BP Reflects on Development, Drawing Professional Workers, and Mayoral Ambivalence

His innuendos were obvious, if not passive aggressive.

But there he stood, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. spending 45 minutes in his seventh State of the Borough address chastising the de Blasio Administration for a number of perceived missteps. For political observers, it was a diatribe that once again stoked the burning question.

Does Mr. Diaz want to be mayor of New York City? Can he really run the city?

It’s an elephant in the room nurtured by daily speculation from inquisitive media and its propensity for validation. Though coy on the prospect, Mr. Diaz hasn’t stopped reporters from letting loose on his mayoral ambitions, a frequent question raised in each interview, including this one. In every instance, his answer is never as simple as yes or no.

“You guys would want me to say I want to be mayor, badly,” said Mr. Diaz, chuckling inside his polished conference room, an ad hoc trophy center. “They like this. The media like this.”

The public would have to wait until next year, or 2021 to find out.

Mr. Diaz undeniably relishes in the mayoral speculation that’s become symbolic of the fantastic climb he, a homegrown Democrat who began as a messenger for the New York City Council at age 21, has made.

It was a recurring theme in a half hour interview with the Norwood News, allowing Mr. Diaz to underscore his lofty goal of attracting a lower middle class, chide Mayor Bill de Blasio’s recent State of the City address, and reassure constituents he routinely travels the Bronx, even if his presence is seldom seen in communities such as Norwood (as of press time, the Borough President visited MS 80 for a meet and greet with volunteers from the Community Emergency Response Team).

“A lot of the issues that I think we’ve championed affect many of the residents. With that said, I know that it’s important. I know that it means a lot, sometimes even more for people to see their elected official, and certainly the borough president,” said Mr. Diaz, who remained unclear over whether a town hall-style meeting would ever be in the cards for the working class community.

Settling into his seventh year as “Beep,” Mr. Diaz has continued to play the Bronx up to curious developers inspiring the opposition’s outspoken chant “The Bronx is not for sale.” He’s benefited from lower crime, boasted the Bronx’s amenities, and even gotten the ear of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Just recently, Mr. Cuomo approved a plan for four Metro-North stations in the East Bronx.

For now, as the official line goes, he’s quite comfortable being the borough president, admitting his intentions to run for re-election in 2017. But with politics, anything can change.

His current stop as borough president puts him in the pilot’s seat, steering the destiny of a borough that’s perpetually fallen behind in the categories of health, employment, quality of life, and education.

As borough president, Mr. Diaz’s role is relatively limited. Though his office possesses a yearly pot filled with roughly $9 million for capital projects, he’s legislatively stymied, unable to enact any laws, only call on his “partners in government” to do so. By and large, borough presidents are seen as nominal politicos whose influence widely varies depending on how good they are at schmoozing.

For Mr. Diaz, a six-foot-tall clean-shaven Hispanic man, checking off his list of accomplishments was largely due to “sheer will, and just advocacy.” But it’s arguably his ability to charm that’s allowed him to weaponize it, wooing over developers and skeptics who’ve come to reevaluate their positions on the Bronx.

Despite his legislative limitations, Mr. Diaz has crafted an agenda centralized to commercial and residential development, measured beacons of a prosperous Bronx. He’s done so with help from his longtime right-hand man, Paul Del Duca, the bespectacled chief of staff and senior advisor who’s molded many of Mr. Diaz’s stances.

From the time Mr. Diaz was in office, $9 billion has been pumped into Bronx projects that range from the enormous Bay Plaza Mall in Baychester to the Bedford Manor on Webster Avenue, coinciding with job growth, though admittedly at the low-paying end. The median salary of the Bronx still stands at $34,284, still behind the rest of the city.

Development has ushered supportive housing, a residence specifically geared to a niche demographic that includes formerly homeless veterans, former drug addicts or HIV/AIDS sufferers.

The Bedford Manor was part affordable housing, where low-income tenants pay rent at a maximum 30 percent of their take home pay. Affordable rent guidelines are decided by a percentage of Area Median Income (AMI), a formula determined by salaries from New York City, Westchester and Rockland counties. The current AMI at 100 percent for a family of four is $86,300.

And with Bronx developers building more affordable units at a lower AMI, retaining well-off professionals edging into the middle class becomes the challenge, said Mr. Diaz, using a hypothetical example of a young professional settling in the Bronx.

“Hopefully, I’m going to start with $60, $70, $80,000 a year. That already puts them at 100 percent of AMI. So when you’re talking about 50 percent of AMI, they’re out of that picture,” said Mr. Diaz. “You certainly can’t buy a home in Pelham Bay or Throggs Neck.”

A middle class exists in the Bronx, though it’s overpowered by working class and working poor.

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center classifies a middle class family of four in New York City to earn a minimum of $70,000 a year. The U.S. Census projects over 30 percent of married homes in the Bronx are above that middle class threshold.

It’s one reason why Mr. Diaz eyes the northern section of Webster Avenue, an arterial roadway cutting through

Norwood, Bedford Park, and Fordham as a harbinger for a burgeoning middle class. Considered by Mr. Diaz as a “good parallel to the Grand Concourse,” once ranked a bastion of class and upward mobility, Webster Avenue has enjoyed a swell of attention from developers since it was rezoned in 2011.

Fourteen rezoning efforts have happened under the Diaz administration, which offers an advisory vote during its public review process. Since then, Webster Avenue has ushered in residential developments paired with supportive housing, creating a dichotomous landscape. Mr. Diaz, who stressed he’s “supportive of supportive housing,” cautioned Webster Avenue developers to “be mindful that to start new development on Webster with supportive housing may scare off potential developers…”

Among the projects in the planning stages is a hotel proposed by the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) that would be built at the corner of Webster Avenue and Bedford Park Boulevard, which the Garden owns. NYBG is currently weighing proposals by developers, who would likely adhere to NYBG’s desire for a mixed-use development, including a hotel. The property is currently occupied by a Pioneer Supermarket. The proposal has riled local residents who greatly depend on the supermarket given its proximity. Residents admit they would have little opposition should a developer build above the supermarket.

And despite community opposition, Mr. Diaz simply stated he supports a hotel, leaving it at that. He would later say in a follow-up statement he is “supportive of the [request for proposals] New York City Council and we look forward to examining the responses.”

Mr. Diaz, perhaps having the foresight to sense backlash from groups in favor of affordable housing at even lower AMI, was quick to re-emphasize his stance on Mayor de Blasio’s affordable housing plan that would see 80,000 new units of affordable housing across the city, a move Mr. Diaz continually stressed as conceptually admirable but flawed in its execution.

“Are we in a race to get to ten million residents in the city?” asked Mr. Diaz. “I don’t think that should be the case.”

Still, many of Mr. Diaz’s successes, including his involvement in the reconfiguration of the Kingsbridge Armory into an ice skating center, remain waiting (as of press time, it had been 827 days since the New York City Council approved the project). The Kingsbridge National Ice Center, for instance, has languished in delays for the last year, an unanticipated setback given the internal legal feud between principals and developers.

Mr. Diaz, who, unlike in previous years, did not mention the project in his State of the Bronx address, blamed the holdup on the de Blasio Administration, saying the “city has to be more accommodating.” His criticism of the de Blasio Administration once again took center stage.

Notwithstanding Mayor de Blasio’s decision to hold his third State of the City address in the Bronx (Mr. de Blasio has made only six official stops to the Bronx this year, compared to 1 in Staten Island, 25 in Brooklyn, 8 in Queens, and 46 in Manhattan), the content of how much attention he paid to the Bronx didn’t exactly impress Mr. Diaz, who attended the speech.

“[W]hat in the State of the City address did he say was huge for the Bronx?” asked Mr. Diaz, turning to his director of communications, John Desio. “What did he say? Power blast streets? Two health centers? Come on.”

The criticism was marginally balanced with credit given for some noble initiatives Mr. de Blasio has accomplished in his tenure. Universal pre-K has made it possible for 4-year-olds to gain an academic head start, while the city’s economy continues to boom.

Mr. Diaz’s serious run for mayor would have to come with a heavier campaign war chest, which stands at $651,000, according to filings. It’s half as much as Mr. de Blasio’s, whose campaign worth rests at $1.1 million. But beating both is City Comptroller Scott Stringer, another mayoral hopeful, who has raised $1.3 million for the 2017 elections.

Should Mr. Diaz run, the Bronx would have to shed some of its issues to build upon Mr. Diaz’s position as an effective leader.

And that includes ensuring crime remains low. So far, overall crimes have increased in every Bronx police precinct except the 44th  Precinct in the South Bronx, as of press time. Though the Bronx has “put its foot on the throat of extremely violent crime,” robberies and petty theft have contributed to a noticeable spike.

But Mr. Diaz shrugged off the numbers, knowing it’ll do little to stem outside interest in the borough.

He justified his position following a closed-door meeting with the New York City Economic Development Corporation to discuss an undisclosed project. Mr. Diaz didn’t say much, except the “amount of interest [in the Bronx] is phenomenal,” notwithstanding crime.

“While we have our issues, and we’re going to do more to reduce overall crime, I don’t see that stopping the level of interest at all,” said Mr. Diaz. “At all.”

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.