Photo by José A. Giralt
After an almost two-year wait, a new Chase Bank branch has opened at 7 E. Burnside Avenue, just east of Jerome Avenue on the border of Fordham Heights and Mount Hope, close to the University Heights border. A former Chase branch located at 5 W. Burnside Avenue closed in October 2019, serving a blow to the local community. The impact of that closure was compounded by the subsequent closure of a local Amalgamated Bank branch in September 2020, as reported.
Elected officials, including Congressman Ritchie Torres (NY-15) and Assemblyman Victor Pichardo (A.D. 86) delivered remarks at the grand opening on Monday, July 26, welcoming Chase back into the community. Torres’ visit was brief, but he thanked the bank for “helping [to] build a better Bronx.”
For his part, Pichardo, who serves as chair of the banking committee in Albany, and who has worked to keep banks from divesting from low-income communities, reiterated Torres’ thanks, praising Chase for staying close to the Mt. Hope and University Heights communities. “The fact that Chase not only is here, is hiring Bronxites, and more importantly, is making a serious and incredible investment in our communities says something about what they’re trying to do here,” he said.
Photo by José A. Giralt
The communities in question make up some of Bronx Community District 5 (CD5). Data from NYC.gov shows that 35.6 percent of the population in this district have incomes that fall below the poverty threshold defined by the City. By contrast, just 26.2 percent of Bronxites have incomes below the poverty threshold. Meanwhile, only 19 percent of New York City residents have incomes which fall below the same poverty threshold.
Local community activists like Democratic nominee for District 14 City Council, Pierina Sanchez, who is also a member of the Jerome Avenue Revitalization Collaborative (JARC), have fought to push financial institutions from abandoning local branches that are desperately needed in these under-served neighborhoods. City Council District 14 includes CB5, and Sanchez has led several protests to keep institutions like Amalgamated and Chase from closing their branches.
After the event, she spoke with Norwood News about the economic impact on local communities of the closure of “brick and mortar” branches. “It is not a coincidence that they are closing here,” she said. “We are one of many communities that are economically depressed, that are largely a community of color, that is seeing this flight of capital.”
She described the physical presence of banks in neighborhoods as being integral to a thriving community. “We’re also talking to them [Amalgamated and Chase banks] about ways that they can invest in our small businesses here,” Sanchez said. “Whether that’s making credit available … as well as funding our local community organizations, these conversations are ongoing.”
Sanchez added that community boards and local organizations, “see this as a model for how these major institutions, with a lot of access to capital, can work with a community of color.”
According to Deborah Charlemagne, market director for the Bronx West market of Chase Bank, finding a new Chase location in the neighborhood was relatively quick. She estimates the distance from the old address on West Burnside Avenue to the new one on East Burnside to be about 250 feet. “I don’t think [the search] took long to get from that location to this one,” Charlemagne told Norwood News.
Instead, she explained that the pandemic restrictions were to blame for a longer- than-usual timeframe in getting the construction work finished at the new branch. “[The new location] was a shoe store so we had to build it out to make it a bank and then COVID happened, so we had a little delay in construction.”
Photo by José A. Giralt
Norwood News recently reportedthat representatives from Ridgewood Savings Bank issued a statement on Thursday, July 15, confirming the opening in August of the group’s new branch at 320 East 204th Street in Norwood, which will replace the location at 3445 Jerome Avenue, which is closing.
Meanwhile, the movement to open more community-owned banks is gaining further momentum and has received the support of a number of community leaders and elected officials in recent years. The economic impact of the pandemic has further mobilized the movement.
An ongoing issue for any bank is, of course, robberies, of which there have been quite few over the years in the Northwest Bronx and elsewhere, even as recently as June 2021, as reported.
In terms of long-term viability, Norwood News had reached out to the City’s Independent Budget Office (IBO) in January 2021 to get a sense of the overall impact of the pandemic on Wall Street revenues in 2020, and to understand if the impact had had a significant effect on the availability of local bank branches across the City. Despite reports that some firms (including some financial firms) had left the city amid the crisis, it transpired that Wall Street actually had something of a bumper year.
According to an IBO report published in January 2021, New York Stock Exchange member firms profits soared to $27.6 billion over the first half of 2020, and the IBO projected that profits would top $47 billion for the year as a whole—a total exceeded only in 2009 according to the IBO, when Wall Street was rebounding from steep losses at the onset of the Great Recession. The IBO also forecast at that time that Wall Street profits would subside to $25 billion in 2021 and then hold in the $23 billion to $25 billion range over the rest of the financial plan period.
The city’s economy was impacted by the pandemic of course. According to the IBO, it was due to collect $11.3 billion less tax revenue than had been anticipated —a 4.2 percent revenue shortfall that the IBO said at the time tested the city’s ability to meet its mandate to maintain a balanced budget.
The IBO provided us with an updated assessment of Wall Street’s position as of May 23, 2021, saying, “Wall Street profits were $50.9 billion last year, up over 80 percent from 2019.” The representative added, “But we expect profits will fall to more usual levels over the next few years.”
In mid-July, CNBC reported that JPMorgan Chase posted Q2 revenues of $31.4 billion, exceeding the bank’s estimated revenue of $29.9 billion.
Meanwhile, with 6,000 customers, including some which are businesses, and $300 million in deposits at the Chase Bank Burnside Avenue branch, Charlemagne expects room for growth. She is committed to making sure her employer gives back to a community where she, herself, has roots. “I grew up, actually, on the other side, East Tremont,” she recalled. “So, I used to come here, Burnside [Avenue]. … I definitely have a vested interest in making sure that this community survives.”
*Síle Moloney contributed to this story.
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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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