Just a few feet from the South Bronx’s waterfront along the Harlem River in Port Morris, a new skyline is emerging.
What was once dominated by NYCHA’s public housing developments like Mitchell Houses and Millbrook Houses, two new towers at 200 East 135th Street will soon rise taller than any other building in the immediate area.
At least for now.
From Third Avenue and 135th Street one can easily see the development rising.
When Welcome2TheBronx first reported back in late November of last year on the construction of the two new luxury towers just one had broken ground.
Now, the first of two towers is already quickly rising and standing tall at 14 stories, more than halfway to its planned 25 floors.
Looking South on Rider Avenue
At 14 stories it’s already easily visible from the Major Deegan and local streets. Walk down the Grand Concourse just south of 149th Street and you can see it peeking up above.
You can even see it from Manhattan from 5th Avenue on 135th Street in Harlem, blocks away from the waterfront.
Renderings of 198-200 E 135th Street
Once completed, both towers will have over 400 units of new market-rate luxury housing in what is still considered to be America’s poorest congressional district.
198/200 E 135th Street quickly rising along the South Bronx waterfront.
The face of the South Bronx is changing fast. Within 5 years the area will be all but unrecognizable as thousands more units are constructed along the waterfront.
More development on NYCHA land is coming to The Bronx in Soundview over at Sotomayor Houses.
Yesterday, NYCHA and HPD announced that a 16 story, 200 unit building called Casa Celina will be constructed at the corner of Watson and Thieriot Avenues on what is currently a parking lot.
The building will have 3,350 square feet of community space that will not only be available to the new senior residents but will also be open to NYCHA residents as well.
Casa Celina will rise 16 stories at Sotomayor Houses at the corner of Watson and Thieriot Avenues.
It will also feature a landscaped rooftop terrace, lounges on each floor, fitness room, as well as a laundry room.
Named after Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s mother, Celina, the press release states:
“Raised at the NYCHA complex that now bears her name, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has credited her mother, Celina Baez, with being her ‘life inspiration.’ The Development Team is pleased to honor that inspiration with the residences at Casa Celina. Designed by Magnusson Architecture and Planning, the building will feature generous shared spaces, innovative features and gracious apartments and will connect physically, visually and socially to the surrounding campus. JASA will keep seniors living safely in their own homes with independence, dignity, and joy through case management, in-home care and community-wide programming,” said Xenolith Partners Principal Andrea Kretchmer. “Casa Celina will bring healing, home, and what Justice Sotomayor called ‘magic’ to the community’s seniors. Our team, a true joint venture among pre-qualified developers, a WBE developer and a non-profit, is excited to work with and for the residents of Soundview, the Bronx, and the City of New York.”
Casa Celina will be available for residents 62 and older and 25% of the units will be set aside for current NYCHA residents. In addition to this set aside, 30% of the apartments will be for homeless seniors.
No timeline has been given for construction or completion of the development.
Dinosaurs are returning to The Bronx on April 19 at as The Bronx Zoo opens its new exhibition, Dinosaur Safari.
The exhibition will take you through the woods of the zoo where 40 realistic (as in life-size) animatronic dinosaurs will roar to life providing you with perhaps the closest thing we’ll get to Jurassic Park in our lifetime.
And that’s no exaggeration given the fact that according to Time Out, the zoo has partnered with Don Lessem, a paleontologist who works at the American Museum of Natural History and actually served as an advisor to the Jurassic Park franchise of movies.
“The Dinosaur Safari experience is twice the size of past Bronx Zoo dinosaur exhibits,” said Jim Breheny, the zoo’s director and the Wildlife Conservation Society’s executive vice president of Zoos and Aquarium. “Our visitors have loved experiencing these gigantic animatronic dinosaurs up close. It’s a thrilling experience and a learning one, too. Both dinosaurs and wildlife today developed adaptations that help them survive in their native habitats. This experience highlights some of those adaptive behaviors and characteristics.”
Although they’re marketing this to kids, clearly the inner kid in all of us is gonna wanna experience this so get ready for taking it waaaaay back in The Bronx from April 19th through November 3, 2019.
In a victory for New Yorkers with disabilities, a judge has ruled that the MTA violated the Americans with Disabilities ACT when it failed to install elevators during a renovation of the Middletown Road Station on the 6 line in the East Bronx.
The ruling was a result of a law suit by Bronx Independent Living filed in 2016 for the MTA’s refusal to make the station wheelchair accessible during its $27 million renovation.
Despite arguments from the MTA that the renovation did not warrant an elevator, U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos said that the scope of the work did in fact trigger the requirements for adding an elevator as per ADA regulations.
This comes after the MTA recently reopened two Bronx stations after closing them for half a year for multi million dollar upgrades. While residents were excited for the welcomed upgrades there were an equally vocal number of residents who were upset that the MTA, once again, did not comply with the ADA making it inaccessible to does with disabilities and mobility issues.
Newly renovated 167th Street station on the B and D line on the Grand Concourse was also done without an elevator.
The MTA insists they are still on track to making 50 stations accessible in 5 years.
“The MTA is now on notice that whenever it renovates a subway station throughout its system so as to affect the station’s usability, the MTA is obligated to install an elevator, regardless of the cost, unless it is technically infeasible,” said Geoffrey Berman, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, in a press release. His office intervened in the case in March 2018.
The MTA had argued that the scope of the work did not justify undertaking a renovation that would have disproportionately added to the cost of the project.
In response to the ruling, MTA Chief External Affairs Officer Max Young said in a statement, “The MTA is steadfastly committed to improving access throughout the subway, with a hard and fast goal of making 50 additional stations accessible over five years. We’re not wavering from that commitment.”
We really need to get work on making our transportation fully accessible for ALL.
Tamales are more than ready for their big moment in New York, and Israel Veliz knows it. He has known it since 2014, when he dropped out of college to start making traditional Mexican versions in his Bronx apartment, in part because he wanted to help other New Yorkers appreciate this staple of his childhood in Puebla, Mexico, as much as he did. He also wanted to make really, really good tamales.
“You find tamale ladies on every corner, and the tamales are delicious,” said Mr. Veliz, 29, with a clear reverence for those who have preceded him in the Bronx. “But we don’t always know where the tamales are coming from.”
So he recruited his mother, Sara Muñiz, who had recently moved back to the Bronx from Puebla, Mexico, to teach him to make tamales. Mr. Veliz, who had spent nearly 10 years working in restaurants but never in a kitchen, lightly adapted her recipes and began selling about 100 a week on Facebook and Instagram, and then at weekend soccer games.
Now they’re featured in a video by Insider Comida.
It hasn’t even been a full year since the over 90 block Jerome Avenue Rezoning was approved and already the FOURTH development has been announced with plans already filed with New York City Department of Buildings.
Located at 1169 River Avenue between 167th and McClellen Streets, the
The 19-story building will have 245 apartments spread across the 242,726 square foot development which also includes 100,000 square feet of space dedicated for a community facility.
According to YIMBY, the owner behind the application is Christopher Lacovara of Community Access a non-profit that works with supportive housing but no mention is made if this development will be such a project.
Renderings are also unavailable at this time.
Pretty soon Jerome and River Avenue will be unrecognizable as hundreds of small businesses, mostly auto-related, are bulldozed to make way for these developments.
Cardi B just seems to not be able to stop breaking records.
The Bronx icon has already shattered multiple recording records and now she shattered an attendance record at RodeoHouston that Garth Brooks once held the honor of holding.
She is LITERALLY entering spaces that are not necessarily for people of color nor a woman from The Bronx and SHATTERING records.
The Root writes:
According to CBS News, the Houston Rodeo and Livestock Show is a 20-day livestock show, rodeo and festival that features concerts, a barbecue contest, carnival, ranching and wildlife expo, and other activities—so it’s safe to say the Bronx native’s performance was a bit of a surprise.
“Most rappers aren’t at the rodeo,” a fan named Talan said.
With 75,580 attendees at the paid performances she broke Brooks’ previous record by only 3 attendees.
Not bad for a regular, schmegular, degular girl from The Bronx.
The following was originally posted in the Amsterdam News and written by Bronxite Javier Lopez who was the former Assistant Commissioner for New York City Health Department’s Center for Equity.
We decided to publish this because it is an important part of the conversation when talking about the legalization of marijuana. For far too long, communities of color, especially in The Bronx, have borne the brunt of marijuana related arrests despite the fact that whites smoke marijuana at a higher rate than blacks and latinos.
The Bronx, although having placed second only to Brooklyn in marijuana arrests, was home to half the community districts in the top ten list of NYC areas with the most of such arrests.
So you see, this is a necessary conversation that must be had if we are truly serious about legalization of marijuana and criminal justice reforms.
As New York works to legalize adult-use marijuana, state lawmakers have the opportunity to achieve true racial equity and justice, but it will require a legislative and operational agenda that goes beyond the bureaucratic “promise” of equity.
For decades, low income communities have been destroyed by the war on drugs. In New York City, more than one third of the marijuana arrests took place in seven of the 10 neighborhoods with the lowest median household income, according to a report by City Comptroller Scott Stringer. The damage has been done. The legalization of adult-use marijuana may expunge records but does nothing to reverse that damage. Expungement is not equity.
Via NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer’s Office
We need a law that addresses the millions of people of color who have been impacted by the discriminatory practices of the War on Drugs and offers meaningful pathways so these communities benefit from the formal cannabis economy. That means those individuals harmed would get priority in obtaining licenses, training, financial startup funds, waivers of applications and, if returning from jail, help getting housing, health care and an education.
Sure, you can say “slow down” or mistakenly believe that equity and justice are baked into the proposed Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act. But the truth is the MRTA penned by State Sen. Liz Krueger and Assemblywoman Crystal Peoples-Stokes is a good start, but it doesn’t fully address the above points either.
There is a pervasive belief in many political and government spaces that if you just acknowledge racial inequities in some way (i.e. trainings, task forces, enhanced data analysis or “game-changing” reports) the system will somehow change course. I have made this mistake.
Via NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer’s Office
As a former assistant commissioner with the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Center for Health Equity, my colleagues and I routinely championed health equity in a multi-level bureaucracy, yet our efforts often failed to address the root causes as to why communities of color have far worse health outcomes than white communities. Even with the biggest and brightest stars of the health equity movement, our efforts did not close racial inequities in a meaningful way.
The MRTA and Gov. Cuomo’s adult-use marijuana legalization plan must have a clear equity plan on day one, a plan that checks many boxes. First, people of color and the formerly incarcerated must be able to grow wealth in this industry, not be marginalized by the existing large, corporate license holders. In addition, current medical license holders should not be able to buy a fast-track into the industry—this will only make it more difficult for communities impacted by the war on drugs to break into this business. When cannabis-related offenses are automatically vacated, there must be support for re-entry. Anything less will just recriminalize in the legalized industry.
Racial equity and justice outcomes cannot be achieved by ambiguous efforts. The public health community and other bureaucracies have already learned this. Legalized adult-use cannabis is a way to get social justice right but that will only happen if there is equity on day one. We cannot trust systems such as state agencies and oversight boards to get this right on their own. The law must be clear. There is no autocorrect here.
Javier Lopez is the former assistant commissioner for the New York City Health Department’s Center for Equity.
Tomorrow, Monday March 4th, NYC Public Schools are closed due to the winter storm which is now dropping a lot of rain in our area and is expecting to change over to snow at some point.
Mayor Bill de Blasio made the announcement just moments ago and urged folks to just stay home if they don’t have to be out and about.
Parts of The Bronx have been forecasted to get up to eight inches of snow but it all depends on the trajectory of the storm.
Parents, make plans for your kids and to the kids, enjoy your snow day tomorrow!
Oh and if you didn’t know, alternate side street parking rules are canceled ad well but meters are in effect.
Last night Saturday Night Live aired a skit on bodega bathrooms and we have to share the hilarious clip even though it doesn’t take place in The Bronx but The Bronx is bodegas after all.
Some folks might get offended but let’s be honest: Have you ever seen a bodega bathroom or even used one?
I’ve had the unfortunate pleasure of seeing someone open the door to what I thought was a closet once and it was a scene I’d love to forget.
Anyway, check it out below and let us know what you think:
The other day we posted a video on Bazaar, a Bronx-based tech company that’s using digital solutions to every day problems bodegas face.
But did you know that there is a growing tech scene right here in our borough?
Tech:NYC recently visited The Bronx and wrote about their time spent exploring this industry as they visited practically every corner of our borough.
Tech:NYC’s visit at Lehman College/Image via Tech:NYC
They write:
“…we continued on to visit Bronx Business Bridge, the innovation lab and tech incubator at Lehman College. The incubator connects local businesses and entrepreneurs with access to workspace, equipment, and training. Their program is exciting in that it also connects Lehman students to training programs in web development, marketing, and entrepreneurship at the same time it places them directly with startup clients that give them the real-world experience of building business solutions that clients actually use. With City Council funding, they’ve also recently added a state-of-the-art VR Development Lab, providing Bronx-based tech professionals to develop new skills in one of the fastest-growing sectors of our economy.
Next up was a visit to Tech:NYC member Metabronx, an accelerator focused on startups founded by women and members of cultural minority groups. With a cool space in the South Bronx, Metabronx is providing business support and mentorship to companies like Bazaar and Neture, both companies that are working to expand access to online solutions for their communities. It was great to talk to their founders and hear about how they’re growing businesses that bake in the idea that tech can promote civic good and make people’s lives better.
A few stops on the 6 train and we finished our day at The Knowledge House, another Tech:NYC member. They’re working to to build a diverse pipeline of tech talent from low-income communities. After touring their new space in the historic Banknote Building in Hunts Point, we talked with co-founder and CTO Joe Carrano and his team about how they’re providing access to programming and web development training to New York’s future engineers. We’re particularly excited to see they’re focused on building curricula that isn’t just training for today’s tools, but looks ahead to the tech of the next decade. Jobs in AI have more than doubled in the past three years, with New York companies hiring for the more of them than any other place in the country. TKH’s programs in AI, machine learning, and other emerging tech is a sure way to set their students up for the best job placement and workforce opportunities NYC has to provide.
And their journey didn’t take them to Per Scholas and several other incubators and businesses doing here in our borough.
As the industry evolves and expands, it’s important that our residents can learn the ropes and enter tech to take advantage of what it has to offer.
We can’t let our kids and residents stay behind and if we use these opportunities to our advantage we can have an even stronger future for The Bronx.
You can read more about their visit here and learn more about what Tech:NYC does here.
Now the same developer has snatched two lots directly south of that property at 399 and 355 Exterior Street for $59 million in an all cash transaction snatching up what was billed in December as the, “…biggest development site in NYC.“
According to the Commercial Observer, Lightstone has plans to construct 2,000 residential units with 70% (or 1,400) as market-rate with the remaining 600 units billed as “affordable”.
The developer also plans on constructing retail along with parking as part of the development and says that construction should begin some time next year in 2020 and completed by 2022.
This brings the total number of units planned or under construction along the South Bronx waterfront to just under 5,000 with the majority of them being constructed as market-rate.
Bronx Point will rise at the foot of the 145th Street Bridge at 149th Street sandwiched between the Major Deegan Expressway and the Harlem River.
North of the site at the stolen parkland that is known as Pier 5 which was supposed to be part of Mill Pond Park’s expansion will now be home to over 1,000 units of affordable housing and the home of the Universal Hip Hop Museum, the country’s first such brick and mortar space dedicated to the genre which started in The Bronx.
A few blocks away on 135th Street directly facing the Major Deegan Expressway, construction is underway on two 25-story towers which will have 465 apartments once complete.
Renderings for 198 and 200 E 135th which are already rising in Port Morris.
Around the corner from that development will soon rise Brookfield’s 1,300 unit market-rate luxury development across 7 towers totaling 1.3 million square feet.
The mega developer plans on breaking ground for both sites this year and anticipating completion by 2021.
Brookfield purchased the development from controversial developers Somerset Partners headed by Keith Rubenstien and the Chetrit Group for $165 million last year in the most expensive sale in The Bronx’s history.
Brookfield’s 1.3 million square foot, 1,300 unit development at the foot of the Third Avenue Bridge. Renderings are outdated as they are from when Somerset and Chetrit owned the the site and are revamping the designs.
These developers are taking a huge gamble in building so many luxury units in an area where folks aren’t quite flocking to rent in such developments.
The Clocktower’s expansion at the Crescendo, which is billed as luxury and renting units above $4k is still not fully occupied a full 18 months after they began marketing the development.
Despite all of that, however, there is no denying that the South Bronx is in full gentrification mode now.
Within 5 years our waterfront and skyline will be completely unrecognizable.
