New Community Center in Mount Hope

Mount Hope Housing Company held a ribbon-cutting ceremony yesterday to celebrate the opening of its much-anticipated community center on Townsend Avenue at East 175th Street.

The four-story building boasts classrooms, computer labs, offices, a green roof for insulation purposes, and two large open spaces on the third and fourth floors which Mount Hope will use for events, and also rent out.

It's located near the Cross Bronx Expressway amid a sea of apartment buildings, in a part of the Bronx with few parks and playgrounds. In other words, it's a huge boost for the neighborhood. “I’m excited that we’re able to deliver this building to the community,” said Shaun Belle, Mount Hope's president and CEO. He called it “respite for them [children] in this concrete jungle.”

A fundraiser was held after the ribbon-cutting to honor Belle (who's leaving the company after 13 years of service) and to raise money to help cover the center's operating costs. Mount Hope is also seeking funds for the second phrase of the project - a gymnasium, to be built alongside the center on the Walton Avenue side.

We'll have more on this in the next issue of the Mount Hope Monitor.

Photos and slideshow by Alma Watkins. Holding the scissors is Shaun Belle and Councilwoman Maria Baez, who over the past seven years has put $7 million into the center.

May's Mount Hope Monitor

The May edition of the Monitor is now online. This month, stories include:

In Mount Hope, a Nonprofit Collaboration
Several Bronx-based community development organizations have begun holding monthly meeting at Mount Hope Housing Company’s offices on Morris Avenue, to discuss ways they can join forces and survive the economic downturn.

'No Hitting Zone’ at St. Barnabas
At St. Barnabas Hospital’s Child Advocacy Center, the “No Hitting Zone” is not only an area where parents are asked not to swat their kids, but a larger initiative to create healthy family relationships.

Murdered Toddler Remembered
In Mott Haven, recently, 32 children lay down on a sidewalk and played dead. The “lie in,” on 141st Street at Beekman Avenue was held on April 16 to mark the second anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre in which 32 people were killed, as well as the third anniversary of a Bronx tragedy: the murder of two-year-old David Pacheco.

Roberto Clemente’s Pools Won’t Open This Summer
In summers past, when the mercury climbed to blistering highs, west Bronx residents could cool off in Roberto Clemente State Park’s Olympic-size swimming pool, beside River Park Towers at the edge of the Harlem River. From late June through Labor Day, it attracts hundreds of visitors a day. But not this year: the pool will be closed for renovations.

Opinion: Public Education at a Crossroads
Vincent Wojsnis, a Bronx middle school teacher and a UFT chapter leader, believes mayorol control of the city's public schools - which is up for review in June - has been a disaster.

Man Tried to Hire 'Hit man'
A Davidson Avenue man, languishing on Rikers Islands on a rape charge, attempted to have the woman he’s accused of raping murdered, police say.

New 'Green' Apartment Building in Mount Hope

At a ribbon-cutting ceremony yesterday, Mount Hope Housing Company unveiled the "New Hope Walton Project," a 63-apartment complex at 1775 Walton Ave.

The environmentally friendly building, near East 176th Street, will provide homes to low-income families. The first tenants have already moved in; the building will be full come the end of June.

“Mount Hope Housing Company is steadfast in our commitment to meeting the needs of our community and providing services that help our residents to move up the economic ladder,” said Shaun Belle, the organization's president and CEO in a statement. “The New Hope Walton Project exemplifies this commitment and is the latest success in our decades-long effort to revitalize the Mount Hope community.”

Financing came from Enterprise Community Partners, Inc., HDC, HPD, and Citibank. More here.
The building is around the corner from Mount Hope's new community center, which will likely open this summer. There are additional plans to build a gymnasium on the empty lot between the two projects.

The New Hope Walton Project means Mount Hope Housing Company now provides affordable housing to more than 1,300 people. That's one in every seven Mount Hope residents.


Top photo: With the scissors is new Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. Second from left is Shaun Belle, Mount Hope's president and CEO
Bottom photo: the "New Hope Walton Project" at 1775 Walton Ave.
(Photos by Alma Watkins)

New in the Mount Hope Monitor

The January edition of the Mount Hope Monitor is now online.

Stories include:

Tenants living in 1892 Morris Ave. have taken taken their nonprofit landlord, Mount Hope Housing Company, to court for neglecting the building and ignoring their maintenance requests.

In better news for Mount Hope, we heard today that the organization's beautiful but much delayed community center has moved a step closer to opening. According to staff, the Temporary Certificate of Occupancy has just come through, meaning it can be "legally occupied." Soon is the operative word.

A look at who's eyeing Council Member Helen Diane Foster's District 16 seat. (We tried - and failed - to get Foster on the phone to clarify whether or not she'll seek another four years in office. Her chief-of-staff, Jim Fairbanks, said "she hasn't told me" when asked about his boss' future plans.)

More on Middle School 399 and the DOE's decision to gradually shut it down. The 700-plus student school is housed in a majestic building on 184th Street, just three blocks from PS 79, another school that's being phased out. MS 399 will be replaced by two smaller middle schools that will occupy the same building.

Chavez's Heating Oil Program Goes Up in Smoke

For the past three winters, CITGO Petrolium, a Houston-based oil company and a subsidiary of Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A., has provided several Bronx landlords with low cost heating oil on the condition they pass the savings onto tenants. The program was expected to continue in 2009, but a press release sent out yesterday announced its suspension.

In the statement Joseph Kennedy, president of Citizen Energy Corporation, an organization that helped administer the program, said:

Citizen Energy has recently been informed by CITGO that due to falling oil prices and the world economic crisis, CITGO has been forced to re-evaluate all the their social programs, including the heating oil program, which has provided hundreds of thousands of low-income U.S. households with much-needed fuel these past three years. As a result, the heating oil program has been suspended until further notice. It remains unclear how long this postponement, if it is one, will last.

Mount Hope Housing Company, a non-profit that owns and manages 31 buildings in the west Bronx, is one of the affected landlords. "It's a big hit," said Pamela Babb, vice-president of development and communications. She said the program also helped fund a number of Mount Hope's youth programs.

More here.

Mount Hope's New Community Center

Here's a shot, taken today, of Mount Hope Housing Company's architecturally striking community center, which will open this summer. The center, on 175th Street at Walton Avenue, will serve up to 2,000 people at day. Later this year, a gymnasium will be built alongside. More here.

Talking of community centers, Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club has begun renovating the former Hebrew Institute building at 1835 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. The project, 15 years in the making, has been beset by various construction and funding issues. Work began in May and is expected to take 12-14 months. More here and here.

A BID for Burnside Avenue

Davidson Community Center, working with Mount Hope Housing Company and others, is hoping to establish a Business Improvement District, or BID, on Burnside Avenue.

On April 2, Bronx elected officials, community organizations, and local residents, will gather for a "Taste of the BID" event to announce the beginnings of a campaign to bring on board 116 area business owners. The Atlantic Development Group will hold a steam blasting/graffiti removal/sidewalk washing exhibition - a demonstration of what local merchants could expect with a fully functioning BID. The event begins at 10 a.m. in front of Foot Locker (on Burnside between Jerome and Walton).

According to a provisional press release, the BID will revitalize the shopping district. "As with other commercial strips in the Bronx, the Target Area has too many 99 cent/discount stores, no major national chain, (only fast food national chains)," the release said. "Residents of the Target Area complain of the lack of variety in goods and services which prompts them to shop in other locations in the Bronx or other boroughs in the city." More about BIDs here and here. There are currently six BIDs in the Bronx. In the west Bronx there's Fordham Road and Jerome-Gun Hill.

Photo taken from the Burnside Avenue subway station at Jerome Avenue, looking west.

The BID aside, change is already coming to Burnside Avenue. Morris Heights Health Center is building a new center on an abandoned lot on the corner of Harrison Avenue. St. Barnabas Hospital is in the process of demolishing the former Elks Lodge at Burnside and the Grand Concourse, and building a 10-story outpatient facility. East of the Concourse, near Valentine Avenue, the Atlantic Development Group is building affordable housing. (Atlantic were/are in the running to develop the Kingsbridge Armory but have possibly/probably lost out to another developer.)

UPDATE: The event is being held April 2, NOT March 26 (as was published earlier today. Apologies for the confusion)

New Stories in the Monitor

The next print edition of the Mount Hope Monitor will hit the streets in early November. Here’s a taster of what you’ll find inside:

Following Death of Principal, P.S. 209 Teachers and Parents Look to rename School in her Honor
Community Leaders Balk at Plans for Hotel on Jerome
Mount Hope Housing Company to Benefit from Citgo Grant

All the above were written by students of the NYCity News Service, which is run out of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. Nadia, Amy, Joe – thanks a lot.

Also, check out this opinion piece by Greg Fuchs, a regular contributor to the Monitor. Fuchs would like to see a weekly Greenmarket in Cedar Playground, and a plaque erected to celebrate the playground's importance in the history of the hip-hop movement.

(UPDATE: We're having some technical issues. If the above links take you through to a blank page, click on switch region at the top of the page, select New York, and then choose West Bronx News Network.)

Bronx News Roundup Oct. 24

The case against two cops from the 44th Precinct, who allegedly beat a man outside a Yonkers bar in September, could be falling apart after the injured man failed to pick them out in a police line-up, says the Post. More on the attack here.

Mayor Bloomberg wants to make each and every borough responsible for handling its own trash, but his plans took a setback yesterday when Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver stopped a key vote. It's now looking unlikely that a recycling transfer plant will be built in Manhattan's Meatpacking District, at least in the foreseeable future. That's bad news for the Bronx. As Assemblyman Ruben Diaz told the Times, "There’s still going to be thousands of trucks and tons of garbage coming into the Bronx that isn’t from the Bronx."

In yesterday's Daily News, there was more on the alleged drug deal inside Our Lady of Refuge Church in North Fordham. CBS also picked up the story. Also in the Daily News was this story about community opposition to affordable housing, and a profile of Mount Hope Housing Company by former Norwood News intern, Heather Appel. Mount Hope celebrates its 21st anniversary at a gala this evening in the northeast Bronx.

We missed this at the time, but here’s a Bronx Times’ article on University Woods, a four-acre wood in University Heights that’s routinely named "the city’s worst park." The story follows on from Greg Fuchs’ opinion piece in the August/September edition of the Mount Hope Monitor. For more about the park check out Friends of the Woods.

Ok, so this has nothing to do with the Bronx, but readers may be interested to hear that the Guardian, Britain's left-leaning broadsheet, has launched a new Web site called Guardian America. It's an attempt to pick up more American readers, and, no doubt, more advertising revenue, too.

Bronx Technology Fair

Mount Hope Housing Company's annual technology carnival is being held today. The free community event, on 179th Street between Morris and Walton avenues (three blocks north of yesterday's shooting), boasts computer classes and a video game competition. There's also a barbecue, music, dancing, and a raffle - prizes include a flat screen TV and a Nintento Wii.


The aim of the day is to show local residents how technology - especially computers and the Internet - can help in their everyday lives.

The Bronx, outside of Riverdale, has been slow to embrace the on-line world. Organizations like Mount Hope, who recently wired its 1,250 apartments for high speed Internet access, are working to correct this, and in March, Bronx Community College held a brainstorming conference that looked at ways to bridge this digital divide. (Photos by James Fergusson)

New Health Center and Housing for Seniors to be Built on Burnside

Community leaders converged on a Morris Heights sidewalk, this afternoon, to celebrate the beginnings of an exciting new project that will see a six-story building - home to a health center and 70 units of affordable housing for seniors - rise on what has long been an abandoned lot.

Morris Heights Health Center (MHHC) and Mount Hope Housing Company are behind the venture, which is being built at the northeast corner of West Burnside and Harrison Avenues. Today marked the start of a demolition job that will flatten the existing tumble-down buildings on the site. Construction will begin in October and, assuming all goes to plan, finish in December 2009. Most of the money has been raised, but according to Verona Greenland (pictured speaking), president and CEO of MHHC, the costs have skyrocketed and they're still hunting for $9 million. In October, they're holding a fundraiser.

They'll be more about the "Harrison Circle" project (Harrison, because it's on Harrison, and Circle, because, well, it'll be shaped like a circle) in the next print and on-line editions of the Mount Hope Monitor. (Photo by James Fergusson)

Drug Free and Proud to Be at Echo Park

Organizers from Mount Hope Housing Company celebrated their 11th Annual "Drug Free and Proud to Be Day" at Echo Park, last Saturday.

The day-long event featured ventriloquist Wayne Garland and sidekick Charlie, and old-school rapper Stone of Funky Four and Double Trouble. There was also a basketball tournement and a bubble-ride for youngsters (pictured). Volunteers cooked up 1,000 hamburgers.

The purpose of the event, much like National Night Out, is to encourage local residents to take a stand against drugs in the community. On display were anti-drug essays written by kids enrolled in Mount Hope's Project READY, a youth development program. (Text and photo by David Greene)

Jazz in the park

Jazz legend Lou Donaldson, 80, performing at last week's jazz festival in Echo Park in Mount Hope, a free event put on by Mount Hope Housing Company and Chase Bank. (Photo by David Greene)

In the 1980s this four-acre park - the only green space in the area - was a dumping ground and a haven for drug dealers. Most of the apartment buildings at the park's north end, on Burnside Avenue, lay abandoned. In recent years, however, things have taken a turn for the better, and in 1997 Mount Hope Housing Company began holding an annual "Drug Free and Proud To Be Day" - a day of fun, food, and festivities for all the family. The aim is to encourage local residents to take a stand against drugs in the neighborhood. Last year 3,500 people attended. This year's event is on Saturday August 11. If you wish to be a sponsor, you can call Tee Lawton at (718) 299-2051 ext. 16.