Photo by Adi Talwar
Two neighborhoods falling within Community Board 7 will be the subject of an independent rezoning study by the board, in a move that revisits a request community stakeholders made years ago when rezoning efforts were happening in other parts of the district.
But the New York City Department of City Planning (DCP), the agency tasked to devise the overall makeup of neighborhoods, will likely reject any plans to down-zone, a request community stakeholders have long sought.
The board has now scheduled a brainstorming forum for Nov. 16 to gauge residents on how sections of Kingsbridge Heights and Bedford Park, home to a sliver of private homes settled among the droves of high-rise apartment buildings that largely circle the landscape, can remain that way. With a push to resolve the affordable housing crisis, the de Blasio administration is pressing for more development, a move many believe will further congest the already narrow neighborhoods, according to residents.
“The mayor’s office has a mandate to build as much affordable housing as possible,” Sally Dunford, executive director of West Bronx Housing, a nonprofit housing resource group and Norwood resident, said. “They believe – and rightly so – that the largest cause of homelessness is the lack of affordable housing. I basically agree with the mayor’s office on this. But there has to be some common sense along with it — and these streets are just way too narrow to support tall buildings.”
Working on the independent study is Paula Luria Caplan, CEO of The Collective for Community Culture and Environment (CCCE), an urban planning firm. Caplan, hired by the board at a total cost of $25,000, had worked as deputy director of planning and development for the Bronx borough president and was a registered lobbyist for Boyle Auto Wreckers in 2009.
“[W]e will be looking at how to suggest fine tuning the zoning map so that it reflects the desires of the community,” said Caplan, attending the Oct. 18 Community Board 7 meeting that confirmed her hiring. “The recommendation that we make will be what we think City Planning will do and then they do their own study, but our objective is to give you something that will be ‘good for you.’”
Studying Bedford Park
The Bedford Park area studied stretches from East 201st to East 204th streets, a section zoned as an R8, a distinction that allows apartment buildings 10 to 12 stories high. Longtime neighbors have pressed upon the city to down-zone the neighborhood to an R5B, seeing it as impossible for high-rise buildings to re-occupy spaces given the narrow streets that would toughen the search for parking, pack the overly burdened schools and stretch public transportation.
The purchase of 267 E. 202nd St. in Bedford Park by a developer intending to build an apartment building maximizing the neighborhood’s current zoning laws became a jumping off point for community stakeholders to broach the subject of downzoning once again.
“The push from the mayor is build, build, build,” Barbara Stronczer, president of the Bedford Mosholu Community Association (BMCA) and Community Board 7 member, said at a recent BMCA meeting. “When you live in a community where you have certain character, you don’t want to lose that either.”
Sheila Sanchez, a community activist attending the BMCA meeting on Nov. 2, noted that the plan to build more housing doesn’t appear aligned with the need to increase demand for “more schools, more supermarkets, more everything.” For schools, the prospect of more students will indeed pose a problem. Bedford Park and Kingsbridge Heights fall within School District 10, one of the more overcrowded school districts in the Bronx. A briefing compiled by the New York City Council in March 2016 showed the School Construction Authority would have to build a total 5,192 seats to fix the overcrowding issue, which may be years in the making. Within the Norwood, Bedford Park and Kingsbridge Heights neighborhoods, a total of 3,384 are currently needed.
An increased population in Bedford Park and Kingsbridge Heights can also strain the already crowded subway system. A report by the Straphangers Campaign, a rider advocacy group, pegged the 2, 4, and 5 trains, subway lines that are within walking distance of Bedford Park and Kingsbridge Heights, as some of the most crowded. Passengers riding the B and D, train lines that fall between both neighborhoods, have a higher chance of getting a seat, according to the report.
And should more development come to the neighborhoods, developers are not obligated to build in-house garages, a stipulation nixed following the passage of new zoning amendments under the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing and Zoning for Quality and Affordability.
In a statement to the Norwood News, Joe Marzulli, a DCP spokesman, said while “community efforts inform our work,” downzoning is not an option for Bedford Park. “The agency has examined the Bedford Park area and found that the mixed development that already exists in the area would not support a planning rationale for a downzoning. This has been communicated to CB7 on multiple occasions, most recently in May 2016,” Marzulli wrote. Much of that decision is driven by the overwhelming number of apartment buildings matching the zoning distinction. “However, DCP is available to advise on issues that would be appropriately addressed through zoning changes and issues that would be better addressed through other means.”
Editor’s Note: The brainstorming forum is scheduled for Nov. 16 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Sister Annunciata Bethell Senior Center, 243 E. 204th St. For more information, call (718) 933-5650. The published version of this article has a caption that incorrectly states the location of the nine-story apartment building. It is at the corner of East 205th Street and Lisbon Avenue.
admin
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.
English
Arabic
Bengali
Chinese (Simplified)
French
Spanish
The address noted on the image at the top of this piece is incorrect. The location displayed in the image is E Mosholu Pkwy S between Lisbon Pl and E 204th St.
As a resident of the area, I am greatly concerned about the construction of high-rise buildings in the neighborhood, especially on the side streets. But before addressing that, I just want to point out that the photo caption is incorrect and misleading. The private house in the foreground is on E. Mosholu Parkway South, on the eastern corner of Lisbon Place (not Stuben Ave.) and the white multi-story building is actually across the street, on the west side of Lisbon Place. It can only be considered “feet” from the private house in the way that any distance can be measured in feet. Further, there are actually two private houses between the house in the foreground and the red brick building in the background, though the angle of the shot makes them look adjacent. The red brick building is a pre-war 7-story building and the 9-story white brick building is recent construction, maybe three years old, which replaced a single-family home with several outbuildings, which provided parking for about 10 cars. Typical of the area, the block is a mix of private homes and apartment buildings, small and large, and has been for the better part of a century. Recently, two structures on the block were demolished and replaced with taller buildings, though not high rises. First, a single-story commercial building that was once a bodega was replaced by a 4- or 5-story medical building (not adding at all to the housing stock, affordable or otherwise). It took a long time to complete and there were many days during construction when the street was inaccessible. More recently, a 2-story private residence was replaced by a 4-story 8-unit apartment building, now completed but not yet occupied. In the past few months, two more private homes which sit next to each, one with parking for about 12 vehicles, have been sold. I do no know if they went to the same buyer, but speculation is that they could potentially be replaced by quite a large structure. So not only is the aesthetic of our quite tree-lined street changing, but we have lost 10 parking spots, gained 35 families, and face the possibility of losing another 12 spaces to a building that could conceivably house 50 or more families. I would hate to see much more construction, and though I live in an apartment building, the private homes and the proximity to the park make the neighborhood so nice. I urge moderation in any future plans.