Plans have officially been filed for The Peninsula, the development which will replace the old Spofford jail despite having lost two major tenants.
The Commercial Observer reports that Hunts Point Brewing and Lightbox NY Film Studio have pulled out of the deal leaving the city in a race to get tenants for 25,600 square feet both would have occupied.
The jail has been closed since 2011 and the 5 acre site and is undergoing various phases of demolition.
Once the development is complete, it will yield 740 affordable residential units spread across four buildings and will include one industrial building.
The Peninsula is slated for completion in 2022 provided there are no delays.
A lot has changed in Morris Park as new faces and families have moved in over the past decades yet much has also remained the same.
The New York Times explores Morris Park in their “Living In…” fluff pieces and takes a look at what makes the neighborhood tick.
Sadly (and predictably) the article misses the heart of Morris Park because, well, after all, The New York Times Real Estate section is notorious for simply advertising neighborhoods as commodities rather than a place you live.
The article reports:
“An older Italian-American man across the street welcomed him with coffee and cake. “There is no barrier here to where you come from or who you are,” said Mr. Marrero, who was born in the Bronx and raised in Puerto Rico, and had previously lived on Pelham Parkway, just north of the neighborhood. Referring to his new block, he said, “I think I’m the only Hispanic here, and I’ve been very well received.”
Morris Park is a place where village-like congeniality continues to flourish among urban asphalt and flux.
First the site of a racetrack and airfield, then an Italian-American stronghold with pizza and calamari to rival that of Arthur Avenue, Morris Park presents changing faces in a largely unvarying streetscape.”
Morris Park has done quite well for itself without so much outside attention. It’s what makes it charming despite some of its own older residents who aren’t too keen on the “new” faces that have moved in (i.e. non-Italian people of color).
It is a true, blue working middle class Bronx neighborhood.
Will Morris Park survive the new York Times created onslaught that may ensue like usually happens after one of their neighborhood profiles?
The following is syndicated with permission from Forgotten NY.
By SERGEY KADINSKY Forgotten NY correspondent
At the southern tip of Soundview Avenue in the Bronx is the newest NYCFerry dock, providing a one-seat ride from this corner of the borough to Wall Street. I haven’t been to Soundview since high school, when my classmate Karen hosted friends at her home and there was Dominican music in the background. Soundview Avenue is the odd one here, cutting through the street grid on its two-mile route.
Having previously chronicled other prominent points of land in the city, I followed Soundview Avenue to its tip. Along the way, the triangular intersections are designated as Greenstreets parks, with more than a dozen on the route. At the end is Clason Point, historically pronounced as Clawson.
The most notable of these triangular parklets is Woodrow Wilson Triangle, bound by Underhill, Patterson, and Soundview Avenues. Its World War One monument was dedicated in 1928 on the decade anniversary since the end of the war.
On the plaque are quotations from Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Wilson. An odd pair as Lincoln emancipated the slaves while Wilson was a staunch segregationist.
Your old Hagstrom map won’t help you here as many of the streets on the grid were never completed, end midblock, and others appear partially completed. Turning right from Soundview Avenue, one enters Harding Park, a cluster of bungalows built organically in the 1920s by Thomas Higgs and named after then-President Warren G. Harding.
City planner Robert Moses attempted to condemn this community in the name of slum clearance but the residents won and in 1982 the Harding Park Homeowners Association succeeded in gaining title to their homes and land. Kevin Walsh was here in 2006, telling the story of Harding Park in detail.
Beyond the bushes there is a lagoon in Harding Park separated from the East River by a rocky breakwater. This is where the Bronx River widens into the East River. In the background are the Hunts Point Marketand the skyline of Manhattan.
As mentioned, Harding Park developed organically without regard to the borough-wide street grid. Some streets here are interrupted midblock by properties, and others do not appear on any official maps.
One of the great unfinished waterfront roads here is Bronx River Road, which was intended to run continuously from East Tremont Avenue along the east bank of Bronx River down to the tip of Clason Point. Today it runs in five segments that are kept separate by Soundview Park, Harding Park properties, and the Shorehaven development.
Speaking of unfinished plans, further inland at Story Avenue, the Bronx River Parkway abruptly ends. Usually when a highway ends, it does so by merging into another highway. Destination signs along the southbound parkway show Soundview Park as its terminus.
A 1960s hand-drawn Hagstrom map shows the parkway continuing into the park with an interchange at Randall Avenue, Lafayette Avenue crossing the Bronx River, and Bronx River Avenue curving along the shoreline. Hagstrom often tried to keep their maps up to date by depicting planned highways and paper streets as reality, because in most cases when Robert Moses proposed something, it became reality.
On the other hand, the massive superblock interrupting White Plains Road at the time was the wetland source of Pugsley’s Creek. Most of it would end up developed.
Another unusual map of what Clason Point could have been is the 1941 Barkan Street Directory map that shows the grid in its entirety mashed with the natural courses of Bronx River, Pugsley’s Creek and Westchester Creek. A trolley line runs down Soundview Avenue, but Bronx River Parkway has not yet been extended to this corner of the Bronx. The section between Pelham Parkway and Soundview opened in 1951.
I would like to see every major street have a monument and plaza at its terminus, but the southern tip of White Plains Road is marked by a fence that keeps it a few yards short of the East River. This road runs north for 7.2 miles to the city line at Wakefield. It continues north under other names. Its namesake city is 10 miles north of the city line.
Returning to Soundview Avenue, there is a gated community with its own set of nautical theme streets: Admiral Court, Beacon Lane, Surf Drive, etc. This is the 57-acre Shorehaven community, set apart from the rest of southern Bronx by its wall and security guards.
Between 1949 and 1986, this property was the Shore Haven Beach Club, a member-only resort for working-class Bronxites.
In 1949, Mal Deitch and Joseph Goodstein transformed the defunct Clason Point Bathing and Amusement Park, into a private resort with a swimming pool, cabanas, playground, and a stage. Most of its clientele were working class and middle class Jews who resided in surrounding neighborhoods.
Like a Catskills resort or a Miami Beach hotel, Shore Haven had a unique cultural feel of secular Jewish life that included stand-up comedians, singers, mah-jongg, and cocktails. By the 1980s the Bronx was more Hispanic than Jewish, and new residents did not join the club in large enough numbers.
Along with rising liability costs, Shorehaven’s expenses forced it to close. Memories of Shorehaven survive online, with former member Marc Miller compiling a collage of old photos for the Shorehaven Beach Club Facebook group.
The park has a tragic history with 6 deaths and 22 injured on June 11, 1922, when a storm blew down an operating ferris wheel. The amusement park closed in 1935.
The 1927 G. W. Bromley map of Clason Point shows the bungalow colony, amusement park, and the tip labeled as “Public Place.” It was a crowded district in contrast to today’s gated community.
Between 1906 and 1939, a ferry operated between Clason Point and College Point. The completion of the nearby Whitestone Bridge put the ferry out of business.
On the above 1940 photo from the Municipal Archives, the ferry gantries stood unused in place for a few more years. Following the demise of the ferry, the tip of Clason Point reverted to parkland and was given its present landscape in the early 1990s.
This includes a scenic traffic circle as a terminus for Soundview Avenue with vistas of the East River and Whitestone Bridge.
Here you can also take the NYCFerry at the cost of a subway ride down to the Upper East Side, 34thStreet, and Wall Street. At some point, we should do a Forgotten-NY cheapskate’s cruise aboard this ferry. We’ve haven’t yet had a floating ForgottenTour. My previous examples of exploring tips of land in the city include Throg(g)’s Neck, Breezy Point, and Kingsborough Community College.
Sergey Kadinsky is the author of Hidden Waters of New York City: A History and Guide to 101 Forgotten Lakes, Ponds, Creeks, and Streams in the Five Boroughs (2016, Countryman Press) and the webmaster of Hidden Waters Blog.
New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, joined by Councilman Rafael Salamanca, Jr, NYS Assemblywoman Carmen Arroyo, and local business owners and residents, held a press conference in front of the unfinished Roberto Clemente Plaza which has yet to be completed after years of delays.
To echo the politicians who spoke at the rally, this is not just neglect, not just incompetence but just a continuation of a tale of two cities.
This would not happen in Manhattan.
If the constant delays doesn’t make you angry then this will.
The costs of the plaza have soared from originally costing $300,000 to a hefty price tag of $13 million now.
Feast on tuo zaafi (a mash of pounded maize or millet) with a stew of mutton and dried fish, thickened with the crushed melon seeds known as egusi. A great cow foot soup is also available, along with the usual peanut and okra stews.
2. Papaye
2300 Grand Concourse
…Papaye is one of the most mainstream West African restaurants in town…Try the mashed rice called omo tuo, along with a stew of goat in peanut butter sauce.
3. Bognan
590 E 169th St
A colorful menu posted on the wall offers abe nkwan (a palm nut sauce with goat), okra sauce with fish, and a very light peanut sauce, in addition to the stray dish from the Ivory Coast or Ghana. All sauces can be matched with kneaded starches like banku (fermented cornmeal) or fufu (a mixture of white yam and plantain).
4. Grin
454 E 168th St
This small rustic establishment features the cooking of Cote D’Ivoire (the Ivory Coast), including the national dish of attieke (pronounced “ah-check-ay”), which is a coarsely textured manioc stodge with a delightfully sour flavor. It’s served with a relish or two and a cube of salty Maggi.
5. Fouta
1762 Westchester Ave
The interior has a clubhouse feel, and men sit around in robes and skullcaps eating bowls of fluffy white polished rice and sauce de feuilles made with sweet potato leaf, or lamb mafe decorated with a single scotch bonnet pepper.
Make sure you head over to Eaterand check out the other 9 West African restaurants across NYC they recommend!!
From Country Club to the Grand Concourse and Soundview to Riverdale, our borough is truly a diverse gem in landscape, architecture, geography, and its people.
Take a walk with us through The Bronx via some of our images we’ve captured over the years and of course, feel free to share this post with your loved ones.
Without them, Parkchester isn’t, well Parkchester.
Now, several of the iconic terracotta statues that adorn the exterior of the buildings, greeting visitors and residents alike are going missing and in some cases, visibly destroyed.
One of the firemen above Hugh Grant Circle, easily visible from the 6 train station, has been taken down as Parkchester Condominiums performs facade work and no mention has been made whether or not it will be going back up.
Welcome2TheBronx has reached out to their offices on Monday when we visited Parkchester to investigate but no statement has been received as of yet.
Ongoing facade work at Parkchester has resulted in the removal of several statues. Workers here are next to the area where one of the fire marshals once stood. Now just one remains at 11 Hugh Grant Circle.
One of the charms of Parkchester are the over 500 terracotta statues and plaques that you’ll find above entrances or on building corners and like the fireman, high atop the buildings up in the sky as if guarding or watching over the planned community.
Everywhere you turn you run into one of these magnificent pieces and I recall vividly as a child how much I loved them then as I do now.
According to Sharon Pandolfo-Perez, who runs The Parkchester Project documenting the statues, the disappearances of these statues has been going on for at least a year to her knowledge.
She estimates that about 10 of these statues have been taken down and never replaced although we were not able to verify this.
This is what happens when we don’t pressure the city to landmark our treasures. Once they’re gone, they are gone forever.
Construction began in 1939 and by 1942, what would become the world’s largest condominium development, was complete.
At first, it was a restricted community designated for “whites only” and it wasn’t until 1968 that people of color were allowed to rent in the complex.
Now it’s a diverse community of almost 30,000 residents from all walks of life.
For almost 80 years the statues have been watching over Parkchester and now it may be too late to bring back the ones that have gone missing.
Needless to say, this wouldn’t happen in Manhattan or Brooklyn…
If you have any images of statues that have been taken down, please send them to the Parkchester Project at info@2pinc.com or contact @theparkchesterproject on instagram.
The developer rush to the South Bronx continues as a warehouse was recently purchased in the Lower Concourse Rezoning area of Mott Haven for $16.8 million—more than double its previous sales price of $7,750,000 just two years ago.
Sun Equity Partners, who sold 288 Walton, had plans to develop the property into a 14 story, 168,000 square foot mixed-use rental property. Rendering is from their website.
288 Walton Avenue is located just a block from the Harlem River Waterfront and is just a couple of blocks away from the newly opened Joinery Condominiums and a luxury hotel going up on Park Avenue.
If construction actually begins, this will be the eighth development to rise in the Lower Concourse area since the rezoning was approved in 2009.
The cleansing of the Jerome Avenue Rezoning Area has begun as the first set of auto-related businesses are set to be demolished and replaced by a 15 story development which will be the tallest building in Mount Eden once completed.
It’s happening much faster than anticipated by many but those of us who warned the city saw the writing on the wall.
Rendering of 1331 Jerome Ave via YIMBY
Now YIMBY has exclusively revealed the new renderings of the building which will rise at 1331 Jerome Avenue which, once completed, will rise 159 feet with 255 residential units.
145 of the units appear to be set aside for homeless or formerly homeless families with the remainder of the 110 units most likely as affordable housing.
There are currently 5 buildings on the lot, all of which are slated to be demolished and along with them several businesses which currently occupy the site.
The 221,060 square foot development will also have 128 spaces for bicycle parking.
1331 Jerome Avenue sits just a couple of blocks away from an already over-burdened 4 train at 170th Street.
Many warned the city that these businesses would be wiped out and here we are as the first set face the wrecking ball to make way for “progress”.
Employees continue to at one of the businesses as their days of employment are numbered.
But what is progress when our infrastructure can’t handle our current population? How are we supposed to accommodate thousands more?
The same politicians that cry “jobs, jobs, jobs” when they want to pass unpopular proposals are the ones who voted for this.
Three blocks south from this site another proposed development is slated to rise with not one but two 17-story towers across the street from each other on River Avenue. This development was the first announced in the Jerome Avenue Rezoning Area.
Plans for that development were revealed just a little over a month after the rezoning was approved and demonstrated just how hungry and ready developers were to raze and change the face of the neighborhood.
Many will argue that this isn’t gentrification because they’re bringing in “affordable” housing and housing for the homeless but the fact is that it all begins somewhere and this is just the beginning.
Displacement of longtime businesses, regardless of how “undesirable” you may find them, is still displacement.
In an area mostly dominated by 1-4 family homes at the last stop (or the first stop, depending on your perspective) of the 2 line a development has been proposed that is rather out of character for the neighborhood.
YIMBY reports that the proposed development located at 700 E 241st Street, adjacent directly next to the 241st Street Station on the 2 line, will include 416 residential units, ground floor commercial retail space, and community facilities.
The building will be over 400,000 square feet and 9 stories tall if approved and due to the fact that the lots would have to be rezoned, 255 of the units would have to be permanently affordable, however, the remainder is proposed to be market-rate.
Parking is also included in the proposal for approximately 100 vehicles.
The site is also located just 7 blocks away from the Wakefield Metro North Station.
No completion date is set as the site would require zoning approvals first which can take a considerable length of time.
If approved, this would dramatically change the character of the neighborhood and in particular, the intersection of White Plains Road and 241st Street.
DeWitt Clinton High School in The Bronx is known for having produced such notable alumni like Stan Lee, Burt Lancaster, Richard Avedon and many others.
Now the famed Bronx high school is being recognized for something else: Growing fresh produce.
And we’re not talking small potatoes either. According to PIX11 News, these students are producing 25,000 feeding 2,200 students each day.
All of this is being done out of a 1,300 square foot space.
The jail has been closed since 2011 and the 5 acre site and is undergoing various phases of demolition.
Your old Hagstrom map won’t help you here as many of the streets on the grid were never completed, end midblock, and others appear partially completed. Turning right from Soundview Avenue, 
Undeveloped waterfront parcels were 
Beyond the bushes there is a lagoon in Harding Park separated from the East River by a rocky breakwater. This is where the Bronx River widens into the East River. In the background are the 
As mentioned, Harding Park developed organically without regard to the borough-wide street grid. Some streets here are interrupted midblock by properties, and others do not appear on any official maps.
One of the great unfinished waterfront roads here is Bronx River Road, which was intended to run continuously from East Tremont Avenue along the east bank of Bronx River down to the tip of Clason Point. Today it runs in five segments that are kept separate by Soundview Park, Harding Park properties, and the Shorehaven development.
Studio units are renting at $864 a month for single family households making $31,509 to $43,860 per year.
To apply, head over to NYC Housing Connect and 
Parking is also included in the proposal for approximately 100 vehicles.