Brian Boggan stood nervously in the press box outlined with tape on the side of the St. Nicholas of Tolentine School gym in University Heights. Boggan had come to a rally, organized by the grassroots Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, with an opinion about plans for the long vacant Kingsbridge Armory.

As a physical education teacher with a long history of ice skating, Boggan was ready to defend the Kingsbridge National Ice Centers’s bid to fill the empty armory with nine ice rinks.

But no one from the ice center group showed up to receive Boggan’s support. As a row of empty chairs and Coalition leader Alice McIntosh noted, the front-running bid to revamp the armory declined to attend the rally.

The ice center group, which is headed by a former Wall Street executive and supported by prominent ice athletes including hockey star Mark Messier and figure skater Sarah Hughes, is one of two bidders hoping to redevelop the armory.

The other group, Young Woo & Associates, was in attendance at the rally. Both groups showed up to make presentations at a forum hosted by Community Board 7 meeting just a week before the rally.

The Coalition, which is the beating heart of the Kingsbridge Armory Redevelopment Alliance (also known as KARA), helped defeat a proposal three years ago that would have turned the armory into a giant shopping mall. With the support of Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. and other local elected officials, KARA led an effort to kill the mall proposal in the City Council when the contractor refused to guarantee living wage jobs.

This time around, former KARA allies like Diaz, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union and other elected officials are strongly backing the ice center plan. (Councilman Fernando Cabrera, who represents the armory area, has stayed neutral so far.)

But the Coalition wants the winning developer to promise more community benefits. Their rally at Tolentine was designed to get more specifics from the groups on what they could offer the community.

Boggan was initially opposed to Young Woo’s proposal, which it calls Mircado Merabo, and envisions the armory as a futuristic town square that serves as both an artisanal market for local entrepreneurs and recreational space. But he was disappointed the ice center group had ignored the Coalition’s invitation to attend the rally.

Boggan, who has been teaching in the Bronx for more than 17 years, is a representative of the United Federation of Teachers at one of the six small schools on the Walton High School Campus, which is just a block away from the armory. Boggan says he has 35 years of ice sports-related experience and thinks the easy access to ice sports he had during his own childhood would be a great addition to the community.

Yet, during the rally, Boggan eventually began to consider the fact that Mircado Merabo also includes space for exercise and recreation. Mercado Mirabo would function as a flexible recreation space with basketball courts, soccer fields and other open space during the week. It would turn into an artisanal market only on weekends, explained Young Woo representatives Greg Carney and Adam Zucker during their presentation.

Boggan approached Young Woo’s representatives at the end of the rally, asking what they would do “for the kids.”
Carney and Zucker reiterated that beyond the provision of recreational areas, they would allocate money to the development of educational space in the north annex buildings (currently occupied by the National Guard), with a cap at $250,000. Boggan expressed disappointment with this amount, but was excited by other aspects of the bid.
(The ice center group says it will work to build a school on the annex site, but has not committed any money to the project. The group also said it had approached state military officials about moving the guard units, but the Bronx Times reported last week that, in fact, they had not.)

Boggan asserted that Carney and Zucker promised the basketball court and a rock climbing wall run by the group Brooklyn Boulders could be used from the hours of 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. for free by his students and would be reserved especially for those who attend elementary schools that do not have a gym.

“Many elements of a full education are lost without a gym,” Boggan said. “The kids need free access to this space.”

By the end of the rally, Boggan was in support of Young Woo’s plan. Despite Boggan’s personal love of skating, his ultimate concern is exercise for the children.

“Physical education is great for cognitive, social, and psychomotor skills,” Boggan said. “It makes for healthy and well-rounded kids, and that’s what I want from the armory.”

Boggan’s attitude towards Mercado Mirabo was echoed by Coalition leaders and many who had gathered for the rally.
McIntosh, Carney, and Zucker confirmed that Young Woo & Associates have agreed to sign a memorandum of understanding, but will only sign a list of community benefits principles after they have been contracted for the project.

The memorandum asserts Young Woo & Associates’ intent to support the Bronx in all community endeavors. The list of community benefits principles is far more extensive, including a living wage standard ($10 an hour plus benefits or $11.50 an hour without benefits), expansive community space, a prohibition of big box retail and the inclusion of a public school.

—Additional reporting by Alex Kratz

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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.