Bronx News Network

Norwood Walks Aim to Build Community and Commerce

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Kids line up for face painting during a Weekend Walks event on E. 204th Street in Norwood.(Photo by Alex Kratz)By Alex KratzOn Sunday, hundreds of local residents spilled onto the middle of E. 204th Street for the Weekend Walks event, which included shopping, face painting, fitness instruction and lots of kids playing in an open fire hydrant courtesy of the fire department.Hosted by Community Board 7 and Mosholu Preservation Corporation, Weekend Walks is a city initiative designed to bring community and commerce together on streets throughout the five boroughs. On E. 204th Street, a two block stretch between Bainbridge and Hull avenues was blocked for shopping and a host of other activities.Lowell Green, the chair of Board 7’s transportation committee, first learned about the Weekend Walks program last summer and signed the board up to help host the event over the winter. Green, however, was skeptical that the board could pull it off without a co-host. In the early spring, Mosholu Preservation Corporation (MPC), a nonprofit that manages affordable housing and promotes economic development in the Norwood area (and also publishes the Norwood News), teamed up with Board 7 to help organizing and promoting the event.Michael Lambert, the deputy director of MPC, said he hopes Weekend Walks will help build momentum and interest for an E. 204th Street business corridor beset by two tragic fires in the past two years.Representatives from several area businesses, including Ridgewood Furniture, Foodtown, Freilich Jewelers, McKeon Funeral Home, Papa John’s Pizza and the new Beso Lounge, participated in the event.Weekend Walks continues the next two Sundays, July 31 and Aug. 7, from noon to 5 p.m.

Bronx News Network

New Webster Ave. Plans Bring Cheers and Jeers

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Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in the latest edition of the Norwood News, on the streets and online now.Construction has begun at 3600 Webster Ave. on a four-building affordable housing complex. (Photo by Jeanmarie Evelly)By JEANMARIE EVELLYChange is coming to Webster Avenue. The gritty, industrial stretch that runs through the neighborhoods of Norwood and Bedford Park was rezoned by the City Council this past March, with a plan designed to encourage more retail stores and residential housing in an area now largely composed of parking lots and auto body shops. Though not necessarily a direct result of the city’s change—zoning plans are more like gentle hands that shape a neighborhood, and depending on market conditions, it can take years before any real changes are seen—new projects already underway or in the pipeline along Webster are a portent for what the street could look like down the road.

Bronx

Bronx News Roundup, Friday, July 29

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We’re short-staffed today, so a quick but substantive round-up folks … Have a great weekend!This story in the Riverdale Press caught our eye. The Amalgamated Houses, the sprawling, leafy limited-equity co-operative wedged in between Norwood and Kingsbridge Heights, has hired a new property manager, Charles Zsebedics, who was convicted for participating in a scheme a decade ago that defrauded his former company of $1.3 million. The Amalgamated’s board was well aware of Azebedics’history but did its due diligence and decided that he had learned from his mistakes and that he was the best person for the job.Andrew Boryga, a graduate of BxNN’s youth journalism program for high school students, continues to do great work for the New York Times in between his academic pursuits at Cornell. In this Times’ City Room blog piece, which also appeared in today’s print edition, Boryga profiles artist Nicolas Dumit Estevez who had himself baptized on the Bronx River as a new Bronxite and to bring attention to his new exhibit at the Longwood Art Gallery on the Hostos Community College campus.A plan to close 17 Bronx post offices, the most in the city, continued to roil postal workers and those who say local post offices are a lifeline for seniors and local communities.The Daily News reports that 60 Bronx businesses are in danger of going under following the massive Jerome Avenue water main break on Wednesday morning.Cops are looking for the shooter responsible for shooting a 5-year-old boy in the leg while he was walking with his mom near Holland and Astor avenues in the east Bronx last night.Four police officers assigned to the Bronx district attorney’s office have been caught cheating on their timesheets, the Post reports.Lots of tasty morsels in Bob Kappstatter’s column as usual this week, including the possibility that the financially struggling Bronx Museum of the Arts might try to emulate the Museum of Modern Art by developing a new, substantial revenue stream by building housing for artists on an adjacent property.

Bronx

Mail Employees Go Postal on Closure of Bronx Plant

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Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in the latest issue of the Norwood News, on the streets and online now.By Alex KratzJames Perez, a Kingsbridge Heights resident and 24-year veteran of the United States Postal Service, is having a hard time imagining working outside of the Bronx. But he might not have a choice in the matter. By the end of the fall, his position and at least 231 others at the Bronx mail processing plant will be eliminated as the USPS consolidates all of the Bronx’s mail processing and distribution into the Manhattan plant. Perez and his co-workers may end up in Manhattan, but they could be transplanted to any postal location within 50 miles of the five boroughs. The USPS, citing budget concerns due to a “dramatic” drop in mail volume, said this is a done deal, but the postal workers union is not giving up without a fight.They organized a rally to protest the elimination of the Bronx plant for Wednesday afternoon, July 27.