Yesterday, the latest piece of this aquatic puzzle opened, a fun-looking 1.5-acre park in the Hunt's Point section of the borough.  It includes a new fishing pier, a kayak launch, and a restored shoreline with tidal pools that, according to the city's Economic Development Corporation, will naturally absorb storm water runoff.  The park is liberally sprinkled with large granite slabs of city history, remnants of the deconstructed Willis Avenue Bridge, which make up much of the comfortable looking boulder seating area and grass retaining wall.

Hunts Point Landing is one of five projects underway from the first phase of the South Bronx Greenway master plan, which represent a $48 million total investment by the city. EDC is currently seeking proposals for a food vendor to open up shop, too.  It's not a bad spot for business either, since the famous produce market is here, as well as a new green roof the EDC is working on. At approximately 200,000 square feet, the rooftop has the potential to accommodate what could be one of the largest rooftop farms in the world. And for a bit more of that aquatic flavor, there's the New Fulton Fish Market next door.

“Hunts Point Landing is a perfect example of the Bloomberg Administration’s vision for reactivating waterfront properties, both in the South Bronx and across the City,” EDC president Seth Pinsky said. “Thanks to our many dedicated partners in the local community, we have been able to transform what was once a dead-end street into publicly-accessible open space with exciting amenities for local residents and workers to enjoy.”

And then everyone went for a paddle.

When Mark Messier first announced his intentions to build a new skating complex inside the Kingsbridge Armory, it sounded crazy. This is the Bronx, after all. When it was revealed there would be eight rinks in total, it sounded insane.

But the Kingsbridge National Ice Center recently launched its social media campaign—what bid for a public project would be complete without one?—and on the project's Facebook page are a number of models that show exactly how Mr. Messier and his team intend to pull off this wild engineering feat.

At the heart of the complex will be a main rink with 5,000 seats and Madison Square Garden-sized ceilings that go clear up to the the massive buildings roof. On either side of center ice will be four more, stacked two on top of each other. All of the rinks will be NHL or Olympics regulation size. There will also be some retail concessions, which are tentatively to be filled by local businesses, as well as 30,000 square feet of community space.

The whole effort underscores just how massive the armory is in the first place.

As for who the heck skates in the Bronx, the Kingsbridge National Ice Center intends to launch a number of programs to get local kids and families on the ice, including a free after-school program modeled on the successful Ed Snider Youth Hockey Foundation in Philadelphia. There is also plans to partner with the Urban League to create some sort of ice sports public school, as well as transforming the exterior of the building into ample open space, including an outdoor rink for wintertime skating.

Whether this will be enough to convince local stakeholders remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure: It sure is a heck of a lot nicer than a giant mall.

Just what New York needs!

New York may be home to some of the best boutiques, specialty shops and department stores in the world, but you know what it really needs? A huge outlet mall with brand names for less!

The New York Times claims that New Yorkers, secretly covetous of the bland, sprawling suburban malls that can be found in the city's hinterlands, are ecstatic to hear that an outlet mall may be opening near Co-op City in the Bronx. (The Lightstone Group, a company that develops and manages outlet malls, purchased a 19.2-acre site in the Ferry Point neighborhood this May, although the group has yet to announce any plans for the site.)

To investigate resident's reactions to the project, The Times talked to tourists on a bus bound for the Woodbury Common outlet mall in Orange County. And guess what? They were all incredibly enthusiastic about the prospect of opening more places in New York that feel exactly like the soulless suburban tracts they left behind. Never mind that most of them had never been to the Bronx and weren't really sure where it was.

“It’s the hassle of having to come down here and get on a bus versus a short cab journey,” said John McLaughlin, a tourist from Northern Ireland visiting with his family and a large duffel bag that they intended to fill with Calvin Klein and Timerberland merchandise.

Other tourists, the newspaper noted, reasoned that if the Bronx was good enough for the Yankees and Jennifer Lopez, it was surely good enough for Prada and Louis Vuitton.

“Love J-Lo, very fashionable,” Tammy Bevcar, an operations manager in her 40s from Toronto, told The Times. “I would definitely go.”

The site of the outlet mall is not exactly close, but it is accessible via public bus and is about a mile from the nearest subway station. (Shoppers will need to bring their wheeled suitcases, which The Times notes are already common carry-ons on the $42 bus to Woodbridge Common.)

Not that everyone is excited about the development. The local community board is worried about the additional congestion and traffic that an outlet mall would bring to the area, especially since a new mall, Mall at Bay Plaza, is already being planned nearby.

To be fair, The Times does talk to a few New York residents, including Marlene Cintron. Ms. Cintron, who also happens to be the president of the Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation, said that all her friends were thrilled to hear about the planned outlet mall.

“They were beside themselves,” she gushed, adding that a Connecticut friend was “on her way home to let the rest of the neighborhood know.”

kvelsey@observer.com

Back to the streets. (HUD/Flickr)

Friday was Adolfo Carrion’s last day working for the Obama administration. He had been ensconced for the past two years in a corner office on the 35th floor of the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building downtown, serving as director of HUD Region 2, which is where The Observer met him a few weeks ago to discuss the president‘s flagging urban agenda.

Bronx paraphernalia filled the glass-line space. Near the doorway was a green highway sign, WELCOME TO THE BRONX. On a bookshelf behind his desk, beside family photos, books (Sonia Sotomayor’s biography, Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat) and hardhats of special significance, rested  a miniature subway sign for the 161st Street-Yankees Stadium stop. Along the wall stood a T.V. tuned to CNBC, framed newspaper clippings, and not one but two Yankees groundbreaking shovels, one of which had a bat for a handle. Pinstriped paraphernalia was everywhere, declaring the Manhattan-born, Bronx-bred politician’s on-field allegiance.

Mr. Carrion left the Bronx to go work for the administration, first on the campaign trail, then as the inaugural director of the White House Office of Urban Affairs. He left that position to come work at HUD, a move many saw as a demotion, though he insists it was always part of his plan.

"My plan was to help the president open this office, coordinate the agencies, start the conversation and then come back home to continue working here in New York City," Mr. Carrion said, referring to his time at the White House. "And that's what I am doing—so happy to be home. So happy to be working the front lines. I've always been a local guy, I think all politics and planning is local. The economy plays out locally. I'm happy to be home to the greatest city in the world."

Mr. Carrion said that the revelation that he had received a renovation to his home on City Island from an architect who had business with the city while he was Bronx Borough president had nothing to do with his move back to New York in 2010. Nor did a December fine of $10,000 from the city's Conflicts of Interest Board impact his decision to leave HUD now, which he announced in an email to friends and colleagues at the end of December.

"God no, of course not," Mr. Carrion said. "That's done, over with, much ado with almost nothing. Some agencies, in my estimation, have to justify their existence. Let's close that book."

Mr. Carrion, who was once considered a mayoral contender befor Mayor Bloomberg seized his third term, would not rule out the possibility or running for public office again—"I never say never," he said—but his bigger priority is launching a consultancy that will continue the work he has been doing as cities czar and HUD regional director.

"I think having visited so many cities around the country, folks need help to get themselves repositioned for this global economy for the growth that is occurring." Mr. Carrion said. "We don't know how to count in the United States, so when we say there will be another 120 to 140 million more Americans in the next 30 to 40 years, it will likely be more than that. We need to figure out how to house, how to educate, how to create clean water, clean air, safe food, safe communities, business opportunities for those people. There is so much to do, we can't afford to wait. I'm looking forward to working in that space."

He said he would be announcing some new partnerships "very soon."

His eyes are set on the Bronx. (Sports Illustrated)

New York is not much of a hockey town. The Rangers are the top team in the league right now, and still the awfulness of the Knicks gets more attention. The Super Bowl is sucking up a lot of air time, but even if the Rangers win the Stanley Cup—their first since 1994, second since 1940—the back pages of the tabs will still spend most of their time on off-season baseball news.  Sean Avery's sartorial choices attract more attention than a Henrik Lundqvist shut out.

Thus The Observer almost slipped on the ice in surprise when two reports surfaced yesterday about hockey coming to some unlikely places.

The first is not all that surprising: The New York Islanders, truly an abysmal franchise, will play at the Barclays Centre next season. It's only a preseason game, but one that Brooklyn hockey fans should enjoy, especially as it will be against cross-Hudson rivals the New Jersey Devils—the Rangers still think themselves too good to leave Manhattan perhaps.

Whether this move would ever become permanent remains unclear. It has been a possibility for some time as the Islanders fight for a new arena in Nassau County. In August, voters rejected a bond issuance for a new arena, part of a larger redevelopment called The Lighthouse and proposed by the team's owner, Charles Wong. Initially, Forest City had considered stripping an ice rink out of the Barclays Centre plan to save costs, but one could be installed for events like this preseason game and could possibly become a permanent feature.

Meanwhile, the ice is being laid in an even more unlikely place: the Bronx. According to Crain's Ranger's great Mark Messier has joined a group that hopes to bring a multi-rink complex to the Kingsbridge Armory, one of many possible bids to redevelop the massive building. If this sounds out of place for a majority minority community that favors baseball and basketball, the plan calls for a youth program aimed at getting kids off the streets and onto the ice.

“When I first heard ice hockey in the Bronx, there was a question mark in my mind,” one Bronx official told Crain's. “But when they made their presentation, I ended up with ice hockey in the Bronx with an exclamation point.”

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Hot house! (Google Maps)

Thought bankers and celebrities were the only people in New York who could afford a five story home? Think again! A five-story marijuana farm was raided in the Bronx yesterday, and the sophisticated operation was occupying a prime piece of real estate, the New York Times reports. The building, at 610 Morris Park Avenue was located on a quiet residential block.

According to StreetEasy, the 10,625-square-foot warehouse is "fireproof," which makes sense considering the abundant grow-lights and product testing that must have gone down on the premises. And, with abundant real estate to cultivate their inventory, this was no small time operation, according to The Times:

Talk about house plants. (NYPD/NYT)

The authorities found 75 pounds of marijuana that had been cut, dried and packaged in plastic. The total amount of marijuana recovered from the site was estimated at 1,550 pounds. The police figured that 50 to 60 pounds, with a value of approximately $250,000, were being produced each month.

It's gonna be a long week for a lot of people in Greenwich Village.

eknutsen@observer.com

Mayor of the Capital of Innovation. (Getty)

The main focus of the Mayor Michael Bloomberg's State of the City speech today may have been on taking another crack at fixing the city's schools and streamlining its government, but this is still Mike Bloomberg, remaker of skylines and rebuilder of waterfronts, so there was bound to be a lot of development goodies studding the speech.

Aside from the Kingsbridge Armory announcement, which was previewed yesterday, the proposal that most jumped out was one for the heart of Midtown. "In the area around Grand Central, we’ll work with the City Council on a package of regulatory changes and incentives that will attract new investment, new companies and new jobs," the mayor said.

That was all he said about the proposal, in fact. The Observer reached out to City Hall and the Department of City Planning a few hours ago, but so far we have not heard back on what this plan could be. A rezoning? Rent breaks? Tax breaks? Hard to say exactly, this being a highly developed area commanding the highest commercial rents in the entire country.

Still, with the World Trade Center and the Far West Side developing at a nice clip, some in the real estate industry have complained that the still grand but not quite central midcentury towers of Park and Lex may become ugly step children in the brave new New York. With East Side Access in the works, providing an easier commute to the station, it would make sense to find new ways to continue growing the heart of the city's central business district.

Among the other marquee projects outlined were new fine arts and film incubators, new incentives to keep the Hunts Point produce market from crossing the Hudson into Jersey, and, of course, ongoing support at the World Trade Center to see that project through. (Even if the mayor is butting heads with the governor over the opening date of the 9/11 museum.)

There is a new mega-mall coming to Parkchester in the Bronx and a new mega-development in Astoria—that appears to be the long-delayed Hallets Point project, which began making news again at the end of last year. And there will be rezonings and relocations.

"We’ll begin rezoning East Fordham Road to allow for more private sector investment and explore economic development possibilities on Webster Avenue. To do that, we’re working with a group of neighbors we call the Bronx Quad: the New York Botanical Garden, the Bronx Zoo, Montefiore Medical Center and of course, the emerging basketball powerhouse, Fordham University."

[...]

“In Queens, Jet Blue will open its new headquarters in Long Island City and an expansion of the Queens Museum of Art will double its size. On Staten Island, we’ll create a new blue-collar-friendly industrial business zone, we’ll redesign the zoo’s aquarium, and we’ll help break ground on a major apartment and retail development at the Homeport, creating more than 1,100 construction jobs.

“In Brooklyn, more good blue-collar jobs will come to the waterfront both in Sunset Park and at the Navy Yard."

There will also be even more tourists, the mayor hopes.

The most far-reaching proposal may come from the streamlining section of the speech, where the mayor introduced the Partnership to Build NYC, an expansion of the current Department of Buildings programs to speed up building approvals. "Our goal is ten days or less–and we’re not talking about cutting corners, we’re talking about cutting red tape," the mayor said.

He also said he wants "streamlining City Planning’s review of land use applications." Could this mean the overhaul of ULURP everyone from community advocates to Big Real Estate have been clamoring for?

And not to ignore the streets, there will be more slow zones and more bike lanes—just in time for bike share—so the bikelash may indeed continue into 2012.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Rap's first home is saved!

The hallowed ground on which "b-boys" and "b-girls" first found their groove will be saved from (a non-allegorical) wrecking ball crew.

1520 Sedgwick Avenue in The Bronx is often referred to as "The Birthplace of Hip-Hop" owing to the musical sound that was pioneered by DJ Kool Herc (nee Clive Campbell) in the building's recreation common room during the late 1970's.  Mr. Campbell's music influenced other progenitors of the hip-hop scene, including Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa, who made their way to the Morris Heights section of the Bronx to attend parties at 1520 Sedgwick, before bringing Mr. Campbell's DJing style back to the more Southern boroughs.

In recent years however 1520 Sedgwick became a glaring example of the pitfalls of predatory lending, with it's new ownership falling almost immediately into default and allowing the building to go neglected. In fact Senator Chuck Schumer wryly referred to the building as "the birthplace of predatory equity” last September when news of the building's dire financial situation came to light.

Despite attempts by city financial officials to prevent the transaction, a group led by investor Mark Karasick purchased the deed to 1520 Sedgwick in 2008, and went into default less than two years later, prompting outrage and fear from longtime residents including 72 year-old "Mama Kool Herc," aka Geraldine Davis, who told The Times today that "We stay here and fight. I’m going to stay here till the bricks come loose.”

But the bricks will stay firmly in place, at least for now, as a company called Workforce Housing Advisors has picked up the deed to 1520 Sedgwick at public auction for $6.2 million. $5.6 million of that amount will come in the form of a city loan designed to save buildings just like hip-hop's Bronx-based birthplace.

tmcenery@observer.com

Win one for the Giff.

A development firm that counts former speaker of the New York City Council Gifford Miller as a partner received city approval to rezone a portion of the Bronx for a 5-acre mixed-use property development.

The project, which is being spearheaded by the development firm Signature Urban Properties, is situated on a portion of land located along West Farms Road in the neighborhoods of Crotona Park East and West Farms.

The West Farms development will build a total of 10 mixed-use buildings and will add 46,000 square feet of retail space and 1,325 housing units, 663 of which will be used as subsidized housing.

GTIS Partners, a global real estate investment firm headquartered in New York City, is underwriting a majority of the capital for the $350 million West Farms project. Signature Urban Properties is seeking additional funding from the city Housing Preservation & Development and other city agencies.

The West Farms development has already received enough financing to start two buildings - a low-income and modern-income, respectively - and has started speaking with potential retailers for the ground space storefronts.

“We’ve talked to a few banks and the like, but it’s still conceptual (right now),” Mr. Miller told The Commercial Observer.

The added retail space would bring an estimated 412 permanent jobs in the neighborhood.

The development received unanimous approval by the New York City Planning Commission in September. The New York City Council voted 43 to 1 in favor of it on October 5th.

Mr. Miller told The Commercial Observer that Signature Urban Properties aims to start building the West Farms project at the end of 2012.

“We’re very enthusiastic about the Bronx,” said Mr. Miller, 41. “We feel there are a lot of opportunities in the Bronx, and this is certainly a project that has given us plenty to work on.”

Gifford Miller served in the City Council from 1996 to 2005.

drosen@observer.com

The five-year triple net deal—by which the tenant pays the net taxes, insurance and maintenance—commanded an asking rent of $7 per square foot, and includes an option to buy, said  Dmitri Gourianov, a broker with Kalmon Dolgin Affiliates who represented the property owner in the transaction.

The asking price for the asset was $10.5 million.

American Self-Storage, an affiliate of American Real Estate Management, plans to convert the industrial building to a storage facility, which should take around six months, brokers said. The company will take possession of an additional 18,000 square feet of parking on the property. The asset’s previous tenant and current owner is Plaza Packaging, a manufacturer of packaging products.

“The whole area is changing, with the new Yankee Stadium, etcetera," said Mr. Gourianov. "There's a lot of new residential construction."

In particular, the tenant was wooed by the building’s high ceilings, as well as multiple loading docks and drive-in entrances. American Real Estate Management is an affiliate of American Self-Storage, which has multiple locations in New York and New Jersey.

Grant Dolgin and Mr. Gourianov, both of Kalmon Dolgin Affiliates, represented the owner in the deal. Ivan Diaz of Manhattan Brokerage Consultants represented the tenant.