Buoyed by a commitment to ensure that a redeveloped Kingsbridge Armory will anchor the community, hundreds of local residents crowded into the Fordham Manor Reform Church last Saturday before marching around the landmark fortress in a cold, driving rain.

The rally could be described as a warning shot across the bow for the developer, which the city should choose in the coming weeks.

A banner on the side of a truck expressed the rally participants’ objective in stark terms: "Developer: Negotiate with KARA."

Organized by the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, KARA (Kingsbridge Armory Redevelopment Alliance), which is comprised of community and labor groups, made it clear that it wants to be at the negotiating table when the city announces a developer. Only two companies remain in the Armory running: Atlantic Development Group and the Related Companies.

Whether the city or the developer wants KARA at the table remains to be seen.

Vacant for more than a decade, the 575,000-square-foot structure represents a prime opportunity for neighborhood improvement in a community struggling with high unemployment and a third of its population living below the poverty line.

For these reasons, KARA wants the developer to sign an agreement guaranteeing the project is built by union members who are community residents. The group also wants schools built on Armory property and living wage jobs for employees of businesses moving into the renovated structure. None of these demands have been guaranteed by either of the developers’ proposals.

"We have to be careful how we go to the next step," said Greg Faulkner, chair of Community Board 7. Faulkner cited the Croton filtration plant as an example of elected officials being persuaded to support the plant for the sake of jobs only to find the jobs go elsewhere. "We all need to sit down and figure out how this can work," Faulkner added.

Once chosen, the developer’s proposal will undergo a lengthy land use review process known as ULURP, as the development plan will be scrutinized by Faulkner’s CB 7, the City Planning Commission, the City Council and the mayor’s office.

KARA’s role is yet to be determined in the negotiating process, but the crowd on Saturday insisted they meant business.

"Let’s make sure that we rally," Council Member Helen Foster, a KARA ally, said to the crowd, "but let’s make sure that we get angry. If we have to stand in front of construction lines and say, ‘You’re not building this because we didn’t sign off on this’ then that’s what we’ll do."

Melvin Rogers, a junior at the Leadership Institute, a local high school founded by the Coalition and its youth arm, Sistas and Brothas United (SBU), spoke of severe overcrowding at area schools. In an effort to highlight the cramped conditions, Rogers volunteered to serve as a tour guide for representatives of the Department of Education (DOE), which recently decided the area around the Armory didn’t need new schools.

The Leadership Institute contains 300 high school students in a building designed for a middle school. There is no library or computer room and classes are taught in basements and in hallways, Rogers said.

Many of the rally speakers voiced displeasure that schools had been cut out of the Armory plan, especially since school seat projections made by the DOE were partly based on the Bronx’s 36 percent graduation rate. The Coalition has called that methodology "planning for failure."

After the march, when most of the crowd had dispersed, it was the youth who were left cheering and yelling loudly on the other side of the fence that they hope one day soon will be doors of opportunity.