Plans for the South Bronx Greenway call for the fence at the end of 132nd Street to come down and the rotting pier to be replaced by a small park.Photo by Sarah Trefethen

South Bronx Greenway to bring access to waterfront

By Sarah Trefethen
sarah.trefethen@motthavenherald.com

It’s a sunny spring afternoon, and a handful of residents are spending time on the stoop of Jasmine Court, on the corner of 138th Street and Bruckner Boulevard. Trucks rumble on and off the expressway. Pedestrians hurry past.

Laura Barksdale, 52, says she sits outside because she likes to watch the people go by. But she acknowledges Port Morris is not the most comfortable place to hang out outdoors.

“There’s nowhere to relax and sit around,” she said. “There’s nowhere to go.”

The industrial area at the borough’s southernmost tip is a place of trucks, factories and fumes, with little to offer humans who travel by foot or by bike, or want to sit a spell. But the proposed South Bronx Greenway could bring tree-lined paths and waterfront parks to Port Morris’ lifeless streets.

Work is already underway on the Randall’s Island Connector, the first step in implementing an ambitious plan that could eventually lace much of the South Bronx with safe and attractive places to exercise and enjoy the outdoors.

Once the Randall’s Island Connector is built, the plan calls for trees to be planted along Willow and Locust Avenues and 138th Street. Cyclists will get their own lane, protected from trucks by a curb.

Right now, the streets leading to the East River shore end in barbed-wire fences. The plan calls for access to the river from 132nd and 134th streets, where small waterfront parks will be built.

Plans for the South Bronx Greenway originated in Hunts Point a dozen years ago, when Majora Carter, then a program associate at The Point Community Development Corporation, wrote a $1.25 million grant proposal to make the waterfront more accessible.

Two new waterfront parks opened in Hunts Point in 2006, but the remainder of the plan remained on paper until this spring, when Mayor Bloomberg announced that $22 million in federal stimulus money would be used to move the greenway from the drawing board to reality.

Completion of the greenway would make it possible for walkers or cyclists to take a trail from Port Morris to Hunts Point Riverside Park, and to connect there with the Bronx River Greenway, leading all the way to Westchester.

“The greenway will offer a community that has had the least amount of park space per resident, compared to the rest of the city of New York, some breathing room,” said Miquela Craytor, executive director of Sustainable South Bronx.

Jasmine Court, an assisted living facility for the formerly homeless, is a rare place in Port Morris where people actually live. But the Port Morris section of the greenway will also benefit the tens of thousands people living nearby in Mott Haven, and waterfront enthusiasts from even further afield.

Forty-year-old Ozzie Morales, a delivery driver from East Elmhurst, likes to stop his van at the fence at the end of 134th Street and enjoy the view.

“I think it would be really, really great,” he said when told about the proposed greenway. “It’s a beautiful view, and this is wasted land. It has so much potential. I could see seating here, and a promenade, like they did on the West Side in the 20’s.”

There are also thousands of people with jobs in Port Morris. Vanessa Lloyd, 18, is a clerical worker at the World Vision distribution center in Port Morris. She thinks trees and bike paths would make the neighborhood a better place to work.

“We need something like that to make it look lively. To have people be able to ride their bikes instead of walking in all this trash,” she said. “It’d be nice to have some healthiness around.”

The photograph shows the Randall’s Island Connector under construction at the Amtrak viaduct in Port Morris. A rendering, below, shows what the site will look like when work is completed.

But a controversial proposal could keep playing fields off-limits

By Lindsay Lazarski
lindsay.lazarski@motthavenherald.com

Elected officials and the Parks Department describe Randall’s Island as an invaluable resource, and boast that its waterfront pathways provide scenic views and “increased access” to recreation “for the neighboring communities of East Harlem and the South Bronx.”

But the island, only a stone’s throw from the Bronx, has been reachable only from Manhattan or by driving over the Triborough Bridge–until now.

In two years the South Bronx Connector; a 1.5 mile pathway for pedestrians and bicyclists, will open under the historic Amtrak trestle on Randall’s Island making newly- renovated fields, a new tennis center and Icahn Stadium easier for South Bronx residents to reach.

But a controversial decision to restrict use of the fields to private schools on school-day afternoons will keep the facilities off-limits then, despite the new route from Port Morris to the island.

And boaters have complained that the footbridge and Con Edison utility cables underneath the bridge will make navigation at high tide difficult.

Nevertheless construction of the connector nearly a decade after its conception wins applause from local advocates.

“The South Bronx Connector is long overdue,” said Arline Parks, chair of the Land Use Committee of Community Board 1. “For the first time, we are seeing the kind of development that reshapes our area of the Bronx and gives us an opportunity to have a better hold on the community.”

The connector is part of the South Bronx Greenway project, a network of green streets and waterfront trails and parks in Hunts Point and Port Morris, which has gotten a boost from $22 million in federal stimulus funds and is scheduled to be completed in the fall of 2012.

Phase 1 of the connector, a footbridge over the Bronx Kill, located just south of 132^nd street in Port Morris, is nearly done.

Construction of the bridge is expected to be completed by the end of the summer, but the pathway will not be open to pedestrians and bikers until the full project is completed in the fall of 2011, said Janel Patterson a spokeswoman for the New York City Economic Development Corporation.

Con Ed will incorporate new electrical equipment on the underside of the connector to upgrade power for Icahn Stadium, the Fire Department training center, and a water treatment plant on the island, said Con Ed spokesman Chris Olert.

“Con Ed hijacked the bridge project,” charges Harry Bubbins, director of Friends of Brook Park, which is threatening a lawsuit over the obstacle to boaters.

The cables on the South Bronx Connector are not the only source of controversy.

The Randall’s Island Sports Foundation, a public-private partnership, and the parks department are building new sports fields and renovating existing ones. They will almost double the number of fields on the island, to 66.

But local residents may be barred from using those fields some of the time.

To pay for the maintenance and upkeep of the new fields, the parks department has proposed a concession agreement with 20 independent private schools in Manhattan.

In exchange for $2.2 million, the private schools would receive guaranteed permits for half the fields from 3-6 p.m. during the spring and fall.

Public schools and community-based organization would receive 40 percent of the permits and the remaining 10 percent would be left for other applicants.

The proposal is a second effort to fund the ball fields project through concessions to the private schools.

In 2008, State Supreme Court Justice Shirley Kornreich ruled the plan had not followed the proper public review process and overturned the agreement.

Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito, whose district includes part of Mott Haven and Randall’s Island, said the new proposal has made some progress, but added she still has philosophical concerns over the privatization of public parkland.

“It is an issue of access and equity in my eyes,” said Mark-Viverito at a public hearing. “We believe in public-private partnerships, and that is important in this city, but we have to ensure that those public-private partnerships don’t create inequities within our communities.”

Hear Geoffrey Croft's take on the process and environmental impact of the plan

 Geoffrey Croft, the president of New York City Park Advocates, said he did not see much of a difference between the initial proposal and the latest one.  

“The whole definition and purpose of public parkland is that they’re supposed to be public, and not be able to be bought by any group, rich or poor,” said Croft.  “Everyone is into making deals and concessions, but that is not what the purpose of a public park is. They are supposed to be open to everybody.”

But Lou Schlanger, athletic director at the South Bronx Campus high schools and director of the Randall’s Island Kids Summer Camp, defended the arrangement.

“Everybody is not satisfied and wished they had more time, but nobody would have anything without the foundations initiatives.  The island still would have been a sand box with broken glass and everything.”

“Whatever the deal is,” he added, “It is a win for everybody.”

The suit charges that the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation violated state law when it decided that a full environment impact statement was not necessary to carry out the plan.

Melrose-based Nos Quedamos is among the plaintiffs. “New Yorkers should be concerned greatly by the increasing privatization of public parkland, particularly when it benefits the wealthy to the detriment of other New Yorkers. This is fundamentally an issue of environmental justice,” said Yolanda Gonzalez, the organization’s executive director.