The Bronx Ink

Yancey Field is a new track and soccer field built as a compromise to Bronx residents on top of one of the Yankee Stadium parking lots. (NIGEL CHIWAYA/Bronx Ink)

The parking was supposed to get better. That’s what New York Yankees president Randy Levine promised Bronx residents and city council members back in March 2006 when the team was negotiating for a new Yankee Stadium. By adding 3,000 parking spots, Levine said, Yankee fans would not need to cruise the streets looking for curbside parking spots. The result would be a less congested South Bronx.

Bronx residents don’t see it that way. According to them, things have actually gotten worse since the new stadium went up.

“It’s a nightmare,” said Joyce Hogi, who has lived on 165th Street and the Grand Concourse for over 30 years. “There are still people that are looking to park on the streets, but now the police block off 161st Street on game days. I have friends in Highbridge and it takes them two hours to get through.”

Decreased street congestion was just one of the four key promises the Yankees made in 2006. At that city council meeting Levine also pledged to create new public parks to replace those lost during stadium construction, to establish a benefits fund for Bronx non-profits, and to provide 1,000 permanent new jobs at the stadium.

But five years after the team broke ground on the new stadium, the parking garages sit half empty during game days, the benefits fund has come under fire for the way it manages the money, and no one is exactly sure how many Bronx residents work in the stadium.

While the city may have determined that the new Yankee Stadium was worth over $60 million to New Yorkers, those who live next door to it in the South Bronx believe is not nearly as valuable.

“All you have to do is look around to see that it wasn’t worth it,” said Ramon Jimenez, who runs the For the South Bronx Coalition, a community group that has been trying to pressure the Yankees into living up to their promises since 2009.  “The new Yankee Stadium has not added to the community.”

Requests to the Yankees organization and city council members Helen Foster, Joel Rivera and Maria Carmen del Arroyo for comment were denied. Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz did not return calls to the Bronx Ink.

Parking garages: The increase that nobody needed

“The same number of cars and buses already come to the stadium.  However, today, they just park all over the street, and all over the community… It causes disruption.  So we’re trying to fix it. By building the new parking spots, the cars will get out of the community.  Won’t circle around the community and disrupt it.  And will go into parking lots.”  -Randy Levine to New York City Council, March 28, 2006

As part of the stadium proposal, the Yankees asked the city and state to build about 3,000 new parking spaces. Critics balked at this request, citing the fact that 7,000 parking spaces already existed and the current stadium would seat almost 4,000 fewer fans. Additionally, the stadium is located along the busiest subway station in the Bronx and the MTA planned to build a Metro North station a few blocks away, providing car-free transportation for Yankees fans from upstate New York. Finally, even the best parking garages wouldn’t attract those that were determined to park for free on the street.

“Additional parking spots doesn’t necessarily mean the fans are going to elect to park in those garages,” said Councilmember Maria Arroyo at the 2006 meeting.  “And as long as there’s free community parking, they may opt to do that before they go into the garage.”

Nonetheless, the City Council approved the Stadium along with the new parking facilities in April 2006 and the city’s Economic Development financed the parking garages with $237 million in public bonds. Three new garages were built: one adjacent to the new stadium and two across 161Street behind the old stadium. The city selected Bronx Parking Development Corporation; a company located 121 miles north of the Bronx in Hudson, New York, to operate the garages.

Five years later, the critics have been proven correct. Though the Yankees have drawn more fans than any other team in baseball since the stadium opened, the garages have struggled to reach 60 percent capacity. In fact, city records show that the parking garages were only 45 percent full during September 2011, when Yankee closer Mariano Rivera recorded his baseball-record 602nd career save.

The anemic performance of the garages has caused Bronx Parking to repeatedly alter its financial projections. The company expects to bring in only $12 million in revenue from the garages in 2012, down from the $22.6 million it projected in September 2010.

On top of the empty garages, Bronx Parking must repay the public bonds issued in 2006 and must make two payments of $6.9 million to the city in April and October of each year. Facing a revenue shortfall, financial records show that the company has had to dip into its cash reserves to make the last three payments, withdrawing $2.3 million in October of 2011. With only $9.2 million remaining in its reserves and facing a projected deficit of $8.3 million, Bronx Parking will have little choice but to reach into its reserves once again next year. The company’s own financial projects show that it is on pace to exhaust those reserves by April 2013.

And in direct contradiction to Levine’s promise, fans are still parking on the streets. “Seasoned fans that know they can find a spot on the street do that,” said Hogi. “It’s gotten so bad that we’ve tried to get a resident parking permit. The garages have not freed up the streets at all.”

Faced with an embarrassing default, the city has begun searching for exit strategies. In September, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. announced a plan to tear down one of the garages and replace it with a hotel. Diaz, who admitted that the parking lots face “severe financial problems” in his 2011 state of the borough address, believes that replacing garage 8­– the 1970’s-era garage that stood next to the old stadium­– with a 200-300 bed “world class hotel” would be a win-win for the Bronx and Bronx Parking.

“This development would serve as a new tourism hub for our borough, while creating hundreds of good jobs for Bronx residents and greatly enhancing the area surrounding Yankee Stadium,” said Diaz.

Community Board 4, which voted against the new Stadium in 2005, is on board with the new plan. And while William Casari, a librarian at Hostos Community College who sits on the board’s parks commission, would rather see the garage turned into parkland, a hotel is better than nothing.

“If it’s done correctly, sure; it’s better than a parking garage,” Casari said. “But it’d have to be a Marriott or something. Not some government-assisted thing.”

Public Parks: The long wait to play

“There will be baseball and softball fields on the site of the original stadium, where Bronx and City kids will play on the same hallowed ground that Yankee greats from Ruth to Gehrig, to DeMaggio to Mantle, to Berra, to Jackson, to Rivera and Jeter have played. The new park will have a new running track, a new soccer field, new baseball and softball fields, new basketball courts, new handball courts, and new tennis facilities.”
                                                       -Randy Levine to New York City Council, March 28, 2006

Yancey Field is a racetrack and soccer field that sits across the street from the new Yankee Stadium. Every morning, even before she has her breakfast, Hadiyah Colbert runs laps around the track. Colbert, originally from Yonkers, is quite fond of the track.

“This one is cleaner,” said Colbert, who moved to the Bronx seven years ago.  There used to be garbage in the old one.”

The track that Colbert runs on is part of a grand compromise that the parks department and the Yankees made with Bronx residents. The new Yankee stadium was built on top of Macomb’s Dam and Mullaly parks. To replace the destroyed parkland, the parks department spent $195 million rebuilding Macomb’s Dam Park across the street from the stadium. Yancey Field–part of the new park–sits on top of one of the stadium’s parking garages.

It didn’t come easily. Originally scheduled to open in 2009, Yancey field didn’t open until 2010, which meant that Bronx residents went four years without a track. Colbert made do by running around the remainder of Mullaly Park, but added that she would have preferred the old park.

“They didn’t need to build a new stadium,” Colbert said. “I think the money could have been put to better use.”

Baseball players have had to wait even longer. The area lost its only regulation baseball field when Macomb’s Dam Park was paved over. The parks department promised to replace it when Heritage Field–a complex of three ball fields built in the footprint of the old stadium–by 2010, but delays in the demolition of the old Yankee Stadium pushed the park’s opening date back to fall 2011. The park opened for one day in late November, when Little Leagues competed on the field. The park was then shuttered for the winter the next day. Casari said that he has noticed parks officers shooing residents away.

“Two guys with big bags for baseball bats were headed toward the field,” Casari said, “and the officers took them off the field.”

When they finally open to the public, the ball fields will require a permit to play on. While it children under 18 will be able to obtain a permit for free, adults will have to pay, which Jimenez said makes them less attractive to the community.

“The old parks were open,” Jimenez said. “This just doesn’t replace the old parks.”

Community Benefits Fund: money with no oversight

“As part of the benefits agreement that we’re negotiating, we’re talking about putting a very sizeable amount of money  — I’ll give you a ballpark right now, about $700,000 a year, which, for each of 40 years, which will go to a committee… There will be a grant apparatus set up.  That everybody in the community will come, make an application, and the people in the area, in the community, will decide which is appropriate, which is prioritized, and which is not.  -Randy Levine to New York City Council, March 28, 2006

If the parking situation irritates Hogi, the Community Benefits Fund makes her seethe. To Hogi, the fund is another example of the lack of input given to the people of the Bronx.

“Nobody knows how much money is in there and how it’s handed out,” Hogi said. “It’s demoralizing to the community to be so left out of the loop.”

Despite its name, the Yankee Stadium Community Benefits Fund operates independently of the community and the Yankees. Created in 2006 as part of an agreement between the team and four Bronx politicians, the fund is a non-profit organization that handles $800,000 worth of grants provided annually by the Yankees. The fund has been a magnet for contention since its inception. While the Yankees said they began donating money annually in 2006, the fund’s committee wasn’t established until 2008.

According to the fund’s 2008 and 2009 tax documents, it has distributed over $1.6 million to several Bronx non-profit organizations. Records show that the Highbridge Community Life Center and the Highbridge Voices children choir received grants of $20,000 and $7,500, respectively, in 2009.  However, groups outside of the community, like the Manhattan-based New York Road Runners club, which received a grant of $16,250 in 2009, also have access to the money.

“That money was supposed to benefit the people in the South Bronx,” said Jimenez. “It’s supposed to be for those who had to deal with the disruption the stadium caused. How does that money go to Throgs Neck and Riverdale?”

The fund came under further fire in September, when the New York Post reported that several groups without non-profit status were receiving grants. The groups in question include El Maestro, a Foxhurst boxing gym that was for-profit when it received $5,100 of sports equipment in 2009, and Flo-bert Ltd., a Manhattan tap-dance troupe that last filled out tax forms in 2007 yet still received $2,000 in 2009. Flo-bert’s non-profit status was revoked in 2010.

Serafin Mariel, the fund’s president and the former chief executive of National Bank, refused to comment or provide copies of the fund’s annual reports to the Bronx Ink. “I’m sorry, I don’t speak to reporters,” Mariel said.

Jobs: the unproven investment

“This new stadium will create thousands of construction jobs, and at a minimum, as President of the Yankees, I’m telling you 1,000 new, permanent additional to what we have, new permanent jobs at the new stadium. And they will be good jobs… A commitment by the Yankees to significant Bronx employment.”
                                                   - Randy Levine to the New York City Council, March 28, 2006

In the same agreement that created the fund, the Yankees also promised that 25 percent of all new jobs created at the new Yankee stadium would be reserved for locals. It is difficult to verify whether this promise has been fulfilled, however, because the Yankees have not provided figures.

Even so, Levine’s promise of 1,000 permanent jobs rings hollow. A 2009 report by former New York State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky revealed that the Yankees reported to the city’s Industrial Agency that they intended to add only 15 full-time jobs in 2009. And while the Yankees disclosed in a 2008 application for public funding that they would add 1,100 contract jobs, the majority of those jobs were in concessions.

If Bronx residents are outraged by the lack of transparency, they are powerless to combat it. Only five people signed the community benefits agreement: Levine, former Borough President Adolfo Carrion, and council members Arroyo, Maria Baez, and Joel Rivera. Only the politicians that signed the document have the legal standing to enforce its terms, and both Carrion and Baez are out of office.

This lack of community input has caused the community benefits agreement to be widely criticized as a sham that was thrown together to help the Yankees get their stadium.

“I’d give an ‘F’ to whoever drew up that benefits agreement,” said Jimenez, “if I thought they were drawing it up in the interests of the community.”

Bettina Damiani, Project Director at Good Jobs New York, a watchdog group that tracks government subsidies, summarized the community’s legal woes by saying: “there is no CBA – not a real one anyway – at Yankee Stadium.”

Unhappy anniversary

For Hogi, the anniversary of the groundbreaking is not one she cares to mark. In fact, these days she does her best to avoid the stadium altogether.

“If I have to be out driving on the game day I go all the way east and come around,” Hogi said. Part of her reason for staying away is to avoid the traffic, but part of it is to escape the irritating feeling of being right.

“Those of us that were really fighting the intrusion,” Hogi said. “Everything that we said would happen, has happened.”

Students at P.S. 73 warm up for their health lesson.

At 8:15 am Thursday, nearly 30 4th graders sent mini tremors through P.S. 73.

“Who can last longer than Mr. Rios?” said Juan Ramon Rios, director of Healthy Highbridge. He was trying to get children half his height through a warmup routine of jumping jacks.

Despite all the activity, 37 percent of the students in this class are overweight or obese, according to body mass index measurements that Rios and his team at Highbridge Community Life calculated this week. Two classes even measured in at 59 percent.

The overall rate of overweight students at the Anderson Avenue elementary school is consistent with that of the entire South Bronx, where 40 percent of students are overweight or obese. That percentage is higher than the alarming national level, which the American Heart Association estimates at 33 percent.

Healthy Highbridge meets with fourth and fifth graders at P.S. 73 once a week to combat the repercussions of obesity in an area that has a lot of obstacles to staying healthy. In the South Bronx, 38 percent of the residents live below the poverty line, according to the 2010 American Community Survey. Highbridge also has too few supermarkets to meet the needs of its 34,000 residents, a 2008 city study says. Rios said these factors lead to poor food choices and, by extension, poor health for area children.

“We’re losing a generation,” Rios said three days earlier from his cramped basement offices at Highbridge Community Life Center. “All of this is going to create a health cost”—that is, unless everyone gets moving.

After the exercise, Rios instructed students on how to take their pulses.

“Why did we do that?” Rios asked as 60 index and middle fingers pressed against 30 wrists.

“To lose some weight,” said Fatumata, 9.

“Because it could be fun to exercise,” said Shantel, also 9.

“Because we need to get exercise,” said 10-year-old Jonah.

These children are all participants in Healthy Highbridge’s year-long health education program, funded by a $30,000 grant from the Communities Impact Diabetes Center, which in turn receives its budget from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Before they start their education curriculum, Healthy Highbridge staff must measure the students’ body mass indexes, test their prior health knowledge and survey them on exercise and eating habits as well as their attitudes and beliefs regarding working out and eating. These initial studies will be used as a baseline to track students’ progress, as Rios and team return each week to tackle a different health subject: Michelle Obama’s “My Plate” and “Let’s Move” campaigns, diabetes, nutrition, and exercise, among others.

P.S. 73 students eat a breakfast of sausage, biscuits and orange juice.

The goal is to help youngsters understand what it takes to be healthy, said Michelle Ramos, the diabetes center’s community project manager.

“As attitudes around healthy behavior improve, hopefully the behavior itself will improve,” she said from her Harlem office. Ramos said that while she doesn’t encourage children to lose weight, she believes that as they grow, they’ll maintain their weights and their body mass indexes will drop.

“Hopefully they’ll pick up healthy habits and go and share them with their families,” Ramos said.

P.S. 73’s principal, Jean Mirvil, said sharing health information with the parents is critical to solving the obesity problem. Many of the families, he said, come from different countries and have a hard time making the proper, healthful adjustments in their new homes (34 percent of people in the South Bronx are foreign-born).

“The kind of food they’re used to does not present itself in the same way as they are making the adjustment with this country,” Mirvil said.

He expects that the children will bring information about what and what not to eat home to their parents.

“At school, they are given a full picture of what a regular, healthy meal should look like,” Mervil said.

To combat the obesity problem, this September the school instituted a salad bar at lunch, so students can add a rotating variety of produce—spinach, corn, radish—to their meals. The main courses vary according to the Board of Education menu. Recently, Mervil said, students had chicken and a choice of pasta or rice. Students can choose milk—not chocolate milk—or water for a beverage.

On the day of the Healthy Highbridge visit, breakfast consisted of a sausage and biscuit sandwich, and orange juice.

During this class, students were asked to pick which food choices they would make: chicken with the skin on or off, whole wheat or sweet bread, regular peanut butter or freshly ground.

Shannon takes her pulse after a round of jumping jacks.

Shannon, 9, said she preferred popcorn without butter, low-fat milk to skim, and would eat an apple before a piece of candy most days.
“Salt? Ew,” she said, her neat cornrows jostled back as she shook her head.

Winston, the largest boy in the class and the first to cease his jumping jacks, said he was less into self denial. He puts butter on his popcorn because, otherwise, “it doesn’t taste like anything.” The nine-year-old did acknowledge that salt isn’t always necessary.
“Sometimes, if you don’t add salt, food can still taste good,” he said.

Jaheim, 10, said he couldn’t replace french fries with potatoes, nor could he exchange a burger for a salad. “French fries?” he asked rhetorically as his hands shot from his striped hoodie to the sky. “I love them.”

As for burgers? “They’re very good,” he said. “You could even put bacon on them.”

When asked if all his poor eating choices left him a healthy individual, Jaheim was confident.

“Yeah, I do weights.”

Police seek help identifying a man responsible for a spate of incidents, including two shootings last week in the 44th precinct of Highbridge, according to the  New York Police Department. At 4:10 am Sunday Oct. 30, the suspect fired two rounds into the air outside 145 E. 149 St. He then walked down the street and fired one round into the Newsroom Bar; no one was hit. He walked north on Walton Avenue and shot his first victim in the leg. He then walked to the McDonald’s on Grand Concourse, threatened a worker with a gun and stole food from the counter. Afterward he went to the Nuestro Bar on Mount Eden Parkway, got into an argument with the bouncer and shot him in the arm. Both victims are in stable condition, the first at Lincoln Hospital, the second at St. Barnabas.  Police are looking for the suspect, a heavyset,  light-skinned black man in his 30s,  5’8″ to 5’10″ tall, and are asking those with tips to call NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 800-577-TIPS.

"Power walls," where cigarettes products and ads dominate the area behind cash registers, are common in Highbridge. (RANI MOLLA/The Bronx Ink)

A day before Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced record lows for smoking in New York City on Sept. 15, Bronx anti-smoking advocates were on the ground in Highbridge, still trying to put out a habit that has persisted despite citywide measures to curb it.

Coordinators from the American Lung Association and Healthy Highbridge are part of a campaign to stop point-of-sale smoking advertisements—the cigarette ads that plaster the insides and outsides of stores, as well as the “power wall” of cigarettes and advertisements directly behind the cash registers.

“They can’t advertise anymore on TV, billboards, clothing—this is the last arena for them to advertise,” said Spitzner, as she walked from bodega to bodega with Rios on Ogden Avenue, photographing what they said are new tobacco advertisements. “That’s where they dump all their money.” Rios, who was part of the Bronx Smoke-Free coalition that advocated to make New York City parks smoke-free earlier this year, said that the concentration of point-of-sale tobacco advertising has gotten worse in recent years.

Although the percentage of smokers citywide has plummeted (from 17.5 percent in 2007 to 14 percent, according to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene), current smoking rates in the South Bronx are the same as 2007. In the South Bronx, 19 percent of the adult population and 5.2 percent of 14 to 18-year-olds smoke, compared to 17.8 percent for adults and 5 percent for children in 2007, according to the Department of Health spokeswoman Kari Auer. The South Bronx has the second highest percentage of smokers in the city, right after Staten Island. Spitzner and Rios believe that if they can curb point-of-sale advertisements, they can decrease smoking, particularly among young people.

The two were staking out Highbridge Wednesday for a “walking tour” for local politicians next month. Their hope is that after politicians see the saturation of tobacco advertisements in Highbridge, they will enact legislation to curb point-of-sale advertising.

Anti-smoking activists Juan Rios and Lisa Spitzner stake out Highbridge businesses that advertise cigarettes. (RANI MOLLA/ The Bronx Ink)

A majority of signs that blanket most bodegas in the area are for tobacco products. Many of those signs—particularly those for Newport—appear to be very new.

“Menthol advertisements target African Americans and young people,” said Rios, citing the large percentage of blacks who smoke menthol cigarettes. According to a 2005 Harvard study, advertisements for menthol cigarettes are more heavily marketed in areas with large minority populations.

According to the district profile for Community Board 4, of which Highbridge is a part, nearly half of the area’s residents are black and a third are under 18.

“We’re trying to educate kids, lawmakers, parents and teachers of tobacco’s practice of targeting youth,” said Sheelah Feinberg, director of the New York City Coalition For a Smoke-Free City.

Feinberg said that 90 percent of adult smokers started when they were teens, an age group that is particularly susceptible to advertisements.

“When you’re a young kid and you go to the store to buy gum or water, when you go to make that purchase, you’re bombarded by ads,” Feinberg said, pointing out that many of the power wall advertisements are located at kids’ eye-level.

“For us, the big concern is that the tobacco industry is always going after the next generation,” she said.

Rios believes that unless lawmakers halt point-of-sale advertisements, young people will continue to be vulnerable to ads because vendors will continue to put them up. Vendors receive discounts on their cigarettes depending on the prominence of their stores’ advertisements, according to Rios.

After multiple calls, voice mails and emails to local and national representatives at Lorillard Tobacco Company, which produces menthol Newport cigarettes, no one at the company would comment.

The effectiveness of smoking advertising is difficult to measure since it would require exposing a large number of people to long-term cigarette advertising.  Tobacco companies usually contend that advertisement is not to attract new smokers but to broaden market share for a certain brand.

The Bronx Ink interviewed several vendors whose buildings featured advertisements. All said they receive a discount on their cigarettes for placing the cigarette advertisements inside and outside their stores.

Jin Kim, manager of K.J.Y. Fruit on Gerard Avenue and 161st Street, said the decision to put up ads is about money.

“This is a business,” Kim said. “We sell cigarettes to make money. I don’t like that, but it’s a business.”

A cashier at the nearby Nadal 3 Deli said he’d be fine with giving up the advertisements. “It’s all good so New Yorkers stop smoking,” he said, adding that those who already smoke will continue to come in with or without the advertisement.

Juan Ramon Rios works to combat smoking and promote health eating in Highbridge (NIGEL CHIWAYA/The Bronx Ink)

Hints into Juan Ramon Rios’s past and present are abundant.

The way Rios rolls the r’s in “Ramon Rios” speaks to his Puerto Rican heritage. The Yankees hat on his back shelf reveals a native allegiance to baseball. Photos of himself and students meeting with Sen. Ruben Diaz, Sr. hint at the appeal of political activism.

But it is the Harvard Law School banner that is the most curious. It’s the only reminder of his former life.

Rios, 45, was previously a litigation lawyer, a career that involved suits, ties and California sun. It was a life that thousands of law students dream of every year. But it kept the Mott Haven native away from the Bronx, and so it didn’t make Rios happy.

“My dream was to come back to the community and help,” said the dark-haired, bespectacled Rios. “But the work I was doing was interfering with that.”

Rios, who traveled the world to become a lawyer and escape the poverty of the South Bronx, found that the South Bronx was where he wanted to be all along. So Rios traded in the suit, tie and high salary to return to the Bronx improve the health of the children of the South Bronx.

Rios runs the center’s Healthy Highbridge program where he, among other things, has championed the city’s recent smoking ban in parks and beaches. Rios also created a health curriculum for the students of P.S. 73.

Rios stresses healthy habits to Bronx kids because he’s seen the effects of the bad ones. The son of two Puerto Rican immigrants, Rios grew up in the Mitchel housing project in Mott Haven and came of age during the Bronx’s low period in the 1970s, when crime, drugs and arson committed by landlords crippled the borough.

“A lot of my friends from that era,” said Rios, “are either dead, in prison, or they fell into substance abuse.”

Rios avoided falling into those same habits in part because of his parent’s work ethic. Neither of them spoke English fluently, but his mother taught herself while his father labored as a factory worker.

According to Rios, this dedication to hard work translated to their children. Rios’ older sister, Angela, graduated from Columbia University with an engineering degree.

Rios took a different route. He joined the military after high school, touring the world as an emergency medical technician in the Navy. Though he was stationed in California, Rios’ tour took him through Europe, Asia and Australia.

After four years in the Navy, Rios returned to New York and worked on Wall Street at Smith Barney, starting as a clerk and working his way up to the position of assistant broker despite never having gone to college.

The lack of a higher education degree caught up with Rios a few years later, when Rios said he “saw the ceiling” in finance. So Rios enrolled at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where he studied government and philosophy and graduated with a 3.98 GPA – good enough to get him into Harvard Law School.

Timothy Stroup, a philosophy professor at John Jay, recalled Rios’s time at the college. Stroup, who taught Rios in an ethics and law class, noted that Rios “was always the first to volunteer” in class.

“He just has an unquenchable love of learning,” said Stroup, 68.

Stroup noted a mock affirmative action debate he held during the final class of the semester. The students were to argue against their natural belief. Rios was one of the three debate captains. Stroup was so impressed with the performance that he struck up a friendship with Rios and the two other captains, who went on to attend Boston College law school. With all three students in the Boston area, Stroup and his wife, Alice, would visit the students and take them out to dinner once a semester. Though the tradition has lagged in the past year, Stroup, who has been a professor for over 40 years, still speaks highly of Rios.

“He’s one of the students of which I’m most proud,” Stroup said.

After law school Rios went west, where he worked for the law firm Jones Day in California for two years.  He followed this up with a two-year stint at Gary Wright in New York.

According to Rios, life as a lawyer was tough. Rios said he waded through piles of documents and law books, researching complex trade laws and advising big clients.

The job came with a big paycheck, which Rios, who originally wanted to become a criminal prosecutor, needed to pay off the Harvard student loans, but it also came with a culture shock. The poor Puerto Rican kid from the Bronx was now a big-time lawyer, hanging out with other rich lawyers and seeing the disparity between where they lived and where his family still lives. Rios said that this “dark contrast” began to gnaw at him.

“It was really an eye-opener,” Rios said, “to see that certain classes have more than others. It instills an understanding that you have to come back.”

Stroup was unsurprised by his former student’s struggle to cope with the world of law, saying, “It’s one thing to play devil’s advocate in class. It’s another thing to have to actually represent real devils in business. Juan found it inconsistent to work for big corporations.”

Rios said he began to wonder what he could do to help those back home in the Bronx. He settled on children, realizing that if he couldn’t work as a prosecutor to keep criminals off the streets, he would try to reach them before they became criminals.

And so, in 2005, Rios changed careers again. This time he left law behind to become a New York City teaching fellow. Rios returned to the Bronx and was placed in Christopher Columbus High School in the Pelham Parkway section of the Bronx, where he taught social studies to grades 9 and 12.

Rios, who now owns a house in Morrisania, said that he earned more satisfaction from his five years at Columbus than during his time as a lawyer. Rios is especially proud of his work with Columbus’ high school seniors, for whom Rios said he wrote “dozens” of college recommendations.

After his teaching licensed expired last year, Rios didn’t get it renewed. He decided to give one last shot at law, trying to run his own private practice. However, Rios said that “difficulties” led him to dissolve the partnership. Once again, Rios could go in any direction. Unsurprisingly, he decided to help the community.

Rios said he heard through friends that the Highbridge Community Life Center was looking for a program assistant that would help promote health in the neighborhood. With nothing to lose, the former medic decided to give it a shot.

One year later, Rios has already drafted the health and wellness curriculum for P.S. 73. The program, which features bilingual lessons on healthy eating, the dangers of smoking and the merits of exercise, debuted for fifth graders last year and was expanded to include fourth grades this year. Rios teaches the courses himself, fittingly placing him back in the classroom.

In addition, Rios has championed the smoke-free New York campaign, lobbying in Albany for a ban on smoking in parks, plazas and beaches. The law was successfully passed in February.

Outside of the Highbridge center, Rios is still active in the area. He sits on the community board four health committee and said he never misses a general meeting.

When asked why he works so hard for the children of the Bronx, Rios’ answer hints at a slight selfishness. Though Rios, who is engaged, doesn’t have any children of his own, he said he does have to look out for his former students.

“You could say,” Rios noted,  “that I have 8,000 kids.”

Flashback: Bush at Yankee Stadium after 9/11

On October 30, 2001, the Yankees played the Diamondbacks in Game 3 of the World Series. The Boston Herald recaps how, as President George W. Bush threw out the first pitch, everyone was considered a potential terrorist – even George Steinbrenner and Joe Torre.

Bronx has 4 of NYC’s most ‘dangerous’ schools

The New York State Education Department posted a list “persistently dangerous” schools on its website last week. The New York Post reports that of the nine New York City schools on the list for 2011-12, four are in the Bronx – Aspire, Soundview Academy for Culture and Scholarship, PS 11 Highbridge, and IS 190. The Post says that Aspire Prep’s 554 students tallied 88 “violent and disruptive” incidents in 2009-10. These included sex crimes, robbery and assaults.

Bronxites help farm devastated by Irene

Two busloads of Bronx families traveled to Schoharie in upstate New York on Saturday with emergency supplies for a farm devastated by the remnants of Hurricane Irene, says an Associated Press report in the Wall Street Journal. These families from the South Bronx were just a few among the 1,000 and more that Richard Ball’s farm has been feeding since 2009.

By Manuel Rueda

Wearing thick cotton gloves and a leopard print hat, Myriam Aquino hands out a one-pound bag of rice.  Her client pushes his small shopping cart forward and both arrive at the next shelf.  “You can pick one of these or one of those” she says in Spanish pointing to a bag of raisins and picking up a pack of figs.

The Community Food Pantry at Highbridge on Ogden Avenue, currently has no heating and the selection of brands is limited.  But food is free here, and for thousands of Bronx residents with low incomes or no jobs, the groceries on offer enable them to save $20 or $30 that can be spent on rising rents, transportation hikes or other non-negotiable expenditures.

Aquino volunteers regularly at the pantry and is currently unemployed.  She also takes some groceries home after everyone has been served. But she is also worried about the future of the pantry. Staff member salaries were suspended last week because the agency that runs the pantry is short of funds.  And the variety of food Aquino says “is never like it was before.”

Like hundreds of food pantries across New York, Highbridge is facing difficult times.  The 2008 recession, and the ensuing period of jobless economic growth has increased the number of people demanding the food pantry’s services.

In 2007, Highbridge used to get 800 unique visits per month says director Nurah Amatullah.  Now it averages about 1,200 a month.

But funds for running the pantry are becoming scarce and its director says she may have to shut the place down in March because there is little money to pay for staff or operational costs.

Myriam Aquino is not only a regular volunteer at the Highbridge food pantry. She is also a client.

“There are things in food poverty work that requires paid staff to do it.” Amatullah says in a subtle Trinidadian accent.

Hunger levels across the city are alarming according to the Food Bank for New York.  The nonprofit estimates that 37 percent of New Yorkers resorted to emergency food aid at some point in 2010.

That number is slightly below the 40 percent figure registered in 2009.  But Carlos Rodriguez, the Food Bank’s vice president for benefit access, points out that many New Yorkers are now limiting the amount of food they buy and its quality. His organization estimates that thirty percent of New Yorkers reduced their food intake last year.

Meanwhile, soup kitchens and food pantries across the city say greater numbers of people are showing up at their doors.

The New York City Coalition Against Hunger, an umbrella organization for emergency food providers, sent out a questionnaire last year to some 1,100 local soup kitchens and food pantries.  More than 200 returned the questionnaire with 85 percent reporting they had fed more people in 2010 than in 2009.

The coalition does not keep statistics on exactly how many people were fed.  But in its survey, 53 percent of respondents said the number of people they feed has increased “greatly.”

Executive Director Joel Berg says New York food pantries and soup kitchens improved their response to increased demand in 2010, thanks to greater investments by the federal government in food stamps.

In New York City last year, the federal government spent more than $3.2billion in food stamps through its Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program he says, taking pressure off local food pantries and soup kitchens.

Seven out of ten agencies reporting to the Coalition Against Hunger last year, also said that they received additional funding from the federal government through the Emergency Food and Shelter Program.

But anti-hunger advocates say most of the money goes towards food and little is left for operational costs and staff.

On Webster Avenue, near the Botanical Garden, the nonprofit agency POTS, -Part of the Solution- runs a soup kitchen that serves 350 hot meals a day and a food pantry that gets approximately 40 daily visits.

The number of people attending the pantry has increased by 20 percent over the past 12 months says emergency food services director, Sister Mary Alice Annan, while at the soup kitchen Annan reckons attendance has increased by 50 percent.

Staffing which consists of 15 employees has remained the same for years, with POTS relying on  a large number of volunteers to stock food and serve the clientele.

“The need is getting so great and we don’t have enough money to pay for everything” says Sister Hannan. “So we would rather pay for food for the people than pay for staff.”

Like most who work in this industry however, Hannan says there are jobs that are best left to paid staff, such as operating databases, cooking in the soup kitchen and writing grant proposals. “Volunteers don’t always show up, so we use them to supplement what we do” she says.

Nurah Amatullah directs the Highbridge food pantry. She is struggling to pay her staff

Nurah Amatullah, from the Community Food Pantry at Highbridge says that while volunteers are a crucial part of her operation, she cannot rely on them to regularly receive and organize food deliveries that arrive at 8:30 am.

There is also a lack of people in the neighborhood trained to run databases that document how many attended the pantry, the number of people in their household and other data required by funders.

So while she advocates for the professional staffing of food pantries, Amatullah has had to furlough her staff of three, paying them small amounts of money as people donate cash to the food pantry through a PayPal account she set up in support of the pantry.

Amatullah’s organization -the Muslim Womens’ Institute for Research and Development- receives funds for operational costs from United Way and grants for staffing from Feeding America.

Funding from these sources has shrunk and Amatullah has not found another donor to fund pantry operations.   It costs $2,500 a week to fund Highbridge and its sister pantry in Parkchester Amatullah says, with less than one third of this money going to staff.

But the lack of funds is currently so severe that Amatullah does not know if they will make it through March. Staff are currently volunteering their time to do essential jobs like taking orders and keeping the client database at both pantries.  Amatullah claims this way of working is not sustainable.

Her three staff members are the main breadwinners for their families and they are already looking out for other job opportunities.   “When they don’t get a check it is not just them” she says.  “It is a household tethering on collapse.”

Nancy Marrero, a 2008 graduate of the New School with a master’s degree in human resources, was confident enough in her resume in 2009 to post it on a web site called the Bronx Fast Track Unit for employment at the then-unfinished Gateway Center in Highbridge.

Shoppers fill the 3-level mall for the holiday season, but good jobs are hard to come by. Photo: Zach Schonbrun

Marrero had another thing going in her favor: she was born and raised in the Bronx.

So she filled out a digital application for an opening as an administrative assistant at the mall’s management office. The Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation, the entity that ran the job-search site, noticed her credentials and she was hired for a salaried, full-time office position with a company, Related Company, LP, that has promised room to grow.

“She fit the bill,” said Omar Benjamin, the business development manager of the job-hunting organization that found her.

To some, Marrero’s story nicely illuminates the 15-month-old Gateway Center’s potential influence on the community: thanks to Gateway, a hard-working local resident has a sturdy platform to start her ascendance toward the once seemingly unattainable middle class. To others, though, similar success stories have come too few and far between to deem the mall a savior on Highbridge’s blighted commercial horizon, and the promise that the Gateway Center will ever become that white knight may be even more distant.

As with most building developments in the Bronx, there were pros and cons about the $400 million Gateway Center from its conception, in 2004. There is little dispute that the mall was an aesthetic addition to the community when it replaced the derelict Bronx Terminal Market, which for years had festered as a dingy eyesore just 10 blocks from Yankee Stadium.

But the economic ripples caused by the Gateway Center’s splashy entrance are more difficult to parse out. Though the mall has introduced jobs to a neighborhood with a high poverty and joblessness rate, business advocates raise concerns about too many low-wage retail jobs flooding the borough, and community-based organizations openly question several measures taken by Gateway’s developers.

And while residents are pleased to have the new shopping options in their neighborhood, they grumble about the mall’s 2,600-space parking facility, which could be viewed as an appropriate symbol for Gateway’s complicated impact on the Bronx: it answers some of the area’s local parking concerns — while charging $3.50 an hour to park.

“It hasn’t been a win-win for both the community and the developer,” said City Councilwoman Helen Diane Foster. “It has been a situation where the developer’s needs and wants are put before the community.”

Others would counter Foster’s claim, pointing to the approximately 2,100 jobs that the mall has introduced to the community thanks to major retailers like Target, B.J.’s, and Home Depot, as well as the high-end shopping opportunities from stores like Bed Bath & Beyond or Best Buy that provide local consumers with convenient new options.

According to Related’s vice president, Joanna Rose, more than two-thirds of the mall’s jobs have been filled local residents, far exceeding the stipulation in the development’s Community Benefits Agreement, and minimum wage requirements even for sales positions were raised to approach the city’s living wage levels.

When Target, which employs about 750 year-round workers, held its initial job fair for the community in the spring of 2009, more than 7,000 applications flooded its offices. Similar totals could be seen at B.J.’s, despite having only 300 job openings, and the Bronx Economic Development Corporation continues to see potential applicants looking for jobs at Gateway every day.

“It’s been a mass outcry of individuals asking for job opportunities,” Benjamin said.

From that standpoint, Gateway has appeared to work at helping residents find work.

***

In 2004, a private investment firm in New York City, Related Companies LP, purchased the Bronx Terminal Market property from landowner David Buntzman for $42.5 million with no public bidding. Critics, including Representative Anthony Weiner and City Council members Foster and Hiram Monserrate, lamented the swiftness of the deal, contending that it should have been opened to other developers, considering the high demand for the quality land just beyond Yankee Stadium. Weiner pointed toward the close relationship between Related’s C.E.O. Stephen M. Ross and Daniel Doctoroff, then the city’s deputy mayor for economic development, as proof of favoritism with the generous building subsidies bestowed on Related, which had recently completed construction of the new Time Warner building at Columbus Circle. But along with its detractors, however, there were ample groups of supporters, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Bronx borough president Adolfo Carrion, who saw Gateway as one of the city’s most necessary revitalization projects. And by August 2006, construction on the 900,000 square-foot facility was already underway.

Twenty-three food merchants were evicted from Bronx Terminal Market, resulting in a loss of more than 400 jobs. According to a news release shortly after the Gateway development deal was made, Carrion stated that the mall was expected to bring in 3,700 jobs. That number was knocked down to 2,100 when the mall was finally opened in September 2009. The Community Benefits Agreement signed by Carrion and the City Council required that at least 25 percent of the jobs hired by Related would be from the community and that $3 million would be set aside for local hiring and job training programs.

Critics of the community agreement, such as Foster, argued that the draft was settled too hastily and that the $60,000 penalty for violating the agreement was an insufficient deterrent for a development firm like Related. In 2007, Bronx borough president Ruben Diaz Jr. called for a full accounting investigation of funds appropriated by the agreement for the setup of the Bronx Fast Track Unit, a web site run by the Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation for the purpose of aiding local job training and hiring for the mall. Though the results of the investigation have not been issued, in September Diaz announced the appointment of a task force designed to enforce guidelines for further public benefit agreements in the borough.

The mall has brought stores like BestBuy and Target into the neighborhood for the first time. Photo: Zach Schonbrun

The agreement wound up costing Related $5 million. Its major provisions included prohibiting the arrival of Wal-Mart, and a space set aside for childcare services and waste management in accordance with environmentally friendly certification guidelines. It did not mention parking prices, minimum wages or placement of the evicted tenants.

Related has no problem with the agreement and sees its Gateway Center as a successful “boon” to the community thus far.

“Our tenants have been very pleased,” Rose said. “They’ve ingratiated themselves in the community and their traffic has been very, very good.”

Before the agreement was signed, a “Task Force Coalition” was organized by Carrion to investigate the development and what the agreement would ultimately mean to the community. The coalition, handpicked by Carrion, consisted of more than a dozen grassroots business development groups, and, according to a report by the New York chapter of the American Planning Association, were given no legal guidance before negotiating with Related over the agreement. Only three members ended up signing the agreement, which was passed nonetheless. Mayor Bloomberg praised the agreement as one that “will go a long way toward meeting the community’s needs.”

“The whole (agreement) was so damned political — too political,” said Jose Rodriguez, the district manager of Community Board 4, which includes Highbridge. He was upset too few grassroots organizations were involved in the agreement’s drafting process. “I think you can hear it in my voice. It was a mess.”

The unemployment rate for the Bronx was at 12.5 percent through November, nearly three percentage points higher than the average for New York City, according to data from the New York State Department of Labor. Highbridge has managed to add more than 2,100 jobs in the last 10 years for an increase of 58 percent, the highest percent change in the borough.

But economists worry that too big an influx of low-wage, low-skill jobs is merely a short-term fix. According to the Center for an Urban Future, a New York-based think tank that examines workforce data, 42 percent of workers over the age of 18 in the Bronx have “low-wage jobs” earning less than $11.54 per hour or $24,003 per year. That percentage is by far the highest in the city; Queens, at 34 percent, comes next.

“I think the proliferation of low-wage jobs in this one borough is a legitimate concern,” said David Giles, a research associate at Center for an Urban Future. “I think it’s well within [the city’s] rights to talk to the developers and chain stores that are going into those places and talk about minimum wage requirements as a condition of whatever government subsidies or rezoning efforts.”

But Arthur Merlino, who heads the Bronx branch of the New York State Department of Labor, said it’s important to help people who are simply looking for part-time jobs, such as high school or college students who need extra money for tuition.

“You have to consider the full range of possibilities here,” Merlino said. “You have a lot of individuals going to high school and college that depend on flexible hours and weekend hours to help with some of their expenses.”

The community agreement stipulated a “maximum effort” to pay employees a “living wage,” which for New York City would be $11.86 per hour. Shannon Rzasa, the director of the Bronx Workforce1 Career Center, which facilitates much of the hiring at Gateway, said the mall’s stores ensure a minimum of $10 per hour for most sales job, and others, like a position on the “Geek Squad” at Best Buy, will pay up to $20 per hour.

Businesses like Best Buy and Target, Rzasa said, are also well known for their reputation to promote from within and develop career tracks starting at a sales or cashier level.

“I think people understand those brands,” Rzasa said. “That it’s not just a $10 per hour job, it’s a start.”

Others are not so optimistic and draw parallels between cashier jobs at big-box retailers and flipping burgers at fast-food chains: rises through the ranks, while occasional, are by no means an ordinary career path.

“I would love for everyone to be honest to the fact that these are low-pay, low-skill and there really is no future within the organization with these types of jobs,” Rodriguez said. “Maybe one or two become managers and then they move on. But I haven’t heard that type of story. It’s somewhat what I expected. Retail work is retail work.”

Gateway’s retailers have worked almost exclusively with the New York State Department of Labor and the Bronx Workforce1 Career Center, an employment service run by the city’s department of small businesses, to fill jobs at most of the retailers at the facility. But they have not worked in the same way with other community-based employment networks, like BronxWorks, a local organization with a substantial workforce development program.

The director of that program, Jessica Nathan, said BronxWorks helps about 3,000 people every year find jobs in Highbridge. She estimated only 15-20 of her clients have been offered jobs at Gateway, and only one or two were offered managerial positions.

“It’s the nature of the game,” Nathan said. “A large employer would shy away from working with a whole number of community-based organizations. We’re thankful those employers come to the Bronx and hire Bronx residents, but can we establish relationships with them? Not always.”

***

On an unseasonably warm Saturday afternoon in mid-November, the Gateway mall was crammed with customers zipping up and down the escalators and rattling shopping carts along the concrete outer corridors. The carts are mechanized so that their wheels stop spinning once they reach a certain limit outside the store in order to prevent theft. But some people have nonetheless managed to carve out a niche business lifting the stalled carts to customers’ cars.

They are called the hustlers — usually teenagers who ask for a few bucks in return for a lift — and they join a busy micro-economy that has stemmed from the new mall: gypsy cabs who line up along the first level of the parking garage waiting for fares; gyro venders whose carts fill the sidewalks along River Avenue; parking attendants who fill neighboring lots; street hawkers who set up tables filled with candy bars to attract passersby.

They come to take advantage of the foot traffic now centralized at Gateway, after years gone wasted at the old Bronx Terminal Market. These are the undervalued positives of a new community center: the tiny flicks of opportunity that surface after a major development has made its splash.

In speaking with shoppers, almost all would agree that Gateway has been a welcomed addition to the community. It was two weeks before Thanksgiving but Toys ‘R’ Us was already bustling with activity. The wholesale giant B.J.’s accepts food stamps and offers half-priced membership for low-income families so a constant stream of customers rolled out lugging packages of bulk food packages.

The mall has its expected discount chains — Marshall’s, Target, Payless — but also a few that have never been in that section of the Bronx before, like the home goods retailer Bed Bath & Beyond and the upscale furniture seller Raymour & Flanigan.

“I love this store,” said Bronx resident Rosa Cassado, pushing a cart full of goods outside Bed Bath & Beyond. “I’d come here every day if I could. The prices are so good, and the people take care of you here. It’s fabulous.”

Cassado used to have to travel to Yonkers or midtown Manhattan to find shopping that is now located within walking distance from her apartment on 164th Street. Last year, a two-level Bed Bath & Beyond closed in Bay Plaza, making the Gateway Center’s store the only one in the borough.

“I usually get things here for my apartment,” said Shaniqua Morrero, 25, of Pelham Bay. “I like the stuff here.”

“Now they’ve realized the power of our dollar,” said Rodriguez of the high-end chain outlets at the mall. “I think it kind of promotes community development. It promotes economic diversity.”

Rodriguez and others, however, have expressed concern over another issue at Gateway — the cost of parking in the mall’s six-level garage. The mall’s parking lot, owned by Manhattan Parking Group, a private company that controls more than 60 lots across New York City, has a capacity of 2,600 cars and charges up to $3.50 an hour to park — a source of tension in the community for many residents unable to afford such steep prices to park.

“A pay-to-park lot is egregious,” said Foster, who has battled over parking in the Bronx since she was first elected City Councilwoman in 2001. “It is another means by which money is being made off of the working poor.”

Rose said repeatedly that the prices the garage charges are consistent with what other indoor facilities charge within the area. She declined to answer whether or not there is discussion about waiving the fees.

On an average weekday, Gateway’s indoor structure will shelter around 2,000 vehicles, according to M.D. Hossain, the garage’s assistant manager. But Hossain acknowledged those numbers are slipping, and Rodriguez is concerned that that will hurt business at the stores.

“I think it just doesn’t make any sense,” Rodriguez said. “You have a similar type of development in Westchester County and the parking is free, totally free.”

“These stores will say, ‘We’re losing money because people are not using these facilities so we’ve got to go,’ ” he added. “So now they’ll tell corporate America, ‘Don’t come to the Bronx because you won’t make any money.’ ”

It is another issue of debate, atop a long list trailing the new focal point of the Bronx’s commercial landscape.