Portia Reiners

The “Hunts Point Heroes” mural at the Hyde Leadership Charter School.

Students celebrate Hunts Point’s waterfront and its ‘heroes’

Painted in brilliant colors, five familiar faces smile down on passersby on Hunts Point Avenue. The “Hunts Point Heroes” mural, designed by local teenagers and painted on wooden panels installed on the side of the Hyde Leadership Charter School, celebrates people who have dedicated their time to the community throughout the years.

The mural was completed last year, along with another, entitled “A Better Bronx” next to the entrance to Hunts Point Riverside Park on Edgewater Road. It, too, is the work of local youngsters who were brought together by the Brooklyn-based Groundswell, a non-profit organization that combines art and activism.

Each summer, Groundswell gathers a team of local people, age 14-21, and employs them to create a new mural in their neighborhood. The team members work together to design and create a piece that reflects their collective vision and conveys a message about social change.

“I think that murals speak to the community more than, you know, just saying what could be done, and I think it’s nice to look at the things that could happen if people put in the time and the effort,” said Shanice Rivea, a 16-year-old student at Hyde.

“It’s a way for young people to try to solve problems using creativity and to have something purposeful to do, that there is a real value to,” explained Amy Sananman, Groundswell’s founder.

The students did extensive research for each mural. For “Hunts Point Heroes,” said Moné Alexander, 16, “We were recognizing and praising the people that helped the community make a change.” Their work enshrines environmental activist Majora Carter, founder of Sustainable South Bronx, teacher and community organizer Sister Thomas, dancer Arthur Aviles, the co-founder of Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, health worker Megan Charlop, co-founder of Greening for Breathing and Gilbert Valle, the “mayor of Spofford Avenue” known for his work with young people.

A junior at Hyde, Alexander said he and his team mates interviewed their subjects and made sure to feature a theme for each that suited their life, work and personality.

“We went on our own to time to talk with Chickie,” said another Hyde student, 17- year-old Charlie Rodriguez, using the affectionate nickname of Gilbert Valle, the owner of the Candy Box on Spofford Avenue. “We’re friends with him. A lot of us visit the store a lot.”

Rodriguez explained that the students began each mural with a general idea of the face or body they wanted. “Then we drew them on pieces of paper, planning it over and over again until we got everything perfect, and then we started the first paintings on the wood.” The students worked on the mural over the course of a few months during the school year, staying after school a few times a week to plan and paint.

“A Better Bronx,” which portrays people enjoying the waterfront park, was “much more research-based,” said Alexander, who worked on both murals. “That one was really about the community and environmental ideas.”

Knowing that their neighborhood is afflicted by more than its fair share of industrial pollution, the students wanted a theme that encouraged environmental awareness. So they decided to create a mural that celebrates the clean-up of the Bronx River and the creation of parks and greenways that give residents access to their waterfront.

The mural project will continue for another year, and three more murals are planned. “We want these kids to look around and see what possibilities are there for change,” said Sananman. “Once a kid does a project like this, they get hooked. They see how they can create something monumental.”

The students offered glowing reviews of their experience.

“I loved Joel and I loved Crystal,” Alexander said of Crystal Bruno and Joel Bergner, the two professional artists who guided the students on the heroes mural. “They were like the best people ever and we just chilled and it was fun painting and we interviewed people. We had laughs, we’d talk about songs, we ate M&M’s like all the time,” she added mischievously.

“It was good because we were like a unit,” Rivea said. “A lot of people have said that they liked it and that we should continue doing it. I would love to paint murals to make a change.”

Now in its seventeenth year, Groundswell has completed over 400 works of public art throughout the city and in Newark, New Jersey. Streetwise, the Hunts Point mural program which organized the new murals, was designed with support from the Rockefeller Foundation Cultural Innovation Fund and supported by the New York City Department of Transportation and the Majora Carter Group.

Marguerite Adams

Majora Carter paused at Spofford on a walking tour she ledt to show her plans for development.

Majora Carter Group campaigns to redevelop shuttered jail

Rita Jones sat handcuffed. Her mother stumbled into the courtroom, whiskey bottle in hand. Because there was no responsible parent to care for her, the judge sentenced Jones to a juvenile detention facility.

The scene was enacted on the stage of the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, but it was drawn from everyday life.

It was the climax of “Memories of the Future,” a play produced by Theatre of the Oppressed NYC in collaboration with Majora Carter, the Hunts Point native who hopes the performance will advance her efforts to develop the site of the notorious Spofford juvenile detention center to create housing and businesses. Each scene represented a real-life experience for the cast, according to Melanie Crean, a professor at Parsons The New School for Design.

The play followed the life of a girl and her family over the course of 10 years. It looked at the availability and affordability of childcare, peer pressure, bullying, gang activity and the structure of the family court system as paving stones on the path to Spofford for the 15-year-old Jones.

“The court system needs to change,” Jones said after her performance. “There needs to be more of an effort towards keeping families together instead of breaking them apart. They need to find more resources before deciding to lock people up.”

“These issues have almost become the norm,” Carter said. “It shouldn’t be that way.”

By building housing for middle-income people, along with shopping opportunities that now lure them to Manhattan, she hopes to encourage successful people to live in Hunts Point. She says she wants “to harness the power of gentrification,” arguing that as long as the only development in the neighborhood targets the poor with programs that expect them to remain poor, the cycle of poverty can’t be broken.

At the conclusion of the performance, members of the audience were encouraged to come up on stage and offer their own reactions. Melissa Lomba, director of special projects for the Majora Carter Group, stressed to the audience that they were not just “spectators” but “spect-ACTORS.” She wanted them to know that the Majora Carter Group would use the audience’s feedback.

Carter hopes to win the right to demolish the forbidding white building on Spofford Avenue and replace it with rental apartments and upscale commerce. To do that she will need to find a partner with deep pockets and to get the okay to take over the site from the city, which is expected to begin asking for competing proposals this summer.

At rhe performance, Carter broke the ice by being the first person to enact a scene on stage, and after that, the cast members had no trouble getting the other audience members to follow suit. Anna Ramos, a longtime Hunts Point resident, was encouraged by the Carter Group’s efforts to redevelop the Spofford site.

“It was really good to get the responses we wanted,” Carter said. “We can plan for bigger aspirations in this community.”

Joe Hirsch

Extensive repairs have greatly improved life for tenants at 621-625 Manida Street.

Developer revives neglected Manida St. building

Carmen Rodriguez will never forget the time her then 12-year-old daughter told a friend that she didn’t live on Manida Street.

“She was embarrassed of where she lived,” said Rodriguez, who has lived at 623 Manida Street—part of the apartment complex infamously known as “Hunts Point’s House of Horrors”—for 16 years. “I don’t think any child should feel that way about where they live.”

Rodriguez’s daughter no longer has to be ashamed of her address. A new landlord has completed the nearly $12 million renovation undertaken a little over two years ago, completely transforming the buildings.

“It was as extensive a rehab as you can get without knocking the buildings down,” said Eugene Schneur, the managing director of Omni New York LLC, the real estate development company founded by former Major League baseball player Mo Vaughn, that owns 7,400 units of affordable housing across three states.

Omni acquired the complex in November 2010 after the government agency that held the mortgage forced the former landlord out. At the time of the acquisition the buildings had 1,871 in combined violations and were among the most run-down in all of New York City.

“It was just a horrific situation,” said Schneur. He detailed problems that ranged from broken lobby doors to water damage that was so severe a tenant could literally look down and see the neighbor on the floor below.

“We never had hot water or heat when we needed it,” Rodriguez said. “You wouldn’t believe how we were living. It was like we were in jail cells or a haunted factory.”

“We were pretty much living in abandoned buildings,” said Alberto Rodriguez, Carmen’s brother. “There were crack heads coming in and out all the time. A lot of prostitution.”

These were the kinds of conditions Vaughn set out to rectify when he founded Omni in 2004. Vaughn, who played his last game with the New York Mets in 2003, said he wanted to give back to New York for the opportunity he was given to finish his baseball career in the city.

“Affordable housing is the only thing in life where everyone one wins,” Vaughn said in an interview. “The tenants win, the city wins, the developer wins, everyone wins.”

Repairs at the Manida Street buildings began in January, 2011. Rodriguez said the tenants were confident that they had the right landlord after he and other tenant leaders met with Omni and were taken on tours of other Bronx buildings being renovated by the company. After those meetings, the tenants pressed for Omni to be chosen to acquire the buildings.

By the time the project was completed, the Manida Street complex was unrecognizable.The lobby and hallways feature terracotta tiles. Each apartment has a new kitchen and bathroom, both fitted with marble countertops.New, high-efficiency boilers, which can be controlled on-site or remotely, have replaced the heating system that was constantly breaking down.

In an interview, Ahmed Taylor, Omni’s vice president of field operations, described the process of renovating the buildings. First came an overhaul of the buildings’ security system. Now, the only way to enter the buildings is with a security card. Non-residents, who plagued the tenants when they turned tricks or sold drugs from empty apartments, can no longer get in.

In addition, said Taylor, “Every square inch of these buildings is able to be seen on camera. There are no blind spots,” he said. Omni also employs a team of ex-police officers who visit the site at least once per day.

Perimeter lighting completes the beefed-up security. Taylor believes the lighting, along with the cameras, will lead to a reduction in crime. “The cameras are a much better deterrent than a $12 an hour security guard,” he said. “People know they’re on video.”

Following Vaughn’s vision, the residents’ rent remained what it was before the renovation, and it continues to be regulated by the state.

The project was particularly rewarding to the Rodriguez siblings. While Taylor estimates that roughly half the current tenants lived there in the bad old days, Alberto and Carmen Rodriguez toughed it out for the better part of 20 and 16 years, respectively. Alberto Rodriguez likened his living conditions to the South Bronx of the 1970s, when so much of the borough was devastated by fire and abandonment.

He had trouble putting his thoughts about the transformation of his home into words, so his sister helped him out.

“Now I can say that we are human again,” Ms. Rodriguez said.

The environmental non-profit on Lafayette Avenue is looking to help turn things around in the neighborhood, which rates dead last in recycling in the city. The group will work closely with another South Bronx non-profit, the Highbridge Community Development Corporation, which manages the Southwest Bronx buildings the pilot project will be centered in.

“Residents of the South Bronx who live in large apartment buildings face numerous obstacles that make it difficult to recycle on a regular basis,” said Sustainable South Bronx’s executive director, Michael Brotchner, adding his group “aims to produce concrete findings on how recycling can best be promoted in the South Bronx.”

The project “will help us kick-start recycling in a set of buildings that is representative of buildings throughout the community,” Brotchner said.

The grant was provided by Ekocycle, a collaborative venture launched by celebrity recording artist will.i.am and the Coca-Cola company. The company promotes the use of recycled materials in the production of clothing and other items.

“By teaming up with Sustainable South Bronx and Highbridge area residents, Ekocycle’s mission is to help kick off this pilot recycling program and encourage residents to do their part to contribute to a more sustainable city,” said will.i.am.

The initiative is slated to begin on May 20.

Starlight Park opens to tenth annual running of Bronx River event

Only one team won the Bronx River Flotilla’s first ever Starlight 5K Canoe Challenge—a team calling itself In the Woods, which finished the canoe race in 55 minutes—but they weren’t the only ones able to celebrate the annual event.

“When people get out on the river, they begin to get what it’s all about,” said Linda Cox, Executive Director of the Bronx River Alliance.

Some 200 river users came to Starlight Park on May 11 for the Flotilla’s 10th annual running on a cloudy Saturday afternoon, one day after the park officially opened. Eighty paddlers were divided into two teams for the five-leg, timed canoe race on the river. But although the race was the main event, attendees also had a chance to get acquainted with the new park, and to find out more about initiatives meant to promote the public’s use of the river.

“This is the perfect audience,” said Carol Samol, Bronx director of the city’s planning department, who was manning a booth from which she could inform the public about the city’s plans for redeveloping areas near the Sheridan Expressway and the Harlem River.

Other booths presented less studious options, such as the one manned by Morris Heights Health Center’s “Changing the Odds” program. Children gathered there to have their faces painted with flowers and colorful shapes, or as their favorite superheroes.

“It’s a great time,” said Alexis Smallwood, who is training at Sustainable South Bronx’s Environmental Stewardship Academy. Smallwood brought her 7-year-old son, Alexander Jones-Baker, who spent the day running to the riverbank to see the canoes, his face painted like Iron Man. Smallwood, who has been learning about protecting the environment at the academy, said he wanted to see more nature-focused events around the city.

“It’s something that could benefit other boroughs, not just the Bronx,” he said.

After the flotilla race, many attendees took canoes out on the river, paddling along the hidden stretch of the river that divides West Farms and Parkchester.

“The Bronx looks really different from the river,” said Cox.