Mott Haven Herald

As pact with city expires, gardeners worry

Posted on 04. Aug, 2010 by Joe Hirsch.

Eight years ago, the city, the state and the creators of 500 community gardens on city-owned land reached an agreement that ended a long battle that began when the Giuliani administration sought to auction the garden lots to developers.

Now, that agreement is set to expire, alarming gardeners in Mott Haven and Melrose who fear that new rules drafted by the Parks Department threaten their green mini-utopias.
(more…)

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In the news, July 26-August 1

Posted on 26. Jul, 2010 by editor.

Beginning a string of three homicides in seven days, 18-year-old Troynisha Harris was killed by a man who jumped from a Lincoln Town Car and plunged a knife into her neck on July 24. Harris and a friend were sitting on a stoop on 166th Street at 3:30 a.m. when the attacker struck. When Harris’s companion struggled with him, he stabbed him in the stomach, then fled. On Saturday, police released video of the attack in an effort to find the killer.

Shortly before 6:30 p.m. Sunday a man was shot and killed at 681 Courtlandt Avenue in Melrose, the Daily News reported. Police did not identify the victim, who was in his 20s, and whose bodies was riddle with bullets, they said.

A well-known resident died Wednesday, four days after he was beaten and stomped by thieves who stole his cell phone. Surveillance cameras caught the attack by four men, who beat and kicked Juan Lopez, 54, as he was returning to his home on Cauldwell Avenue. “There wasn’t one person in the neighborhood who didn’t know my father,” his daughter Melissa Lopez told the Daily News. “Nobody can believe that anyone could do such a brutal thing to my father.”

Former waitresses at a Mott Haven strip club have filed suit in federal court, charging that were groped, had to fend off sexual demands from their bosses and had their tips stolen. “They degraded us, they insulted us. They touched us,” Jasmine Felipe, 26, of the Bronx told the Daily News about working at Sin City, the club on Park Avenue and East 138th Street that bills itself as “New York City’s # 1 Strip Club!”

When Congress voted to spend $37 million Tuesday to support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Rep. Jose Serrano, who represents Mott Haven and Hunts Point, voted No. Serrano called for an end to the Afghanistan war, and said e U.S. forces should leave Pakistan unless Congress gives specific authority for them to be there. “I believe that sending forces to Afghanistan after 9/11 to root out the terrorists, their supporters and their training camps was the correct move. Nine years later, I believe that it is past time to end our involvement in that nation, because it is clear we are stuck in a quagmire and not on the road to peace or victory,” he said after the vote, which won approval for President Barack Obama’s policy 308-114 with many Democrats voting against the expenditure while Republicans voted with the White House. If military involvement in Pakistan were to be put to a vote, Serrano said, he would vote No again.

Every year, police forces across the country hold a one-day summer event called “National Night Out” to bring police officers and community residents together to discuss local issues and concerns outside the tense environment of precincts and meeting rooms. This year’s event in Mott Haven will take place in St. Mary’s Park on St. Ann’s Avenue on Tuesday, August 3rd, where officers from the 40th precinct will be present. Among this year’s featured events, high school students and adult volunteers from the United Playaz organization will stage an event to promote the need for peaceful conflict resolution among young people. The event is scheduled to run between 3 and 8 p.m.

Brook Park in Mott Haven was the scene for the second annual Festival for Immigrants on July 24, as hundreds gathered to hear activists speak out against Arizona’s controversial new law, which many feel discriminates against Latinos. There were musical and dance performances, including the Mexican traditional dance troupe Cetilizli Naucampa, which performs dances based on the Nauhatl traditions. Speakers called on the public to join a planned protest against the Arizona Diamondbacks when they visit Citifield in Queens to play the Mets on Friday, July 30.

The Bronx Culture Trolley will make its next run on Wednesday, Aug. 4, with a number of stops in Hunts Point and Mott Haven, including 52 Park, The Point CDC, Bronxartspace, LDR Studio Gallery and the Bruckner Bar and Grill. The free ride begins at Longwood Art Gallery, Hostos Community College, 450 Grand Concourse at East 149th Street.

Cecil Joseph, who was briefly the interim Bronx Borough President when his boss Stanley Simon was indicted for corruption in the mid 1980s, has opened a new McDonald’s across from Lincoln Hospital. After heading the Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation, Joseph, who grew up in the Patterson Houses, turned entrepreneur, forming a company to acquire fast food franchises.

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Earth Fest reaches out with music and games

Posted on 12. May, 2010 by Nick Loomis.

Legendary emcee Grandmaster Caz has been packing parties in the South Bronx since 1974, but none quite like the one at St. Mary’s Park in Mott Haven for this year’s Earth Day on April 24. .
 

Soundslide by Nick Loomis

By noon on the beautiful spring day, the crowd was already dancing to the Staple Singers’ “I’ll take you there”–courtesy of DJ Jazzy Jay on the wheels of steel.
 
“Aw yeah, that’s what we’re gonna do,” boomed Caz’s amplified voice. “We’re gonna take you to a greener planet!”
 
One of the founding fathers of hip-hop, Caz said he was honored to be the emcee for the third annual GetGreen South Bronx Earth Fest in celebration of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day.
 
On the first Earth Day in 1970, few would have imagined that the South Bronx would not only celebrate environmentalism, but, in many ways be taking a leading role in the green revolution.

Among the organizations represented at the Earth Fest, were Melrose-based Nos Quedamos, which has led the way for Melrose Commons to become the first neighborhood in New York State to be honored by the U.S. Green Building Council for its environmentally-sensitive business practices.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency has just honored another participant, the Hunts Point-based Sustainable South Bronx, which pioneered the creation of the South Bronx Greenway. When it is completed, it will be a recreational trail dotted with new parks extending from the Bronx River to the Port Morris waterfront and a bridge to Randall’s Island.

More than 40 other local organizations and businesses set up tables at the event. To encourage children to visit and learn, each child who came by got a stamp that could be cashed for prizes like reusable water bottles, pens and plants for community gardens.

Four live birds attracted crowds throughout the day to the Urban Divers Estuary Conservancy table. The birds, all found near the city’s waterways, drew flocks off children.

“The idea here is to try to inspire kids to think about nature a little bit,” said Ludger Balan, the conservancy’s executive environmental program director. “There’s nature in our urban environment, and we’re teaching them a way to appreciate it, learn about it, and hopefully inspire them to become some of the future stewards of this environment.”

“We think that children are at the prime age to absorb this information and teach their parents,” said Andrea Schaffer principal of CityMatters LLC and the event’s chief organizer. “But you have to start young so that it becomes ingrained, second nature to recycle and reuse materials instead of consuming and throwing out.”

Jehlani Bowers, 6, of Mott Haven got the message. She attended GetGreen for the second year in a row with her mother, Nedra Bowers. Jehlani bounced from activity to activity with a painted face, accumulating enough stamps for a plant for their community garden.

“It’s actually helping her out in school because they’re going through, with Earth Day, how we recycle and how we save and how we reuse. So she’s making that connection with being here today,” her mother said.

Participants in a SoBRO after-school program climbed on stage to compete in a “Music Gets Me Green” contest, performing a song they wrote accompanied by a music video. “I like music and I found the opportunity,” said Lenny Nivar, 14, who is in the 10th grade at Green Dot New York Charter School. Along with Ricardo Korsah, 16, Nivar, who came to the United States from the Dominican Republic when he was 9, performed a rap song with some verses in English and others in Spanish.

SoBRO provided the prizes, as well—four cardboard trophies in the shape of trees. It took 30 students in its Education for Life program two weeks to make the trees, said Evalina Ruiz, a 22-year old who is working toward her GED at the community organization. “You have to cut, you have to paste, you have to just really be dedicated to it,” she said.

As the Bronx Borough President’s Office and the city’s Office of Recycling Outreach and Education teamed up to hold a recycling drive to collect old cell phones, computers, printers, TVs, used clothing and sneakers, the music continue on stage.

One group in the music competition ended its performance with a variation of a chant as old as hip-hop itself, and almost as old as Earth Day.

“When I say ‘get,’ ya’ll say ‘Green.’”

“Get.”

“Green.”

“Get.”

“Green.”

Alex Green IV contributed reporting to this story.

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Mott Haven’s oasis of fitness

Posted on 15. Apr, 2010 by Toyin Adebanjo.

By 3 a.m. on a freezing January 30, two dozen people had already lined up outside St. Mary’s Recreation Center to be sure they got one of the 100 available slots for the center’s free swimming program.

Some brought pots of coffee. Some wrapped themselves in blankets. Some who showed up later that morning were wearing pajamas, and said that they’d rushed down after calling the center and being told of the line.

One mother explained that her family had missed out last year. She got her children up so early because she wants them to learn to swim, she said.

The Parks Department boasts that St. Mary’s is the city’s first indoor recreation center. Last year nearly 80,000 people walked through its doors, according to Shawn James, the center’s manager. (more…)

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Group hopes park will go to the dogs

Posted on 11. Apr, 2010 by editor.

If a group of Mott Haven dog owners can raise $5,000 there will be a dog run in St. Mary’s Park this summer.

The South Bronx Dog Owners Group will hold a fund-raiser on May 16 at the Bruckner Bar & Grill in an effort not only to raise money, but to spotlight its efforts to “make the South Bronx’s parks friendlier” for dogs and their owners. (more…)

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Mott Haven gardens reap a bountiful harvest

Posted on 20. Oct, 2009 by Stephanie Rabins.

On a warm weekday morning in September, Valeria Cantero arrives at Brook Park, on Brook Avenue between 140th and 141st streets. She opens the gate with a key and locks up behind herself. After leaving her things in the center of the garden, Cantero ducks into the back of the lot, emerging with an armful of sticks to light a cooking fire.

One of 20 people who maintain plots of vegetables in Brook Park, Cantero grows tomatoes, beans, peppers and cilantro for her family. She is in the park almost daily, often working alongside her daughter Esperanza, who tends to her own neighboring plot. (more…)

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Neighborhood voices: Urban farming NYC

Posted on 18. Sep, 2009 by Bernard L. Stein.

By Adam Liebowitz

This summer, youth in THE POINT’s Summer Day Adventure Program and the teen ACTION program launched a new initiative around urban farming. In EarthBoxes and gardens at both THE POINT and the Bryant Hill Community Garden we planted seeds and seedlings of many different types of vegetables.

This initiative hopes to inspire our youth and the larger community to get first-hand experience working with the earth and growing vegetables, as well as educating them about the healthy benefits of eating locally-sourced food both for themselves and the environment.

And its not just us! Check out the video below about the growing movement in the South Bronx and beyond! Featured in the video is Bissel Gardens, Friends of Brook Park, Part of the Solution, Brotherhood / Sister Sol, slides courtesy of the Majora Carter Group, Bascom Catering, and more!

And there are SO MANY other groups doing similar amazing work that didn’t make it into this cut but are just as vital to the goal, such as the BLK Projek, South Bronx Urban Farmers Collaborative, For A Better Bronx, More Gardens, Added Value, the list goes on and on.

The full length video will be screened in its entirety at a special World Premiere event happening at THE POINT CDC on Saturday November 14th, 2009.

Adam Liebowitz heads the ACTION Program at The Point CDC.

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Port Morris wasteland dreams of green

Posted on 20. Jul, 2009 by Sarah Trefethen.

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.”

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Whose South Bronx Greenway is it anyway?

Posted on 20. Jul, 2009 by Sarah Trefethen.

By Sarah Trefethen
sarah.trefethen@motthavenherald.com

A number of Mott Haven community leaders are complaining that they have been left out of planning the South Bronx Greenway’s future.

At stake, they argue, is not only recreation but jobs.

“There’s a whole spectrum of economic development opportunities here, and we want to make sure this is as inclusive as it needs to be,” Arline Parks, the chair of Community Board 1’s economic development committee, said at a recent committee meeting.

A team of consultants is working with Hunts Point community groups to plan how businesses and residents can get the most out of the proposed greenway. They are developing a business plan for a new, home-grown non-profit organization that would manage the greenway, putting more effort into upkeep than city agencies would be expected to.

“It’s a difference of do you want it kept clean, or kept clean and also planted every year,” said Frank Randazzo, director of the Bronx Empowerment Zone, an arm of the Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation that provided $150,000 to pay the consultants.

According to Daniel Hernandez, one of those consultants, the new non-profit will most likely resemble Solar 1, the environmental education group that manages Stuyvesant Cove Park on the East River in Manhattan.

The management organization would hire other groups to run programs, organize commerce and maintain the greenway. Local residents would have priority in filling these contracts.

“There’s a lot of momentum and investment in the greenway, and implementation of this is critical,” Hernandez said. “People will see that.”

The completed plan will be presented to a steering committee assembled by Paul Lipson, Rep. Jose Serrano’s chief of staff. The committee, which includes representatives of the New York and Bronx Overall economic development corporations and several non-profits, will be in charge of turning the plan into a reality.

“It seemed to me it was more Hunts Point than Mott Haven centered,” said Parks, after a presentation at Board 1’s office.

“They talked about vendors, concerts and other activities. You’d want to make sure our community members could be vendors, and host activities, and participate in the economic development opportunities. You’d want to make sure it’s going to represent Mott Haven and Hunts Point,” she said.

Mott Haven has almost twice as many residents as Hunts Point, but Parks said Hunts Point has gained an advantage because of its activist organizations. “Mott Haven doesn’t have the kinds of organizations that Hunts Pont has,” she said. “Hunts Point has been ahead of the curve in that regard.”

Harry Bubbins, the director of Friends of Brook Park, said he was glad work was being done on the greenway.

“We were leading bike tours to promote the idea 10 years ago, so we’re very pleased to see some progress on this project,” he said.

But Bubbins was disappointed that he hadn’t heard anything about plans for a new organization to run the greenway. And he was worried that a planning process that doesn’t involve the whole community might seem efficient in the short-term, but ultimately fall short of its goals. “There’s a consolidation within Hunts Point groups at the expense of larger community building,” he said.

The Port Morris Industrial Business Zone promotes economic development in the area immediately surrounding a portion of the proposed greenway. Stephane Hyacinthe, who runs the program, said he thinks the greenway sounds like a wonderful idea, but no one has contacted him about the plan.

“It’s an initiative I’d be more than willing to work on and give my expertise and knowledge,” he said, “but I don’t know who’s spearheading the project.”

Maryann Hedaa, who heads the Hunts Point Alliance for Children and is a member of the steering committee, said the perception that Mott Haven and Port Morris groups were being left out of the planning for the management of the greenway was probably correct.

But, she added, “I don’t think the right people from Hunts Point are on the committee either.”

She is less worried about the geographic makeup of the committee than she is about its collective expertise.

“The trouble is there’s no real business leadership involved,” she said. “It could be a whole lot of money going down the drain if you don’t get the right people managing it. I’m worried the people on that committee will maintain the status quo, and the status quo in the South Bronx isn’t sustainable.”

In addition to the Hunts Point Alliance for Children, the steering committee includes representatives from The Point CDC, Rocking the Boat and Sustainable South Bronx.

Randazzo also said Mott Haven and Port Morris may have been overlooked. While much of the work is already done, he said there is still time for additional input on how the greenway should be managed.

“Is there room for another opinion? I would say sure. Is it going to have the same effect as if you’d been there since day one? Probably not,” he said. “Sometimes it’s tough to remember everybody.”

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Melrose kids get new playground

Posted on 08. Jul, 2009 by Jeanmarie Evelly.

by Jeanmarie Evelly
jeanmarie.evelly@motthavenherald.com

Renovations to the Melrose Playground are finally complete, to the delight of local children and residents.

“Happy days are here again, because the playground is open and you get to play in it,” Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe told a crowd of well-wishers in the park on Cortlandt Avenue between East 153rd and 156th Streets at the July 7th ribbon-cutting.

A group of youngsters from the Phipps Summer Day Camp came out to try the new equipment, which includes a swing set, slides, see-saws, chess and checkers tables and a spray pool to cool off in.

Leondra Davila, who lives a block away on Melrose Avenue, also came to the opening with her five young children. They went to the park everyday before the renovations began and waited patiently for it to reopen. She insisted the wait was worth it.

“I love it, it’s a big difference from the one here before, much more kid-friendly,” she said. “I’m even enjoying it myself.”

Joining in the festivities were Deputy Bronx Borough President Aurelia Greene, Assembly Member Carmen Arroyo, Council Member Maria del Carmen Arroyo, Community Board 1 chair George Rodriguez and other community leaders in cutting the ribbon on the newly redone site.

Later in the week, Benepe joined former New York Knick star guard John Starks and others to celebrate improvements to Sedgwick Playground where a basketball clinic was being run by the Knicks. New handball courts, playground equipment and swings have been added at that playground on Undercliff Avenue in the Morris Heights section of the Bronx.

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