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Armory Secrecy


When it comes to choosing a development proposal for the Kingsbridge Armory is the city interested in what the community thinks, or isn’t it?

Does it want the process to be open and transparent or doesn’t it?

If our cover story on the bizarre confidentiality agreement the Economic Development Corporation wants Armory task force members to sign is any indication, the simple answers to these questions is that it isn’t and it doesn’t.

The whole point of inviting community leaders and elected officials to participate in the process of selecting a developer is to seek their advice on what proposal would best suit northwest Bronx neighborhoods. If task force members can’t talk to anyone in their own communities about the proposals (in addition to the safeguard of masking which proposal belongs to which developer), how can they develop a reasonable sense of what would best serve the community?

Congressman Jose Serrano and Council Member Oliver Koppell made the sensible judgment that they would be abdicating their responsibility to their constituents if they kept secret the details of one of the biggest area development projects in decades.

The EDC deserves credit for incorporating task force recommendations into the final request for proposals. But if the city blocks task force members from being able to talk about the various proposals, it raises the concern that the task force is just window dressing on a done deal.

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.

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