In an interview with Crain’s NY today, Mayor Bloomberg said the city will issue another request for proposals to redevelop the Kingsbridge Armory with a few new tweaks.
The announcement marks something of a victory for Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. who has been pushing hard for the mayor to re-issue an RFP for the Armory since releasing a report this past summer showing wide and varied interest from groups who want to use the Armory.
“I’m so happy that we’re working with the mayor and the administration and we’re moving forward,” Diaz told Crain’s.
After Diaz released the report, some were skeptical that groups interested would be able to provide the resources to actually develop the Armory. Many also believed Bloomberg, still hurting from having an administration-backed plan to turn the Armory into a shopping mall defeated overwhelmingly in the City Council two years ago, would not agree to re-issue an RFP.
At one point after the shopping mall project was killed, Bloomberg said he didn’t see the Armory, which has sat vacant for more than 15 years, being developed in the foreseeable future.
But Bloomberg told Crain’s he never gave up on the Armory project. And Howard Wolfson, the deputy mayor for economic development government affairs and communications, said groups have expressed interest in redeveloping the Armory, which is thought to be the largest in the world at nearly 600,000 square feet. (Update: A spokesperson for the mayor told us Wolfson has been working directly with Diaz’s office on the Armory issue.)
For the past few months, Councilman Fernando Cabrera, who’s district includes the Armory, has said he’s been pushing for movement on the Armory but wouldn’t go into detail.
Crain’s reported that the RFP will be similar to the first RFP, which called for a mix of commercial, retail, entertainment, recreational and community uses. This time around, the RFP will include consideration for other possible uses and the winning bidder will have the option to either buy or lease the building from the city.
One other note: The shopping mall plan for the Armory died when the Related Companies refused to include a guarantee of living wage jobs ($10 an hour, plus benefits or $11.50 an hour) at the completed project. The new RFP doesn’t call for living wage guarantees, but will include a preference for plans that create quality jobs. The so-called living wage bill being debated in the City Council now was born out of the Armory battle. The group Living Wage NYC told Crain’s that it is focused on passing the legislation, which would require developers that receive substantial city tax breaks and subsidies guarantee living wage jobs.
Bloomberg is delivering his State of the City address tomorrow at 1 p.m. at Morris High School.
Stay tuned to the Norwood News and Breaking Bronx for all the latest on Armory developments.
Find all of our past coverage of the Kingsbridge Armory saga here. (Take your time, it’s extensive.)
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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.
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Thanks for the armory update..
One Question: What’s an “RFP”? It seems to be a ‘request for proposal’ but is not explicitly explained. Seem this is a basic editorial slip-up. You can’t assume readers know all the alphabet soup out there.
Otherwise, great. Keep it coming.
-Ted
Good point, Ted. This is great feedback. We put “RFP” in the headline, but wrote out “request for proposals” in the first paragraph. We then switched back to RFP in the next paragraph, but that may not have been clear. Probably should have titled the post something like “Mayor Again Seeks Proposals to Redevelop the Armory” or something like that. And we should have explicitly said an request for proposals is often just referred to as an RFP. Anyway, thanks for the comment. Sometimes we get bogged down in all the government jargon and don’t do enough explaining in more simple terms, which is our goal.
–Alex Kratz, editor-in-chief