After years of mismanagement and delays in the completion of Roberto Clemente Plaza at Third Avenue and 149th Street at The Hub, the borough’s oldest shopping district and Business Improvement District, The Third Avenue BID has been selected to oversee the plaza once completed.

Last year we exposed the incompetence behind the delays with getting the plaza completed which has taken 10 years to do so (and still isn’t completed) but thanks to the staff and leadership at the Third Avenue BID along with local elected officials including Councilman Rafael Salamanca Jr, construction is nearing completion.

Most importantly, however, is that the plaza will no longer be run by SoBro but will instead fall under the auspices of the Third Avenue BID which has already shown a proven track record of getting things done by being able to work with the various agencies involved in the project.

“From initial design through construction, the Roberto Clemente Plaza project has taken nearly 10 years to complete.” noted Michael Brady, Executive Director of the Third Avenue Business Improvement District. “We are optimistic that this long awaited community asset is finally going to be a resource for South Bronx residents and shoppers.”

“The Third Avenue Business Improvement District in partnership with Council Member Rafael Salamanca, Jr. is proud to have led the advocacy to push this public works project toward completion. From community visioning sessions to the latest meetings with the Interim Commissioner for the NYC Department of Design and Construction, the voice of our neighborhood have guided our planning, advocacy, and implementation of programming surrounding the plaza’s development. Furthermore, we are equally heartened that the plaza’s management, maintenance, and concession will be operated by the Third Avenue Business Improvement District. The mission of the BID is to lead with equity. Community-based control of public space is very important to an area’s development and growth, and a central component of he equity movement – the BID is happy to be an active part of this movement.”

The BID has already engaged with the New York Horticulture Society who will help maintain the plaza and the green elements of the space as well.

According to a recent meeting with DDC Interim Commission called by Council Member Rafael Salamanca, Jr. the plaza is expected to be completed by May 31, 2018 with the installation of public art to be completed by September 2018. During the meeting Michael Brady, Executive Director of the Third Avenue Business Improvement District stated that “the delays and excuses from the City of New York need to stop.” Brady continued, “the plaza will be an inspirational community asset; however, the delays and unresponsiveness from City government compounded by antiquated procurement policies leave area residents and businesses feeling that they are not on par with Manhattan or Brooklyn counterparts.”

Brady stated that the new DDC Commissioner is more transparent then her predecessors and has committed that the full completion of Roberto Clemente Plaza will be one of her agency’s top priorities.

A sculpture in memory of Roberto Clemente by local Bronx artist Melissa Calderon is scheduled to be installed towards the end of the year.

Personally, we look forward to the completion of this plaza and have the community enjoy this asset.

A mighty oak tree in The Bronx is no more after succumbing to the winds of last week’s destructive nor’easter was reported by Friends of Pelham Bay Park on Facebook.

The Great Oak of Pelham Bay Park has probably been standing since Jonas Bronck, our borough’s namesake, himself first arrived upon our shores in 1639 becoming the first European colonizer of our borough.

Although an exact age of the tree isn’t possible, estimates were that it was anywhere from 300-400 years old and would have placed it in the realm of even possibly having been around when the Lenape Native Americans still lived in our borough before being driven out by the colonizers.

For those who ventured into the forest beyond the Bronx Victory Memorial and traveled through the trails, perhaps you also stopped and stared in awe at this huge monument to nature’s grandeur as I did the first time I stumbled upon it as a teenager.

To think it survived hurricanes, blizzards, superstorm Sandy, and of course, humans, all these centuries but alas, it could go on no more.

It is a sad day in our borough when a tree that so many have loved is now gone but such is the circle of life.

Header image taken today by Nilka Martell of Loving The Bronx.

Curbed just published a sobering look at “affordable” housing and how it relates to the local communities where they are constructed in terms of actual affordability.

Their findings are not surprising to us or activists who have for years asked, “Affordable for who?” due to the very fact that these units are rarely affordable to local residents due to the misleading AMI, or Area Median Income used to calculate the median income of an area which is generally considerably higher than what the actual local median income is in these neighborhoods.

Curbed performed an outstanding analysis of the situation by breaking it down from single-person households to five-person households and does it for each affordable housing development that has been preserved or constructed under New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (or 87,557 units if you’re counting).

They did so in response to the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s map which shows all those units constructed or preserved thusfar but have left all of us asking and wondering, “Affordable for who?”.

It should come to no surprise that under each category, the picture painted for The Bronx was quite grim but single person households were the worst off with an overall 62% of units unaffordable to the average city resident.

Things got significantly better as the size of household increases but still leaves out a large segment of the population.

Curbed reports:

Housing activists, however, have criticized the Housing New York plan for not creating enough homes for those who most need it. The Community Service Society released a report last September that says the Housing New York plan may actually be “further entrenching segregation” through its focus on development in low income communities, where locals are at risk of displacement and affordable units are often out of reach.

Despite the city’s focus on low income neighborhoods, only 15 percent of Housing New York units—13,276 units to date—serve the extremely low income band; citywide, 516,000 of those households are rent burdened. And data shows that about 81 percent of Housing New York’s units to date are located in low-income communities, where the median income of one-person households is below 80 percent AMI.

See Curbed’s complete analysis on the situation: How New York’s affordable apartments compare to neighborhood incomes