aybar, the owner of Bonanza Auto Repair Shop near 140th street on the Grand Concourse.

His small shop has remained afloat despite rising rent. He says his secret for success is two-fold. His recycled tires sell rapidly and he knows how to get female customers to trust his mechanics with their cars.

“Women feel comfortable leaving their cars here, because we explain the different parts of the car and show them where the problem is,” he said.

Aybar’s lease expires in 2016, at which point construction or no construction, he plans on retiring.

The zoning proposal encompasses a 30-block area that surrounds the lower end of the Grand Concourse below 149th street. The plan would change some of the streets where only manufacturing is now permitted to a residential area.

Today 57 percent of the four to 12-story loft buildings and waterfront lots are vacant, according to the Planning and Development unit of the Bronx Borough President’s office. Even during the day, the streets along the lower Grand Concourse are nearly empty. Trash lines the gutters and the only sounds come from passing trains and the high-power hoses used to clean out garbage trucks at a nearby Department of Sanitation facility.

“It’s quite dead at night. After 7 you can scream and no one will hear you,” said Jose Orta , 40, the warehouse manager at Baya Movers Company near 144th street on Canal Place. Unlike Epifanio Aybar’s business on the other side of the Metro North railyard, which splits Mott Haven, Baya Movers Company is not jeopardized by the zoning plan.

Orta welcomes the idea of residents moving into the area, saying it will mean better access to food. With only two delis in the area and a diner, he says, the neighborhood will need more eateries.

Despite the empty streets, in recent years the neighborhood has seen a dramatic decrease in crime. In 1995, the 40th Precinct on 138th street, which covers all of Community District 1, reported a total of 1,116 robberies. That number dropped to 541 last year. Break-ins, however, remain a concern for local workers.

Igor Gladkov, the president of Astra Town Car Corporation, had to install video cameras and alarms around his car dealership near E. 140th street on the Grand Concourse. Two homeless men broke into the small offices on the car lot in January 2008, used the microwave to heat up food and took off with a supply of pens.

Pilfering is the least of Gladkov’s worries. The proposal threatens his business.

Gladkov, however, says he isn’t too concerned. His lease ends in seven years and in that time he suspects there won’t be much construction in the area.

His office rattled as two trains passed by in the rail yard below the dealership. He had to shout to be heard. “If they build a hotel on this strip, the guests will check out after one day and never come back. No way anyone can get any sleep around here with the trains.”

However, if a hotel developer does take over his car lot, Gladkov says he’ll deal with the situation the best he can.

He said, “Moving the business will be hard on us and our customers. But if we have to move, then we move.”

The proposed Bruckner Boulevard Historic District

In addition, a block of Bruckner Boulevard would become a historic district, if the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission voted to accept the proposal.

Landmark status safeguards distinguished architecture or buildings that have played an important role in the city’s history or cultural heritage. The outsides of landmarks cannot be changed without permission from the landmarks commission.

In his 2008 State of the Borough speech, Carrion announced the formation of a task force to find buildings in each of the Bronx’s community districts worthy of preservation. The task force issued its report in December.

Rincon Criollo Casita, a shrine to Puerto Rican music and culture at E. 158th Street and Third Avenue is the centerpiece of the report on Community District 1.

The cultural center and garden was a dump in the mid-1970s when Don José “Chema” Soto led a group of friends to build a shack like the small wooden houses scattered throughout Puerto Rico, plant a garden and gather to play traditional music. Now local people gather there for social events and scholars come from all over the world to learn the island’s traditions.

The task force called for landmark status for:

• the German Methodist Episcopal Church of Melrose on Elton Avenue and E. 158th Street;
• Immaculate Conception Church on E. 151st Street and Melrose Avenue
• St. Anselm’s Roman Catholic Church on Tinton Avenue and E. 152nd Street.

The three churches, built in 1879, 1887 and 1907, respectively, are all architecturally, distinctive, according to the task force.

In Mott Haven, the borough president’s report calls for the first subway station in the Bronx, the Mott Haven station at E. 149th Street and the Grand Concourse to become a landmark. Already on the National Register of Historic Places, the station opened in 1904, and the old street name, Mott Avenue, is still prominently displayed on its brick wall.

The task force also wants Plaza Borinquen, a housing project with a difference, to be preserved. Built in 1974 on E. 139th Street between Willis and Brook avenues for the South Bronx Community Housing Corporation, it is a modernist low-rise complex of triplex 3- and 4- bedroom apartments, each with its own garden.

Finally, the task force said historic district status should safeguard a portion of Mott Haven’s growing antique district. A stretch of Bruckner Boulevard between Alexander and Willis Avenues forms a cohesive block of recently-renovated tenements that “reflect the historic character” of the area, the report said.

If the landmarks commission acts on the recommendations, the buildings would join St. Ann’s Church on St. Ann’s Avenue at E. 140th Street, and PS 31, on the Grand Concourse and E. 144th Street and the Mott Haven Historic District along Alexander Avenue between E. 137th and 141st streets on the honor role of city landmarks.