He worked in the financial sector, installing computer workstations for a big company that was acquiring smaller firms.

After President George W. Bush was inaugurated in 2001, though, background checks became tougher. And after the attack on the World Trade Center in September, still more stringent requirements made it even harder for ex-offenders to hold jobs in the financial technology industry.

Worries about security “made it difficult to get a McDonalds job, regardless of any references,” said Hopkins. “People with criminal backgrounds—they try to give you the bottom of the barrel.”

A rough time followed for Hopkins, 34, who has lived for most of the past decade in Melrose or in Harlem. He struggled to earn a stable income and spent time living in homeless shelters.

It was when he was leaving one such shelter that Hopkins heard the name “Per Scholas” from a job placement agency. That was in 2006. Now, Hopkins finds himself turning down exciting international work in favor of his steady job here in New York, so he can spend more time with his kids.

Per Scholas, a non-profit organization whose mission is “dedicated to using technology to improve the lives of people in low-income communities,” trains computer technicians, encouraging them to gain industry-standard certification when they complete a 15-week course.

Hopkins is a poster child for its success.

Founded in 1995, Per Scholas has just moved from Hunts Point to a new and much larger home on East 138th Street in Port Morris. There, near the East River on an industrial block, the school has built a gleaming new headquarters.

Rep. José Serrano and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski were scheduled to tour the new facility on Feb. 8 to highlight the the educational and economic benefits it has created.

When it began, Per Scholas simply aimed to get computers into the hands of schoolchildren and teach computer literacy to a South Bronx community that was largely being left out of the technology boom.

In 1998, it began training un-employed and under-employed people to work on computers. The original school was located in Port Morris, and long-time teacher Maureen Monaghan remembers working in a small space that held only about 13 people.

As Per Scholas grew, it moved to the American Bank Note Building in Hunts Point. When it returned to Port Morris last October, it purchased its own floor of a building, giving it 16,000 square feet of space. The new Per Scholas Institute for Technology is equipped with classrooms, a library, a student lounge and offices for teachers, administrators and job coaches.

“Each new evolution has resulted in a higher quality instruction,” Monaghan boasts. “This place is just magnificent.”

“The interior is really impressive,” says Hopkins, who graduated from the institute in 2008. “It’s more inspiring than the other building.”

Per Scholas is now equipped to train 450 students per year, tuition free. The program demands 15 weeks of full-time study in computer assembly and repair, network connection and specialty areas like printer and laptop repair, and encourages students to become A+ Certified, the industry standard for computer technicians.

Gaining certification was especially helpful for Hopkins. Though he had already worked in computing when he started at Per Scholas, both he and Monaghan, the veteran instructor, agree that anyone who is dedicated can make it through the institute.

“Somebody who has no experience,” Hopkins says, “if they focus and want to learn this, they will come out with great skills.”

Dina Montes, communications director of Per Scholas, says the program is all about economic independence. “I’ve seen all types of lives,” says Montes. Many students have been unemployed for a long time, she said, while others arrive straight from high school. (A diploma or GED is required, along with math and reading entrance exams).

Still others, like Hopkins, have been incarcerated or have lived in shelters. Per Scholas uses its relationships with local community organizations to recruit.

In addition to classroom time, students work on the production floor, where Per Scholas refurbishes computers for resale, one way the organization fulfills the “green” part of its mission.

Students also receive life skills and job placement assistance. “The more you build confidence, the more you can win over in an interview,” says Monaghan.

All this has led Per Scholas to its remarkable success rate; over 80 percent of its graduates land full-time work in the New York City area, as Torrey Hopkins has.

Hopkins is now working towards a Bachelor’s degree in computer science. Recalling when his criminal conviction made finding work difficult, he said, “People look past your experience and say ‘Why don’t you take this low-paying job?’”

Per Scholas helped him break that cycle. “They gave me a great foundation in the industry,” he says. “I’m in it for life.”

Rev. Martha Overall, the pastor of the Mott Haven church, showed Archbishop Rowan Williams the church’s Wednesday food pantry.

She told the archbishop, who is the symbolic head of the Anglican Church worldwide, “We are really the poorest of the poor. Since we are open all the time, we are the community church,” according to the Diocese news site.

The archbishop was in New York for a theological conference. During his visit he met with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

The National Museum of the American Latino was first proposed by Democratic Congressman Xavier Becerra of California in 2003, with the goal of educating the public about Latinos’ artistic, cultural and historical contributions nationally.

After five years of fine tuning, Congress passed and the president signed a bill supported by both parties in 2008, and a federal study commission was formed. The commission is expected to submit a report to Congress and the White House in two years.

But Díaz expressed his displeasure with the fact that not one of the 23 appointees to the federal commission is a New Yorker.

In a letter to Congressman José Serrano, Díaz argued that “the National Museum of the American Latino has no representation from the state that has over one million Puerto Ricans and Latinos,” calling the oversight “reprehensible.”

Díaz, who chairs the State Senate’s Puerto Rican and Latino Caucus, added that “The state of Florida has six members, Nevada has four, California has three, Texas has two and we get nada.”

The members of the commission were chosen for their “qualifications in museum administration, expertise in fundraising, experience in public service, and demonstrated commitment to the research, study or promotion of American Latino life, art, history, or culture,” according to the museum’s website.

Díaz contends the composition of the commission should be restructured to allow New York more influence.

“Salsa and Cuban Jazz came out of New York,” Serrano’s letter states, naming the Bronx’s Pregones Theater among numerous New York cultural organizations with a Hispanic flavor.

Of the 23 members of the commission, the White House selected 11, while Congress chose 12.

Díaz cited the contributions of New York’s Latinos, including Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez as examples of the oversight.

“On behalf of a community that yet does not get the respect that they deserve, we ask for your help due to your commitment to our community and the arts,” Senator Díaz concluded in his letter to Serrano.

“It is something that should be dealt with,” agreed Serrano in a phone conversation with The Hunts Point Express, noting that he will soon be in contact with Congressman Becerra to discuss what can be done to add a New Yorker to the federal commission.

The Consortium for Worker Education will use the money to establish a Center for Environmental Workforce Training to teach both job skills and offer general education.

The organization will partner with several non-profit organizations, including Mott Haven-based SoBro and Greenworker Cooperatives to train residents to build or retrofit energy-efficient buildings.

Most of the participants will “learn how to work with their hands—being able to fix things,” said Rebecca Lurie, director of development at the consortium.

Jobs will include window installation and building repair, installing insulation and repairing or installing boilers, she said Some participants in the program will also learn to conduct energy audits and market energy upgrades to building owners,

Lurie said the consortium hoped to launch the program, which will last for two years, within a month.

Sustainable South Bronx and The Point CDCthe Osborne Association, the Association for Energy Affordability, the Bronx Overall Economic Development Corp. and Bronx Community College’s Project Hire will also serve as partners in the program, which was hailed by Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. as “a big step toward becoming the ‘greenest’ borough in New York City.”

All told, the program, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, aims to provide training and education services for 425 participants, while placing 297 of those who receive a degree or certificate in jobs.

The Disconnected Youth Training Program and the Entrepreneurial Development Program, both run by Mott Haven based non-profit SoBRO, each received funding to help economically strapped local residents improve their prospects for earning a living wage.

SoBRO will launch a green jobs training program for 20 unemployed, out-of-school youth between 16 and 24, preparing them for construction jobs with an environmental focus. Participants will be trained in clean up contaminated lots known as “Brownfields,” a growing segment of the city’s construction industry.
 
SoBRO says its program counselors will try to help each participant find employment, but applicants must apply for the program no later than February 15.

The Entrepreneurial Development Program, which SoBRO has been running since the 1990s, aims to help aspiring small business owners with legal and financial advice, and with technical assistance related to financing, management and marketing strategies.

The new funding will enable the program to continue helping local residents who want to start a business but who lack experience. There is no application deadline for participants for this program.

For more information about SoBRO, or about the two training programs listed above, visit its Web site or contact Ayca Ergeneman, SoBRO’s Vice President of Development, at 718-732-7520, or email her at aergeneman@sobro.org.

Some people still ask him “whether it’s safe here,” Kostrinsky said. But he wants to polish a new image for Mott Haven, showing it off to curious art lovers who may still be a bit timid about walking the streets alone.

“The Bronx Museum of Art is a big spot, and they pick up artists from this area for their shows,” he boasted, as he contrasted reputation and reality.

On a cold January midday, he met 25 tourists on the corner of Third Avenue and East 138th Street.

“There is a lot of curiosity about this area,” said Mary Kay Judy, a preservation consultant. “It’s a big crowd for a cold day.”

Sponsored by the Municipal Art Society and comprised of society members, the tour included few residents of the Bronx, but all had some ties to the borough, from family history to workplaces.

“My father grew up on the Grand Concourse, and I love to see the Bronx,” said Deborah Abel, a kindergarten teacher. “I’ve seen Melrose, but I’ve never been around here.”

Kostrinsky is a Riverdale resident whose family once owned an upscale silver tableware factory in Mott Haven. Since the closing of his family’s firm, he has found new success in the neighborhood as a promoter for local artists through the Haven Gallery on Bruckner Boulevard.

“Artists started moving here when Brooklyn got too expensive,” said Kostrinsky. “It’s only 15 minutes to 86th Street.”

The first stop was a former warehouse-turned-loft condominiums, where owner Linda Cunningham operates a gallery on the first floor.

Twisted metal beams were arranged as plants on the floor. Nearby, a concrete post that once stood on the border between East and West Germany, takes new life as part of an art installation.

On the wall was a sketch a sketch of a Khmer temple overrun by vegetation. For Cunningham, the crumbling border post and the temple reclaimed by nature symbolize the temporary aspects of an urban landscape.

“Linda is about art as transformation,” said Kostrinsky. “It’s one thing to buy expensive art objects, but she reconstructs objects from the street.”

“This is a garden tended by retired men from the housing project,” said Cunningham, pointing at a photo collage of a street scene. “They guard it, and it’s so sweet.”

Fellow resident Carey Clark once had a studio in Manhattan, but as the neighborhood changed, she sought a more inspiring home. “Tribeca was once arty and funky, but in three weeks the suits moved in,” said Clark.

Since 1990, her murals have spanned the width of the Bronx, from the Yankee Stadium subway station to Hunts Point, where she maintains a framing studio and runs the art program at the local community center, The Point.

“Not all artists have cool-looking art spaces,” said Kostrinsky. “Our next artist lives in a small apartment.”

Jeffrey Acea, 57, who is wheelchair bound, lives in Plaza Boriquen, a low-income cooperative on East 138th Street. Prior to his art career, Acea also claims fame as the city’s first handicapped cab driver.

A self-taught artist, according to Kostrinsky, his current project is a series of scenes from the Third Avenue El, the historic elevated railway that was torn down in 1973. “It created a ghost town along Third Avenue up to Fordham Road,” said Acea.

On the south side of the Major Deegan, the tour group climbed five stories to the apartment-gallery of Luis D. Rosado, 28, where a photography exhibit by George LeGare graces the walls.

“The idea was to create an art space where artists can collaborate in a cohesive way,” said Rosado.

The 25 tour participants barely squeezed into the gallery, as a large printer churned out copies of photographs, and participating artists weaved through the crowd.

“I came from a missionary family, so I’m comfortable opening my door to visitors,” said Rosado. “I’ve had guests from Canada, and they never expected this in the South Bronx.”

All the borough’s branch libraries–from Riverdale to Highbridge–package their trash and drive it to the alley. Whenever the branches have to dispose of a large item too big to fit in a trash can—a wooden table or chair, a microfilm machine or a bookcase, for example—it, too, winds up in a dumpster parked at the Mott Haven branch.

Library officials won’t explain why.

After numerous phone calls and emails from the Mott Haven Herald, library spokesman Herbert Scher responded only: “The Library has determined that the current location is the best one for centralized collection of bulk trash items.”

Neighbors complain that the dumpster stinks, something library officials deny, saying only certain types trash, not the smelly variety, is deposited there. In addition, residents say, the dumpster is an eyesore in a part of Mott Haven that is becoming more upscale, as homeowners and landlords renovate their buildings.

“There’s no reason why there should be a dumpster here,” said artist Linda Cunningham, who lives two buildings down from the library. “This is a residential area.”

When the National Register of Historic Places listed Alexander Avenue in 1980, it praised the “two fine civic buildings”—the 41st Precinct and the library—for “their harmonious proportions and low scale which blend into the surrounding environment.”

Financed by Andrew Carnegie’s philanthropy a century ago, the library’s design was inspired by the Carnegie mansion on Fifth Avenue and 91st Street, which today houses the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum.

The dumpster arrived in the alley almost four years ago, according to Dorothy Louise, a playwright who lives in a condominium two buildings down from the library. She considers the dumpster an eyesore in an otherwise improving neighborhood.

Louise’s home is a former textile factory and warehouse that has been divided into condominium lofts, settled largely by artists, musicians and other creative professionals. Across the street from the library, a run-down walkup is being renovated, with a new sidewalk tree, courtesy of the city.
The offending dumpster is parked in an alley separating the library from a four-story walkup.

On the ground floor, Stephanie Meza, 19, has a bedroom window facing the alley and the dumpster. “My mother has to put on the fire to get out the smell,” said Meza. “We’ve called 311 because of the foul smell. The trash is over the top.”

Meza also said that noisy garbage trucks empty the dumpster as early as 6:30 in the morning.

“The trucks wake me up,” said Meza. “And the workers are loud and rude.”

“I’ve spoken with the library staff,” said Louise. “And they don’t want it here, either.”
Throughout the week, janitors from the various branches drive the trash to the dumpster. The Sanitation Department collects it from the alleyway.

“The Sanitation Department won’t pick up individual bulk items from a library,” said Scher initially. “They have to pick them up at one location in a dumpster.”

Not so, says the Sanitation Department. “The Sanitation Department does not require the New York Public Library to bring their bulk items to the Mott Haven branch,” said spokesman Matthew Lipani in an email response.

In Queens, whose public libraries are not part of the New York Public Library system, “each location has its trash collected individually,” says Queens Library spokeswoman Joanne King.

While the alley behind the Mott Haven branch is used to store trash, other nearby branches have better uses for their outdoor space. The Morrisania branch has park-like landscaping around its building, while the Hunts Point branch has an unused alley behind it.

Lipani, the Sanitation Department spokesman, defended the way the library maintains the dumpster saying, “the area where the container is stored is clear of debris and does not constitute an ‘eyesore.’”

Neighbors disagree.

“There are a lot of cats here,” said Meza. “And people throwing trash over the fence.”
In response to those complaints and an inquiry from the Mott Haven Herald, the library installed a mesh fence and tarp in early November to cover the alley from public view, which further offended the neighbors.

“That masks it, but we still have garbage out here,” said Tyko Kilhstedt, a painter, pointing at a garbage bag outside the fence. Kihlstedt’s wife Andrea, has also spoken with library staff, and says they share her dislike of the tarp.

The Public Library administration insists the dumpster is necessary and unavoidable. “We do not have an alternative site, and this will be used for the foreseeable future,” said Scher.

“It will still smell,” said Kilhstedt. “It could be a nice small park, but at the moment it’s just an eyesore.”

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

Now, there’s been a flurry of activity, as its owner seeks a tenant. He’s enlisted a local blogger to help publicize the effort, and says he’s ready to rent part of it to a health club, if more grandiose ideas for the entire building don’t come to fruition soon.

The building was once the only bustling courthouse in the borough. Today, it’s beautiful but abused. A chain-link fence seals it off, but graffiti artists have still managed to deface it. Just under an ornate statue of Lady Justice, someone has spray-painted the word BRONX in pink block letters.

The city closed the doors of the courthouse in 1978 and allowed it to fall into ruin.

For years, the neighborhood nonprofit Nos Quedamos fought to acquire the property to convert it into Melrose’s town hall–a community center with a library and even an office for the Bronx Borough President–that it envisioned as an emblem of the neighborhood’s rebirth.

Politics got in the way. The Giuliani administration, at odds with Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, turned its back on Nos Quedamos, which had raised millions earmarked for renovations, not for purchase.

Instead the city auctioned the courthouse off to developers—twice. The current owners, Henry Weinstein and his business partner Benjamin Klein, bought the building for $300,000 in 1998.

Now, they say they are once again looking for tenants to occupy the old courthouse and that they hope it can be turned into something to serve the neighborhood.

“We really had our hearts set on community use for this building, but somehow we’re finding it difficult to identify a substantial enough user,” said Weinstein in an interview.

Yolanda Gonzalez, the head of Nos Quedamos, said that while the group hasn’t reached out to Weinstein directly, it remains very much interested in the building.

“We’re still looking to see how we can work with the current owner, making sure we can bring the building back to its original purpose–to serve the public,” Gonzalez said in an interview. “It was built with public dollars.”

She’s approached almost daily, she said, by members of the community who want to know what’s going on with the building and who are frustrated by the fact that it remains derelict.

But Weinstein insists the years of vacancy are not the result of neglect but of waiting for the right tenant.

“I always could have turned it into self storage, but I felt it was such a nice building, it would be a crime,” he said. “I bought it for a cheap price, so because of that, I thought I could really afford to wait.”

Several businesses have expressed interest, Weinstein said, including a medical group and a health club.

But he’s still hoping a school or a nonprofit will come through to rent the space, he said, adding he does not object to setting aside a portion of the building for community use, possibly in the form of a daycare center or an afterschool program.

Last year, the building was slated to become the home of a new charter school, the Bronx Academy of Promise, but the school pulled out.

“They weren’t really ready for a building of that size,” Weinstein said.

Weinstein wasn’t able to renovate the crumbling interior to meet their needs, school officials told The New York Times.

Now, the bad economy and the city budget crunch have also deterred potential tenants, Weinstein said.

Other members of the community have weighed in on what they think the building should be used for.

Ed Garcia Conde, who runs the neighborhood blog “Welcome to the Village of Melrose,” recently took a tour of the courthouse with Weinstein, and asked readers for suggestions. Responses included an Apple Store, a Barnes & Noble, a children’s theatre and an affordable grocery store.

“I think it’s time we got something going in there that we can all be proud of,”
said Garcia Conde, who also works in real estate and described Weinstein as “a friend and colleague.” With all of the development happening in Melrose, it shouldn’t be long before Weinstein fills the space, he said.

Development in Melrose has been taking place under the Melrose Commons Urban Renewal Project—a plan that Nos Quedamos helped develop—which includes blocks of new affordable housing as well as a campus for Boricua College.

“I think it’s something that’ll be picked up pretty quickly, when people start learning the demographics—that it’s not the same demographic as 30 years ago,” Garcia Conde said. “There’s a lot going on.”

Weinstein said that he hopes to have a tenant lined up within the next six months or so, and predicted that the building could be restored and ready to use in as little as six to nine months.

“If I don’t identify a non-for-profit or a school, if none of those pan out, I’m just going to take my health club and put them in there, in a third of the building,” he said.

“We’ll see what happens after that.”

A version of this story appeared in the Winter 2009 edition of the Mott Haven Herald. Contact the author at jeanmarie.evelly@motthavenherald.com.

“So, who’s had eggplant before?” Lara Cely asked the five students gathered around a folding table. Cely, a healthy eating enthusiast and neighborhood resident volunteered to teach the class for the South Bronx Food Cooperative.

Cely, who trained as a chef with City Harvest, decided to teach the class because of her interest in promoting healthy eating to residents of the South Bronx, where fresh fruit and vegetables are scarce.

The South Bronx Food Cooperative hosts the cooking class across the street from its store, on Third Avenue, between East 158th and 159th streets in Melrose. Everyone from the mainly low-income community is welcome at the classes to learn how to prepare vegetables available at the co-op using easy, yet creative recipes.

The cooking class is just one of the options the co-op has started to help encourage a healthier lifestyle in a community where fast food restaurants and bodegas that sell 25-cent bags of potato chips dominate the culinary landscape.

The cooking class meets every second and fourth Wednesday each month. Students chip in a few dollars to pay for the fresh vegetables from the co-op, some of which are unfamiliar to many shoppers at the store.

“I’ve only had eggplant in eggplant parmesan,” said Melrose resident Robin Arroyo. Of the four other students in the class, Warner Perez, a New York City transit worker, also said he didn’t have much eggplant in his diet.

Perez said the class is making him “more aware of what should be consumed on a daily basis.”

According to New York City’s health department, residents in Mott Haven and Hunts Point are twice as likely to have diabetes than residents in Manhattan, and suffer more from heart disease and obesity.

“I wouldn’t want to be a statistic,” Perez said.

Marie Orilus, a social worker from Queens, shared a recipe about how she cooked eggplant in a stew with turkey and beef neck bones.

“It gives it a different taste, a different flavor,” said Orilus, as she talked about how she seasoned the neck bones with a green and red pepper, scallion, garlic and parsley puree, before steaming chopped eggplant separately and combining it with the neck bone in a tomato-based stew.

Cely sat back and listened. Once her students finished sharing recipes, she announced they would cut one eggplant into thin rounds resembling potato chips, and the other lengthwise into long, thin strips. The students took turns at cutting up the eggplants, placing them in separate baking pans lined with aluminum foil.

Orilus and Arroyo sprinkled herbs and spices onto the eggplant chips, while the others sprinkled sea salt on the strips of eggplant. Cely placed both pans in the oven for 25 minutes. While the eggplant baked, Perez chopped up mint leaves for the dish while other students cut a cucumber into tiny, pickle-sized strips.

The eggplant came out of the oven, toasted light brown, hot and ready to eat. Students grabbed at the eggplant chips. They proved soft and chewy.

Cely instructed her students to sprinkle some lemon juice onto the strips of eggplant for the other dish–—a cucumber-eggplant roll.

Arroyo was the first to try it. She sprinkled some chopped mint in the dark eggplant and rolled it in a piece of light green cucumber into a long roll that resembled a vegetarian pig-in-the-blanket.

The crisp texture of the cucumber contrasted with the soft, gooey eggplant. The mint and lemon juice provided a sweet and sour flavor. Each student tried the roll. Five heads nodded in approval.

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

Soundslide and description by Chris Prentice

After her mother’s health struggles, Lara Cely, who teaches cooking at the South Bronx Food Cooperative, decided to learn about nutrition. She joined the co-op and, later, completed a chef-training program with City Harvest, which collects million of pounds of food from restaurants, grocers and other sources and delivers it to community food programs.

The class helps to combat the area’s diabetes epidemic, and, together with the Food Cooperative itself, to try to make what the Department of City Planning has called a “food desert” bloom with quality fruits and vegetables.

The class is just one sign of change. Mott Haven residents are growing their own produce. There’s a new wholesale farmers market in Hunts Point. And the city’s Lower Concourse plan includes a call for a new supermarket.

In the meantime, these South Bronx residents learn that eating healthy can be quick and easy, too.

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

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.