Pummeled by public outcry against a plan to extend the off-ramps on the Major Deegan Expressway, the State Department of Transportation has abandoned the project.

Much-needed repairs will be made to the aging roadway over Mott Haven, but the plan to extend the highway’s exit ramps in order to calm the traffic that backs up as cars merge onto Exterior Street is on hold indefinitely, said DOT spokesman Adam Levine.

Opponents were particularly incensed that the Deegan plan ignored the city’s desire to transform the Harlem River waterfront with a zoning plan passed last spring designed to attract developers to build high-rise apartments, new commercial buildings and a hotel.

Every speaker at a public hearing at Hostos Community College on Nov. 9 denounced the state proposal. Some speakers also expressed concern that efforts to ease congestion would simply attract more cars, and more pollution. Others criticized plans to use eminent domain to seize existing businesses in order to make room for the new ramps.

“We need more jobs, more affordable housing, more clean air, not more highway,” said Mychal Johnson, a member of Community Board 1 who initiated a petition campaign against the state plan. “The Deegan should be repaired, but not expanded,” he said in an interview.

Caro Samol, who heads the Department of City Planning’s Bronx office, said that the highway project would “cause a domino effect. It would severely hamper, if not outright preclude” healthy growth of the waterfront properties. She insisted that there were other alternatives that could both improve the highway and leave access to the waterfront open.

At the Nov. 9 hearing, Deputy Borough President Aurelia Greene insisted that while the highway needs work, “it cannot be at the expense of the surrounding community.” George Rodriguez, chairman of Community Board 1 and Arline Parks, who chairs the board’s land use committee, echoed the same cry.

The DOT capitulated at a meeting on Nov. 20 requested by the Bronx Borough President’s office, which brought together representatives of the state agency with staff of the city Department of City Planning department, members of Community Board 1 and local elected officials.

“We don’t want to be a bad neighbor in that area,” said Levine, the DOT’s director of public affairs. “What we heard from the community was that the widening would impede” waterfront development.

“They were very clear that at some point they will revisit the issue,” said Sam Goodman, a planner in the Borough President’s office, but not until the rezoning plan has a chance to spur development. Once the area has been built out, the state will consider its options again. In the meantime, said Goodman, other traffic-calming measures will be looked at.

Johnson, a long-time property owner in the neighborhood as well as a community board member, feels that all the work to inform his neighbors about the project and its implications paid off. “They actually listened to the community and public officials,” he said. “I feel wonderful.”

A version of this story appeared in the Winter 2009 edition of the Mott Haven Herald.

Traffic on the Major Deegan Expressway backs up at Exterior Street. DOT engineers want to change that, but residents say their plan clashes with plans for the Harlem River waterfront.Photo by Stephanie Rabins

Longer highway ramps could scuttle city’s plan for the waterfront

Plans to rehabilitate the Major Deegan Expressway would destroy Mott Haven’s hopes for a brighter future, residents and public officials told a hearing on Nov. 9 to consider the state Department of Transportation’s proposal.

Community voices rang out in opposition to the plan to lengthen exit ramps, saying the new ramps would torpedo the city’s ambitious plan to build housing, parks, office buildings and a hotel on the waterfront, completed last summer when the City Council and the Mayor signed off on rezoning the Lower Grand Concourse.

In an hour of spirited discussion after state officials presented the proposal, every speaker denounced the plan.

“Blocking waterfront access would create a domino effect” that would “severely hamper, if not outright preclude” development on the affected plots of waterfront property, said Carol Samol, head of the Bronx office of the Department of City Planning.

She said the DOT had rejected alternative plans and charged that they had focused so narrowly on traffic issues that they had failed to consider the “public good.”

According to Syed Rahman, an engineer who presented the DOT plan, the short exit ramps cause extensive back-ups on the elevated highway. He said revamping the ramps from 138th Street to 149th Street northbound and from the Macombs Dam Bridge to 138th Street southbound would relieve traffic jams.

In addition, he said, a longer exit ramp would keep cars exiting onto Exterior Street from backing up traffic on the Deegan.

Arline Parks, chair of the land use committee of Community Board 1, noted that the planning department had worked diligently with her committee to come to an agreed-upon rezoning plan through “countless meetings.” In contrast, the DOT had emerged only recently, presenting a completed plan to the board.

“All our work will be lost if the DOT moves forward with the plan,” said Alice Simmons, a member of Community Board 1.

Speakers after speaker evoked the neighborhood’s history, recalling how Robert Moses slashed through whole sections of the Bronx to make room for expressways like the Deegan, which Moses began building in 1950 and completed in 1956.

Members of the audience were also incensed to learn that the state planned to use its power of eminent domain to buy out and eliminate businesses in the path of the new ramps.

Other speakers cited Mott Haven’s high asthma rates, and expressed concern that a rehabilitated highway would attract still more traffic, increasing air pollution.

In an interview, the DOT’s director of public affairs, Adam Levine, insisted that the community’s concerns were being taken seriously. While repairs to crumbling cement and support beams are essential, he said, the department wouldn’t go ahead with its plan to lengthen the exit ramps if it faced strong opposition.

“We won’t do it if we hear from the community and elected officials” that the expansion isn’t wanted, he said. “We’ll take the money elsewhere.”

The facade of the former PS 31 facing E. 144 StreetPhoto by Maria Clark

‘Castle on Concourse’ languishes in neighborhood poised for growth

By Maria Clark
maria.clark@motthavenherald.com

The passage of time has not been kind to the former school building nicknamed the “Castle on the Concourse.”

Entire sections of the roof have collapsed. Plastic tarps cover the holes. Rotted wooden planks shield the windows and cover gaping holes in the walls.

PS 31 was once one the top schools in the city and was housed in a building that was judged worthy to be a New York City landmark. Now it is a wreck.

Removing asbestos and modernizing its facilities wasn’t worth the price, the Board of Education decided 15 years ago. The “Castle on the Concourse” has steadily crumbled since the decision was made.

“We didn’t only lose a beautiful building. We lost a great school,” said Grizel Cabrera, a former school aide who worked at PS 31 from 1989 to 1997.

Despite plans to rezone the area to invite thousands of new residents, officials from the Department of Education have no plans to restore the treasured building that still stands on 144th street and the Grand Concourse.

“We are not currently doing any construction and there are no plans for reconstruction in the near future,” said Department of Education spokesman William Havemann.

The scaffolding and supportive beams wrapped around the building are in place to prevent it from collapsing, according to Wilhelm Ronda, the director of planning at the Bronx Borough President’s Office. When Ronda toured the building over a year ago, he noted extensive water damage and found that the facade on the North end of the building had crumbled.

“Clearly there is a need for funds to do more than just prevent it from collapsing,” he said. Emergency repairs would cost up to $30 million according to Ronda.

Ronda hopes the building can be adapted for a new public use, such as a performing art space or even a children’s art museum.

“I would like to use up as much of the building as possible. I hope at some point the administration will provide additional funding to do so,” Ronda said.

PS 31, named the William Llloyd Garrison School in honor of the great opponent of slavery, was designed and built over 100 years ago by architect Charles B.J. Snyder, the superintendent of school buildings who presided over the city’s Golden Age of school construction. It was designated a New York City landmark in 1986.

Under the careful watch of retired principal Carol Russo, PS 31 had blossomed into one of the top performing schools in the city. A New York Times article from 1987, headlined “Bronx School Excels Academically, Despite the Odds,” reported that 61 percent of students from kindergarten to sixth grade tested at or above their grade level in mathematics. Almost 88 percent tested at or above their grade level in reading.

“It was a wonderful school. They were given little in terms of resources, but Carol tapped into the enthusiasm of the teachers. She was a diamond of an educator,” said Irving Gikofsky, the television personality widely known as “Mr. G.”

A former teacher, “Mr. G” sent his daughter to PS 31 and took part in 28 consecutive graduations.

“When Carol retired, nobody could take her place. The giant left and nobody could fill her shoes,” he said.

The Department of Education closed the school soon after Russo retired in the mid- 1990s. PS 31 and its students were transferred to a new building on E. 156th Street near Morris Avenue.

Students and teachers still refer to the school’s former home building as the “Castle on the Concourse” because of its size and design.

“I loved everything about that school. I remember on rainy days when we couldn’t go outside, we got to watch cartoons or educational movies in the auditorium,” said E’Toyi Lucas, 29, a former student.

Lucas, like many of his fellow alumni fondly remembers the sheer size of the building, its winding stairs and long hallways.

“I always thought that it was so big and scary at times. It really saddens me that they allowed such a historic place to deteriorate. I pray that they would rebuild so that other children can experience the beauty of PS 31,” wrote Shemeka Gibbs in an email about her time as a student at PS 31 in 1983.

Herman Francis, a member of Community Board 1’s Municipal Services Committee, said that in light of city plans to rezone the Grand Concourse, the area needs a new school.

“We don’t have enough schools as it is, and what we have there is a beautiful empty building that should be a school again,” Francis said.

The “Castle on the Concourse” remains under the jurisdiction of the Department of Education and will not be opening its doors to greet eager students next fall or anytime soon. Shingles will crumble and water damage will continue its destructive march through the once stately walls.

The city’s Economic Development Corporation, which is responsible for promoting economic growth throughout New York City, has promised to “evaluate the feasibility of an adaptive reuse of PS 31” as part of the lower Grand Concourse zoning plan. It offered no timetable.

“I think we all have a connection and a passion for PS 31 and we would all hate for that school to disappear,” said E’Toyi Lucas.

A version of this article appeared in the Fall 2009 issue of the Mott Haven Herald.

An artist's rendering of the development the city imagines along the Bronx Harlem River waterfront

But this may change.

The city has a plan that could bring new life – and new investment – to the lower Concourse and Harlem River waterfront.  The Department of City Planning has envisioned a new future for this 30-block area.

In the next few years the neighborhood’s first large supermarket may replace factories. The stately apartment buildings that line the Grand Concourse to the north could be mirrored in the south.

And the Harlem River Waterfront could be transformed within a decade to a Battery Park City of the North, with towering apartment buildings as high as 40 stories overlooking a waterfront promenade laced with open-air cafes and patches of green.

The government is not going to build any of this itself.  But, through a process called rezoning, it can change the rules that govern how people who own property in the area develop and use their land.

“We want to create a place where people can live, work, shop and play,” said Carol Samol, head of the city planning department’s Bronx office.

Current zoning rules keep buildings small in this area–just blocks away from Mott Haven’s towering housing projects–and prohibit their use as homes.  By changing these rules, the city hopes to encourage property owners either to convert vacant manufacturing lofts to housing, sell their land to developers or build something new themselves.

Community Board 1 unanimously approved the plan at its February meeting, though some board members voiced misgivings.

Board member Mychal Johnson said he’s worried that rising rents could eventually drive out the area’s long-time residents. The proposed new rules would encourage developers to build affordable housing in the district along with higher-rent housing.  But Johnson is concerned that that might not be enough, because the definition of “affordable” is pegged to the average income of people living in New York City as well as Westchester, Rockland and Putnam Counties.

“Sometimes that doesn’t help people here,” Johnson said, “because this community is on the lower end.”

Based on the most recent income calculations, a family earning as much as $55,000 would be eligible for a subsidized two-bedroom apartment, and the rent could be as high as $1,237.

“Of course we don’t want our sky blocked with skyscrapers,” Johnson said. “One of the reasons I love the Bronx is that we’re not boxed in.” But he voted to support the plan because he thinks community will benefit from a better mix of incomes.

The warehouses and parking lots of the Harlem River waterfront may be replaced within a decade by modern development

Commercial investment would also bring needed jobs, he believes, along with real estate tax payments that might help improve local schools.  In addition, he hopes that economic incentives will pressure local polluters like the waste transfer station in the Oak Point Yards to clean up their acts.

Other concerns arise because more apartment buildings would mean more riders on the subway, more cars on the road, more kids in the classrooms and more patients in the hospital.  In its environmental study of the project, the city planning department estimated the plan could bring over 10,000 new residents within 10 years.

Board member Alice Simmons said development should be an ongoing dialogue. “We’re talking about a 10-year goal,” she said.  “It’s not going to happen overnight.”

Community Board 1 Chairman George Rodriguez said residents had reason to worry about such a big change, and acknowledged that he himself is worried about protecting local small businesses.  But rezoning is an important part of revitalizing the South Bronx, he said, and worries should not be an excuse to do nothing.

“You might open a Pandora’s box, but then, you might not,” Rodriguez said.

The small conference room at the community board office was overflowing with people on the evening of the vote.  The planning department showed PowerPoint slides with maps, photos of buildings in the areas that would be rezoned and renderings of potential new development.

Board members and members of the audience expressed their concerns during a question and answer period.

One board member said that Mott Haven needs a state-of-the-art public library.

Pamela Smith, the president of the Mitchel Houses tenants’ association, worried that increased traffic and taller buildings would create and trap air pollution in an area where asthma is already epidemic.
Two representatives of the community group Nos Quedamos asked about churches in the plan, and how the plan would address the influence of Sin City, a strip club on Park Avenue.

Samol said the new zoning rules would not prevent the construction of churches or libraries. She also said that car technology is becoming cleaner, and developers would plant street trees to help clean the air.

Business that are currently operating will not be forced to move, she said, but once the area has a residential zoning new adult establishments will not be allowed.

The City Planning Commission is currently reviewing the proposal.  The City Council is expected to vote on the plan sometime this summer.

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 Department of City Planning hopes Hudson River Park will be a model for a redeveloped Mott Haven.

If fancy apartments and stores move in, will they be pushed out?

By Caroline Linton
Caroline.linton@motthavenherald.com

Lamont Barkley, 42, has lived in Mott Haven his whole life and has witnessed the devastation that overtook the neighborhood, and its rebuilding.

But that does not mean he’s ready for the latest change: the city’s plan to replace gritty industrial buildings with high-rise waterfront apartments and retail businesses.

“Development is always a good idea, as long as you don’t try to move people out of the projects,” he said.

Barkley lives in the Patterson Houses, the 15-building Housing Authority complex that occupies the land between Morris and Third Avenues from E. 139th to E. 145th Streets. The city’s plan calls for creating “a lively mixed use, mixed income neighborhood” along Morris Avenue, across the street from the housing project.

While by some estimates it could take as long as a decade for the Lower Concourse rezoning to accomplish its goals, many residents are leery of the changes.

“They’ve been trying to push people who have been here for years out,” said a local resident who would only give his first name, Poochie. “I’m 54 years old, I grew up here and most of the people who are still here, they wouldn’t be able to afford it now.”

But Thomas Carswell, who said he has been a resident for 52 of his 57 years, said he would welcome the changes.

“This particular area—Mott Haven—these projects, they’re a breeding ground for drugs, violence, STDs,” he said. “Anything that’s coming to this area to improve it, I’m all for it.”

Even though construction worker Billy Meister, 47, makes his living from development, he said he worried that Mott Haven would lose some of his favorite qualities if developers moved forward in the way the city hopes they will.

“There’s a lot of construction going on, but nothing is favorable to the people,” said Meister, who lives in Orange County but works on construction projects in the Bronx. “You can’t build a high-priced neighborhood and keep us here.”

For Charlie Brice, 35, a waitress at the Sweetwaters Café at Third Avenue and 138th Street, the idea of encouraging new businesses to locate in the area is a welcome one. Since she lives near Yankee Stadium and does not own a car, she said she would appreciate it if more grocery stores were added in the area.

But she, too, expressed concern about the impact of the changes. Growing up in Dorchester, a Boston neighborhood that has attracted higher income residents in recent years, she said she has seen the good and bad sides of gentrification. She especially lamented the loss of small “mom and pop” stores.

But while Brice, who is African-American, said she liked the diversity of Mott Haven, she worries about just who will be moving into those new apartment buildings. “It’s fine to be multicultural and all; just don’t kick us out, ”she said.

While many of the residents interviewed were at best ambivalent about the plan, the area’s elected officials have fewer qualms.

Assemblyman Ruben Diaz, Jr., the frontrunner to become Bronx Borough President, said he wanted to make sure residents would not feel they are being pushed out of the area. “Obviously, we’re going to continue to push business, but we want to keep the character of the neighborhood,” Diaz said.

Similarly, State Senator José M. Serrano said in an email response to questions that he supports the Lower Concourse rezoning, as long as city officials work with community members.

“The key here is not about when it will be completed, but whether it will be achieved with the proper community input so that the citizens of the South Bronx and its adjacent areas may benefit from the changes,” he wrote.

Barkley, the Patterson House resident, said he remained skeptical, especially after going to a ballgame at the new Yankee Stadium with his son. The stadium turns its back on the residents who live near it, he said, and he worried that a similar thing would happen if the Lower Concourse plan succeeds.

“You’ve got to remember people live here,” Barkley said. “They’ve been living here their whole lives.”

A version of this article appeared in the Spring 2009 edition of the Mott Haven Herald.

A rendering shows how a pier at Brook Park might look.

All that is required is moving the southern boundary “a mere 100 feet to the South along the Harlem River” Harry Bubbins, the director of the Friends of Brook Park, told the City Planning Commission at its April 1 hearing.

While he applauded the plan’s vision of a waterfront promenade and new parks elsewhere along the Harlem, he noted that the city planners have acknowledged that it would be some time before those projects are built, and said even when they were, they would not provide a launch for small boats.

Brook Park, on the other hand, is “shovel ready,” he said. It is already used informally for boating, and could achieve immediate access to the river at little cost, he continued.

Friends of Brook Park was formed in 1999 and has been working ever since to create a park at 141st Street and Brook Avenue. It calls for removing asphalt, uncovering an underground brook, planting trees and creating a natural labyrinth.

Illustration of proposed Waterfront District

The first two lots, across 149th Street from the new Gateway Mall, would be zoned in a way typically used for specialty and department stores, theaters and office space. Areas to the south would be more likely to be used for apartments, offices and stores.

Towers would have a maximum height of 30 or 40 stories–as tall as the tallest buildings in the Bronx, River Park Towers in Morris Heights and Tracy Towers in Bedford Park. In other waterfront areas, tower height is limited to around 14 stories.

The city would create a 2.2 acre public park at the end of 144th Street, between the two sites zoned for the largest buildings.

Developers would be required to construct a public walkway along their portion of the riverfront, and buildings would be set back away from the water.