Mott Haven Herald

Windmills and sun power Melrose buildings

Posted on 07. Dec, 2009 by Jeanmarie Evelly.

From blocks away, you can spot 10 white windmills whirling atop the five-story brick building on East 156^th Street. The wind-powered turbines help generate clean electricity for the 63 rental apartments inside.

This is the new, green, look of affordable housing, and Melrose is leading the way.

Called the Eltona, the building is the latest addition to housing for low-income families in the neighborhood. Its state-of-the art, energy efficient features are what you might expect to find in the trendy apartments of Williamsburg or SoHo.

“When you speak of green roofs, when you speak of sustainability, when you speak of green structures, we’re number one,” Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., boasted at the building’s ribbon cutting ceremony on Oct. 27.

The Eltona is the first affordable housing development in New York City to qualify for the highest rating a green building can get, called LEED Platinum. The Bronx itself is home to 86 percent of the LEED certified-for-home units in the state, according to Les Bluestone, president of Blue Sea Development, the Eltona’s developer.

LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a certification system developed by the United States Green Building Council to rate how environmentally friendly a building is. Platinum is the highest a building can achieve, followed by gold, silver, and just plain LEED-certified.

The Eltona offers one-, two- and three-bedroom rental units for $782, $943 and $1,089 a month, respectively. Eligibility is determined by family size and income. A family of four must earn no more than $46,080.

Blue Sea has received more than 2,400 applications, according to Bluestone, and about 20 leases have been signed so far.

Twenty-three-year-old Tia Smith and her two-year-old daughter were among the first residents to settle into the Eltona. Smith was on the verge of eviction a few months ago after the rent in her last apartment was raised to $1,300 a month.

The Eltona is one of several environmentally friendly, affordable buildings in Melrose Commons.

“I didn’t know where I was going four months ago, where I was going to live,” Smith said. “Now I know I have a place to come home to.”

Smith and other Eltona residents will also serve as the subjects of an environmental study by Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. The study will monitor the effects of living in a green building on health.

In addition, no smoking is permitted anywhere in the building, and health authorities hope that will have an impact on asthma symptoms in a neighborhood where asthma is epidemic.

The Eltona isn’t the only or first building in the neighborhood to go green. Melrose Commons, as this area of redeveloped housing units is known, is also home to Sunflower Way on East 158^th St between Melrose and Elton Avenues. Completed in 2002, the 30 three-family homes were the first affordable housing to qualify for an Energy Star label through the use of energy efficient appliances, heating and water systems.

In 2007, Blue Sea Development built the nearby Morrisania Homes, the first affordable housing units in the state to receive any kind of LEED certification.

Construction of a LEED Silver building is nearing completion on East 158^th Street. The Jardin de Selene, as the building is called, stands 12-stories high, one of the tallest structures in Melrose Commons.

The building used recycled materials during construction, has bamboo floors and counter tops and solar cells on its roof that will generate about three percent of the building’s annual electricity needs.

But no other housing is quite like the Eltona. Its residents will also be eligible to receive on-site job training from Wildcat Service Corporation, a New York nonprofit.

And then there are those rooftop windmills.

The windmills are an experiment, Bluestone says. Blue Sea is still trying to determine whether or not the turbines are worthwhile, since their efficiency depends on how strong the winds are in a given day and location. (The Eltona also has an electricity source in the building’s basement that works with the turbines.)

“Between the two of them, if it happens to be a windy day, then we could be providing about 90 percent of the building’s electricity,” Bluestone said, “but the wind would have to be steady.

“The jury is still out on whether it’s practical in that location,” he continued.

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

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Mott Haven flunks Recycling 101

Posted on 23. Nov, 2009 by Sergey Kadinsky.

Glass, metals, apple cores: It’s all the same to Mott Haven residents, according to a report published in the Daily News on Oct. 4. Citing confusion and lack of space for recycling, the report, based on Sanitation Department figures, pegs the recycling rate for Mott Haven, Port Morris, and Melrose as the worst in the city.

Only 16 percent of what should be recycled is, according to the report, compared to the citywide average of 42 percent. (more…)

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Rats plague seniors in Betances Houses

Posted on 20. Jul, 2009 by Lindsay Lazarski.

By Lindsay Lazarski

lindsay.lazarski@motthavenherald.com

For months, residents of the Betances Houses building set aside for senior citizens heard the sound of claws scratching as rats scurried back and forth in the crawl space overhead at night.

Rat urine stained the ceiling. The animals gnawed holes in it, then tumbled through them onto the floor. They darted into the radiator vent beneath the mailboxes in the lobby.

Inside the walls of the building, which is across the street from St. Mary’s Park, the rodents climbed to the second story roof where they feasted on chicken bones, take-out containers and potato chip wrappers thrown from windows.     

Finally, in response to complaints, an exterminator arrived. But when he planted poison, the rats died by the dozens inside the walls, and their decaying bodies began to stink.

Residents covered their noses and mouths with their hands, while they waited for the elevator, hoping to ease the suffocating stench of the decomposing rat carcasses.

“This should be the best kept building in New York. Instead it’s the stinkiest!” said Ernest McNeill, shaking his head. 

McNeill, a retired mailman who has lived in the building for eight years, said the rats behaved as if they were tenants, walking around, and crossing the street.

“They looked like puppies, like little Chihuahuas,” chimed in Herman Escabi, another tenant. 

Segundo E. Delgado, another resident, said, “They’re big rats, like cats,” as he held out his hands to measure an imaginary rat for effect. 

The New York City Housing Authority, which owns and operates the 12-story, 88-unit building, reserved for seniors 62 years old and older, openly acknowledges the infestation and the nauseating smell that followed the dispatch of the exterminator.

“No one should be subjected to that,” said NYCHA spokesman Howard Marder of the odor.   

NYCHA has since removed the panels of the dropped ceiling and is in the process of sanitizing the space and replacing the ceiling. “It will be done expeditiously,” Marder promised.

But residents say the horrendous smell from the lobby is all too familiar.  

McNeill, who has burned cocoa-mango incense to try to mask the smell in the lobby, remembers the foul odor beginning about two years ago.  He is hopeful that NYCHA has taken steps to clean the entryway, but wants to see more improvements made to the front of the building.

“All they did was clean that one room,” said McNeill, referring to the lobby. “It still looks like you’re going into a jailhouse.  And it stinks,” he added, as he pointed to a locked room next to the lobby with the word “incinerator” in bold white letters.

McNeill said he doesn’t like to invite guests, or even his own children, over, because of the condition of the building. The whole front entryway should be renovated, he says. Instead of the prison-like iron grates that cover the doors and windows, he proposes glass, which would allow residents coming in to see the lobby and be sure that it’s safe.

The senior building has been nicknamed “Calvary,” after Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, explained McNeill. 

“Calvary is where they put you on your death bed. When they can’t do nothing else for you.  When your insurance runs out and the city is going to bury you,” said McNeill, who disapproves of the name and expects a better living environment.    

Maria Canales, director of the Betances Senior Center located next-door to the senior building, said the center also has a problem with rats.  She said exterminators come, patch holes in the building, and cover the radiators, but she still sees the rodents.      

“I want the seniors to have a clean, sanitary, safe, place to live and socialize,” said Canales. “They worked hard their whole lives and they deserve the best and that is what we are trying to do here.”

Canales explained that part of problem is people who litter or who throw food from the windows to feed the pigeons. Pieces of bread, orange peel, and juice bottles landing on the roof of the senior center attract and nourish the rats.

“We all need to work together,” said Canales. 

Dominga DeJesus lives on the second floor of the senior building. She said she could not open her windows because of the rats roaming on the senior center roof near her windows at night. 

The senior center’s custodian, Tony Rodriguez, said there is nothing more that can be done.

“Rats have been here for the last hundred years, and they are still going to be here,” said Rodriguez.   “As long as people are here, rats are still going to be around.”

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Feds charge Arroyo kin with embezzlement

Posted on 12. Jun, 2009 by Bernard L. Stein.

Taxpayer funds intended for two low-income housing projects in Mott Haven paid for trips to Puerto Rico for Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo and her mother Assemblywoman Carmen Arroyo, according to a federal criminal complaint charging the assemblywoman’s grandson with embezzlement.

Richard Izquierdo Arroyo and Margarita Villegas stole $200,000 from the non-profit SBCC Management Corp., which manages the Judge Gilbert Ramirez Building at 455 E. 138th Street and the Carmen Parsons Building at 441 E. 155th Street, the complaint, unsealed on June 10, charges.

Izquierdo Arroyo is the president of SBCC and Villegas is its director. They used the company’s American Express card to pay for $15,000 in clothing at stores ranging from Macy’s and Promgirl to Coach and Polo Ralph Lauren, according to prosecutors, and charged $66,000 for restaurant meals. Trips to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic accounted for another $80,000.

Included in those travel expenses was the airfare for the assemblywoman and the councilwoman, who is Izquierdo Arroyo’s aunt, the complaint charges. It says Izquierdo Arroyo also paid nearly $4,000 to install a new floor in the assemblywoman’s office and drew on SBCC checking accounts to make more than $13,000 in campaign contributions to the assemblywoman.

SBCC is affiliated with South Bronx Community Corp., a nonprofit that shares an address with the Parsons Building. Maria del Carmen Arroyo headed the organization before her election to the city council, and it employed Izquierdo Arroyo and Iris Arroyo, the councilwoman’s sister. Last year, the Daily News reported that the councilwoman and her mother the assemblywoman had sponsored a total of $242,000 in city and state funds for the South Bronx Community Corp.

Neither elected official has been charged with breaking the law. Izquierdo Arroyo and Villegas pleaded not guilty and are free on $200,000 bail.

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With change in the wind, some residents worry

Posted on 20. Apr, 2009 by Bernard L. Stein.

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. (more…)

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