Welcome2Melrose

For Immediate Release

Contact:
Ed Garcia Conde
917.532.7504   themayor@welcome2melrose.com

Lily Kesselman
917.532.7884
lily@lilykesselman.com

http://southbronxunitestopfreshdirect.blogspot.com/

www.battleforbrooklyn.com

March 5, 2012
Join South Bronx Unite Stop Fresh Direct; Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn; and Good Jobs New York for a screening of the award-winning documentary Battle for Brooklyn at Bronx Documentary Center.

The film will be followed by a Q&A
featuring the filmmakers; Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn’s Daniel Goldstein; Good Jobs New York’s Bettina Damiani; and South Bronx Unite Stop Fresh Direct. The discussion will explore how mega economic development deals that seem isolated are connected by grassroots struggles that affect us all. Panelists will discuss the seven-year battle over Forest City Ratner’s eminent domain abuse at Atlantic yards and the current burgeoning struggle against the city’s proposal to help move FreshDirect, the online grocer, from Queens to the Bronx waterfront, where activists have long been trying to establish a greenway. Both are campaigns against destructive, undemocratic, and publicly subsidized land deals bolstered by spurious promises of jobs that, as “Battle for Brooklyn” proves, never seem to materialize.

Click here for the trailer!

The Mott Haven Herald has reported that a gourmet market will be taking residence at Boricua Village some time this year. Fresca Gourmet Market, according to developer DeVon Prioleau, will feature over 4,000 items that reflect the neighborhood’s different ethnicities.

He goes on to tell the Herald that the market will offer Melrose residents and Bronxites alike, access to the same quality of food that other more affluent areas of the city already enjoy. But this access will, of course, come at a price to local residents.

Mr. Prioleau doesn’t hesitate to say that he’ll have no choice but to pass on the costs of higher quality food on to the customer and foresees items costing upwards of 50 cents to a dollar more than what people usually pay at other local supermarkets.

The Mott Haven Herald quotes DeVon Prioleau as saying that, “The Bronx can ill afford another liquor store or sneaker store,” but can the poorest congressional district in the country ill afford to pay extra for quality?

The answer is, most likely not. Yesterday, the Huffington Post reported that a growing number of Americans can not afford food. A staggering almost 1 in 5 individuals said they couldn’t afford to feed everyone in their family and fact is that this number is much higher in our neck of the woods.

Perhaps the solution to this quandary is that another high end market opens up in the neighborhood as to foster competitive pricing? Let’s see what happens.

You know Spring’s just around the corner when Pete’s Flower Shop on Melrose Avenue and East 152nd Street puts out their plants in front of their shop… Let’s hope we don’t hit any big cold fronts in the coming weeks so that we can enjoy this spring-like weather.

If you’ve been following our story of the resounding anger Bronxites are voicing against the sweetheart deal to keep FreshDirect in New York City by moving from Long Island City to The Bronx waterfront then read more on our continuing saga against undemocratic processes that disenfranchise the communities of the South Bronx. To further aggravate an already tense and delicate situation, during last week’s sham public hearing (which was held AFTER the $130 million deal was announced) it came to light that Community Board 1, which covers the Harlem River Rail Yards where FreshDirect would move, was never informed about the plans to change the land use which was already promised to be a key part of the Bronx Greenway and waterfront access. The following is our official Press Release that we as residents have sent out:

Press Release: Community Members Unite to Stop FreshDirect’s Exploitation of the South Bronx

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 9:00 AM Monday, February 13, 2012

Press Release: Community Members Unite to Stop FreshDirect’s Exploitation of the South Bronx

BRONX, NY, February 13, 2012:

Community residents and activists will rally Tuesday, February 14th at 8:45 AM outside of 110 William Street, to demand that the board of the New York City Industrial Development Agency vote to block FreshDirect’s sweetheart deal in the Bronx. The deal was suddenly announced last Tuesday, February 7th. Governor Cuomo, Mayor Bloomberg, and Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. hailed the privately arranged deal as a win for everyone. FreshDirect is expected to receive a $130 million subsidy package from the city, the state, and the Bronx in exchange for its decision to relocate from Queens to the Harlem River Rail Yards along the waterfront in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the South Bronx.

But local community members are upset about the adverse impact that FreshDirect’s relocation will have on the South Bronx. They have organized a group called SOUTH BRONX UNITE! STOP FRESHDIRECT! and find numerous aspects of the deal and how it is being portrayed disturbing, deceptive, and deleterious to the health and welfare of the South Bronx community.

“Fresh Direct has pledged to bring new jobs to the Bronx,” said Mychal Johnson of Community Board 1, “But they have no obligation to do so. FreshDirect is not penalized if they fail to reach their job creation targets. There are no mandates or incentives to hire people from the South Bronx, which has one of the highest unemployment rates in all of New York City. Further, there is no guarantee that FreshDirect jobs would even be at a living wage.” According to subsidy watchdog group Good Jobs New York, the city is failing to leverage the proposed subsidies for the creation of good jobs for people that need them. In addition, GJNY claims the IDA has failed to provide taxpayers a clear cost/benefit analysis of the benefits expected to be awarded to the company.

“The way this went down was completely undemocratic,” said Mychal Johnson. “The Governor, the Mayor, and the Borough President announced this was a done deal before the public hearing, before the official vote, before there was any chance for public input. They decided to give FreshDirect $130 million dollars in taxpayer support, without any assessment of how this would affect the community. Worst of all, even with millions of dollars of subsidies, tax breaks, and incentives, there is no written guarantee of even one new living wage job for the South Bronx.”

The relocation is a “slap in the face to the people of the South Bronx,” said Rev. Ruben Austria, a faith leader and resident of Mott Haven. “We are in dire need of fresh food in this community, but FreshDirect won’t even deliver in the South Bronx. Yet they have no qualms about driving fleets of trucks in and out of our neighborhood every day, polluting the air our people breathe, while they bring their product to wealthier communities. They say there’s no demand in the South Bronx, but they make no provision to serve families using food stamps, who would gladly purchase affordable fresh food.”

The burden on the South Bronx angers Daniel Wallace, a neighborhood resident. “This project demands that the people of the South Bronx bear an inordinate amount of the costs of a deal from which we are guaranteed no real benefit. People in Manhattan get to eat fresh food; we get to eat more exhaust. As a South Bronx resident, it infuriates me that the people elected to represent our community’s interests are instead allowing us to be saddled with another terrible deal. The way FreshDirect and our elected officials flouted the democratic process to complete this deal is a real sign of disrespect to me and the rest of the people who live in the South Bronx. They didn’t even pretend like our voices matter.”

“It’s unacceptable,” says Ivelyse Andino, a resident of the South Bronx. “We already have the highest rate of asthma in the country, the most concentrated health problems, including infant mortality and childhood obesity – and these things are the direct result of urban planning policies that utterly disregard the rights of poor communities of color. Now FreshDirect is going to bring in another 130 trucks driving through our streets every day, and produce 380 tons of solid waste each month – and there hasn’t even been a legitimate environmental impact study done.”

The worst part of the deal, say environmental activists like Harry Bubbins, is that the space FreshDirect will occupy is misused public land. The proposed site for FreshDirect at the Harlem River Rail Yards in the Bronx was supposed to develop freight service to reduce air pollution from truck traffic, expand the South Bronx Greenway, and give residents access to the waterfront. Instead, 1.9 miles of waterfront space will remain inaccessible to the public. “This gargantuan facility,” said Bubbins, “is clearly inappropriate for our waterfront and has sparked keen and widespread interest in the best use of this valuable public land. We look forward to an aggressive inquiry by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman into the original lease between the New York State Department of Transportation and the Harlem River Rail Yards. It seems they are in default, and a new community led public planning process needs to be initiated. A more mixed use and diverse array of activities on the 100 acres foot print will yield more jobs, cleaner air and a better return for the tax payer investment than what is proposed with the lucrative backdoor deals proposed for FreshDirect to abandon Queens.”

Despite the anger over the FreshDirect sweetheart deal, community members are optimistic. “We’re going to use every legal tool available to us to fight for our community,” said Corrine Kohut, an attorney and homeowner in the South Bronx. “We’re too well informed and organized to let this happen without a fight. Our elected officials and the public agencies that are supposed to look out for our interests aren’t going to get away with selling out the community anymore. We look forward to a community-led development plan that makes efficient use of nearly 100 acres of public waterfront land and incorporates sustainable development, living wage jobs, clean air and waterfront access for South Bronx residents.”

Contact: Harry Bubbins, Friends of Brook Park

harry@friendsofbrookpark.org

(646) 648 4362.

Mychal Johnson, Community Board 1 mychaljohnson@gmail.com (212) 810-0562

http://southbronxunitestopfreshdirect.blogspot.com/2012/02/press-release-community-members-unite.html?m=1

Good morning, lovely residents of Melrose! Make it a spectacular day!

It’s City politics at its finest in the Bronx. When the Bloomberg administration fought (not so hard and not so smartly) to keep the Yankees in the Bronx, they gave a sweetheart deal for the team’s demand of parking for 9,000.

Now, the owners and operators of the 21 acres of concrete wasteland are close to defaulting on over $200 million in bonds – and according to the Daily News, will be the largest default on city issued bonds in decades. How many times did the community rally against so much parking space when statistics showed that fans weren’t using the old ones as much in the first place? Many Yankee fans already arrived by subway and surely more would come via the new Metro North Station at 153rd Street.

Now, with no one really using the parking lots that barely reach a third of capacity on game days, the operators raised the the parking rate from $24 to $35 last year which will further impact the occupancy rate.

These 21 acres could have been put to much better use as a system of world class parkland, affordable mixed-income housing and perhaps that long awaited hotel. Now who suffers? The tax payers and the community suffers from such sweetheart deals and since it’s in the Bronx (particularly the South Bronx) City Hall will continue to turn the other way when questioned about this financial fiasco.

If you ask me, this is a scandal worthy of federal investigation and perhaps a class action lawsuit against the City.

Read more at the Daily News.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/pricey-yankee-stadium-parking-garages-owner-heading-default-237-million-bonds-article-1.1016386?localLinksEnabled=false

One of the great things about living in Melrose is the easy access to the lifelines that make up the transportation network of this great city and region. Whether you’re traveling by subway, bus, railroad or car, you’re only a few short minutes away from your linkages.

You can take the 2, 4 and 5 trains at 149th Street / Grand Concourse or the 2/5 trains at 3rd Avenue / 149th Street and be whisked away to midtown in under 20 minutes. If your commute is north, away from the city then you also have the option of Melrose’ Metro North Station at 162nd Street and Park Avenue where you’ll find yourself in white plains within 25 minutes or even a super fast ride into midtown in 10 minutes and two stops into Grand Central.

Traveling by bus? We’ve got you covered with 13 bus lines (including Express Bus BxM 4) running through our neighborhood ( 1, 2, 4, 6, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 32, 41, 55). Six of these lines converge at the HUB at 3rd Avenue / 149th Street for easy access to the 2 and 5 trains.

If you’re one of those people that need to drive then you’re also in luck with quick access to and from Manhattan via 5 bridges all within 5 minutes from the heart of Melrose and highways like the Major Deegan and Bruckner Expressway.
Even Jersey is a stone’s throw away (in light inbound traffic to the Garden State you can be over the George Washington Bridge in less than 15 minutes!)

So if you’re thinking about moving to Melrose, besides being much more affordable than Williamsburg, Long Island City, Astoria and even Harlem, we’ve got the best transportation network with amazing access to the city.

Hipsters can keep Williamsburg with their crappie L train connection!

A group of young men were busted yesterday for utilizing an abandoned building in Morris Park as a marijuana grow house. How much does this cost the tax payers for this one bust alone?

While we have real crimes being committed such as rapes, murders and beatings – let alone the banking industry which nearly collapsed this country into major financial ruin, we are spending billions upon billions of dollars in this country to fight the “evil” marijuana.

We really need to do some serious soul searching into this because our government is fighting something that is clinically proven to be beneficial yet we allow alcohol to be consumed in vast quantities when 1 in 25 deaths around the world can be attributed to alcohol use? There have been absolutely no deaths on record that were because of marijuana use at all. So where is the problem?

Furthermore, humans and a large majority of life on earth have cannabinoid receptors indicating that we have evolved in conjunction with such substances. Alcohol on the other hand destroys our liver!

The billions spent in New York State alone, fighting marijuana, could be put to better use in education, health care and other social programs to help the poor rather than incarcerate them.

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local/new_york&id=8526160

Sometimes you have to stop and smell the roses every now and again. As I was rushing up Third Avenue, I stumbled upon this Curbside Haiku:

Imagine a world
Where your every move matters.
Welcome to that world.

There are over a hundred of these signs throughout the city as part of the Department of Transportation’s Curbside Haiku safety initiative.

Have you spotted any yet?

Join us this Saturday as representatives of Sustainable Communities • Bronx Metro North Study provide an interactive tour of the Melrose Metro North Station
and its pedestrian access points.

This is a very important way we, as a community, can band together and give feedback and be part of the process for the future of our neighborhood. Melrose has the best transportation access in the entire Bronx with subway access, bus routes and a Metro North station. Statistics show that 25,000 Bronxites make the reverse commute to work to Westchester and Connecticut making the Melrose Station a critical component for area residents in our transportation network.

Read more below straight from the source and don’t forget to take the community survey!!

The Department of City Planning of the City of New York (DCP) is studying areas surrounding select Metro North Stations in the Bronx. With support from the HUD Sustainable Communities program as part of a regional consortium of cities, counties and planning organizations, DCP is working with communities to plan for the Metro North corridor in the Bronx. The goals of the study are as follows:

· Connect Bronx residents to job centers in the region (25,000+ Bronxites make the reverse commute to jobs in Westchester and CT)

· Capitalize on the Metro North corridors by identifying opportunities for transit-oriented development

· Spur investment in lively, sustainable, mixed-use neighborhoods, by permitting new mixed-income housing around stations where growth is appropriate

· Improve station visibility, pedestrian access and intermodal connections around Bronx metro North stations

In order to successfully achieve these goals we need the full support of all community stakeholders. The DCP is moving forward with some important outreach initiatives described below.

Community Tours

In an effort to understand the community needs, pedestrian environment and transportation options surrounding the Melrose and University Heights Metro North Stations, DCP will be conducting interactive tours of key pedestrian access routes. While DCP staff will be onsite to guide the tours we need your help to make them a success! Please join us on Saturday, January 28 th in an effort to strengthen Bronx Communities. Bring your friends, co-workers, and neighbors. See details below and attached flyer:

Melrose Station

When: Saturday January 28th, 2012 10:00 AM—12:00 PM

Where: Meet at the Melrose Metro North Station Platform (Entrance on Park Avenue at 162nd Street )

University Heights Station:

When: Saturday January 28th, 2012 2:00 PM—4:00 PM

Where: Meet at the University Heights Metro North Station Platform (Entrance at W. Fordham Road and University Heights Bridge)

Please let us know if you will be attending or if you have any questions. We look forward to seeing you there!

Community Survey

Your input is an important part of our successful planning effort. As part of our outreach program, DCP has developed a community survey which includes questions to help us understand community needs, land use, the pedestrian environment, and transportation facilities. Below is a link to take survey online and attached is an electronic copy of the survey available in both English and Spanish. Please complete the survey by the March 30 th deadline online, via email, mail, or fax to:

Online:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SCBronx

Or to:

Shawn Brede

One Fordham Plaza, 5 th Floor

Bronx, NY 10458

(718) 220 8505

F (718) 584-8628

sc_bronx_dl@planning.nyc.gov