Here is an article from the New York Post about the sad 1st anniversary of the day that the Kingsbridge Armory was killed as a consumer mall. The article is appropriately entitled "In the Bronx, an empty sore instead of jobs". Here is another little interesting thing to note -- it was written by Candice Giove. For years, Candice was Andy Wolf's chief cheap-shot artist over at the Riverdale Review. I guess it is a good idea that Wolf keeps most of his most vile attack pieces off the web so her new employers probably never saw it. UPDATE: Here is an editorial in today's Daily News, entitled "Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. Let Down the Bronx When He Killed the Kingsbridge Armory Mall." This editorial states that a recent study "found unemployment among young black men at 24.2%. Worse, joblessness is a staggering 52% for young black men without a high school diploma." In addition, an editorial in today's New York Post refers to the Armory anniversary in an article about Wal Mart. This editorial states "In The Bronx, sadly, the concept of any job all too often doesn't apply. The borough has the city's highest unemployment rate -- and it ranks among the nation's poorest communities." It also cites to a recent survey that found that New Yorkers approve of having a Wal Mart by an overwhelming margin of 71 to 24 percent. Just as significant for the Armory issue, Bronxites supported a Wal Mart by an unbelievable margin of 80-18 percent. So who are the ones opposing Wal Mart? We need an honest an open debate about this issue and it looks like that is finally going to happen.
Tweed
It has been around forever
Monday, December 13, 2010
An Unhappy Anniversary for the Kingsbridge Armory: UPDATE
Here is an article from the New York Post about the sad 1st anniversary of the day that the Kingsbridge Armory was killed as a consumer mall. The article is appropriately entitled "In the Bronx, an empty sore instead of jobs". Here is another little interesting thing to note -- it was written by Candice Giove. For years, Candice was Andy Wolf's chief cheap-shot artist over at the Riverdale Review. I guess it is a good idea that Wolf keeps most of his most vile attack pieces off the web so her new employers probably never saw it. UPDATE: Here is an editorial in today's Daily News, entitled "Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. Let Down the Bronx When He Killed the Kingsbridge Armory Mall." This editorial states that a recent study "found unemployment among young black men at 24.2%. Worse, joblessness is a staggering 52% for young black men without a high school diploma." In addition, an editorial in today's New York Post refers to the Armory anniversary in an article about Wal Mart. This editorial states "In The Bronx, sadly, the concept of any job all too often doesn't apply. The borough has the city's highest unemployment rate -- and it ranks among the nation's poorest communities." It also cites to a recent survey that found that New Yorkers approve of having a Wal Mart by an overwhelming margin of 71 to 24 percent. Just as significant for the Armory issue, Bronxites supported a Wal Mart by an unbelievable margin of 80-18 percent. So who are the ones opposing Wal Mart? We need an honest an open debate about this issue and it looks like that is finally going to happen.
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Put the blame on Ruben Diaz, Jr. for his role in killing that amory project. It's a year later and that armory still stands as an empty failure due to him.
ReplyDeleteNo need to take a pot shot at Giove
ReplyDeleteJeez, let's move on already.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who thinks the armory mall would have drawn in shoppers from outside the neighborhood is delusional. The plan called for a paltry 400 parking spaces (by comparison, the Marble Hill Target has twice as many), highway access is suboptimal (and that's being polite), and the surrounding streets are already a traffic nightmare. The Gateway Center and East River Plaza are far easier for a driver to get to and offer a indisputably superior retail mix.
So the armory's shoppers would have come predominately from the neighborhood, which happens to be crushingly, intractably, generationally poor. It would have been just a matter of time before the armory became the world's biggest and most lavishly subsidized dollar store, and the developers knew it: if the living wage was truly the difference between profitability and loss, it was never a viable project to begin with.
(It's also possible that the developers are just shameless, bold-faced liars, but I'm a glass-half-full kind of person.)
I don't know what the hell to do with the armory. But I'd much rather have my painful and significant annual "donation" to the city and state treasuries go to the people who need it, not to rent-seeking (in the economic sense) bureaucrats, extortionate trade unions, and politically connected developers. There has to be a cheaper way to create 1000 utterly dead-end minimum-wage jobs.
Have you been to Target lately? The lot is almost always empty - as the developer thought, most customers take mass transit. And those poor people you refer to constantly flood the stores along Fordham and kinda need places to shop too ya know. And not just at dollar stores.
ReplyDeleteThese are low paying jobs no doubt but not all minimum wage jobs. Another article on this subject points out the alarming unemployment rate among young blacks and hispanics with no high school diploma - they need jobs too.
I trust Related's judgment - this would have been a successful development for them. The living wage requirement was more of a concern for the precedent it set, not the cost.
Here's another piece on the anniversary of the armory thing
ReplyDeletehttp://boogiedowner.blogspot.com/2010/12/armory-anniversary.html
Who in their right mind would trust the economic judgment of Ruben Diaz Jr.?? He has absolutely no business credentials and holds a basically ceremonial ribbon-cutting position. You'll also notice that no other major U.S. city has borough presidents (a total waste of scarce taxpayer dollars!).
ReplyDeleteHey kids! Let's all giggle at the buffoon's silly tricks ... his name is Ruben Diaz, Jr., and he's our borough's official clown.
ReplyDeleteunfortunately, there's nothing presidential about the bronx borough president
ReplyDeleteSounds like Tony Cassino keeps taking cheap shots at Candice Giove because she wasn't impressed by him. Was he hitting on her? What a little boy he must be...
ReplyDeletePossibly the worst thing that any Bronx Borough President ever declared publicly was when Rubén Díaz, Jr. said, "The notion that any job is better than no job no longer applies."
ReplyDeleteBaby Díaz is not just an embarassment for the Bronx, he's a disaster!
He killed a project that would have brought more than 1,000 construction jobs and 1,200 permanent jobs to a borough with the city's highest unemployment rate. Why oh why oh why???
There needs to be a revisit on the subject of the armory.
ReplyDelete