In this issue:
By
Alex K. Payne
Bronx Journal Staff Reporter
By
Lora Victorio
Unity 99 Convention Online Staff
At a Snarl’s Pace
Co-op City traffic is quite bad . Now it could become worse.
By
Alex K. Payne
Bronx Journal Staff Reporter
It’s
a riddle only Mario Spence can answer.
In
the mornings, it takes him a mere 10 minutes to get from his home in Co-op City
to his job at Household Finance on Westchester Square in the Bronx. The return
trip home, however, runs as long as 45 minutes. According to Spence the distance
to and from work are identical.
So
what’s the difference? It’s nothing more than traffic, vehicular congestion
caused by the recent expansion of Bay Plaza Shopping Center. An 83-acre super
mall where retail giants like Kmart, J.C. Penney and P.C. Richards all rub
shoulders, Bay Plaza has outlets aplenty to accommodate hundreds of thousands of
anxious shoppers. Now, it’s
getting even larger. And that means traffic tie-ups and frustration for
motorists.
“On
the way home, anytime between 5 and 7 p.m. I run into all
the traffic from the multiplex or the shopping malls,” complains
Spence, “It’s annoying. This is
my home and I can’t get to it.”
Many
Co-op City residents are frustrated about the constant gridlock near their home.
Recently, traffic has been a nightmare for the community and growing worse still
as the expansion of the shopping complex carries on. Co-op city, home to over
55,000 residents, has quickly become flooded with city dwellers as they come
from neighboring areas looking for quick bargains.
“People
from everywhere are coming here, Manhattan and Westchester [County] as well,”
complains resident Eula Bacchus, a computer operator for Bear Sterns who cannot
stand to drive in her own community anymore. “I take public transportation to
and from work now, but even that’s bad. There are no trains here so I take the
bus. Traffic is so horrendous that often times the bus driver has to alternate
his route into Co-op City,” she says.
Independent
cab driver Bobby Osafo, meanwhile, is furious with the conditions at the Bay
Plaza Shopping Mall because he can’t ring up his fares as quickly as he used
to. “It takes me 15-20 minutes to get around the corner. Sometimes fares get
out and walk because it’s faster. I’m going to have to find another area to
cruise because I’m losing money here,” he says.
James
Vacca, District Manager of Community Board 10 who oversees City Island, Pelham
Bay and Co-op City, recently learned that Prestige Properties, the developer of
Bay Plaza has big plans for the mall. For one, Prestige is looking to develop a
420,000 square foot enclosed shopping center housing100 stores, theme
restaurants and theaters. That four-level mall is in addition to
soon-to-be-built mega-stores Macy’s and Sears plan to operate there.
There
will also be a two-story garage to accommodate drivers. The city has plans to
extend the subway to reach Co-op City residents, but that project is moving
along slowly. The garage will be done in a year or two; the subway won’t be
completed for another 25 years, according to Vacca.
In
other words, traffic could soon get even
worse, before it ever gets better. Charles Mallard, President of the city’s
Economic Development Corp. recently approved the sale of an additional 350,000
square feet of land to Prestige Properties. Mallard says traffic in Co-op City
is of great concern and points out that Prestige is required to undertake
“traffic mitigation efforts.”
A
representative for the developer says that entails widening of Bartow Avenue
from three lanes to four in both
directions from Edson Avenue. to Co-op City Blvd. Additionally, there are plans
to put up more signs to guide drivers within and around the shopping plaza.
A Band-Aid?
That’s
a purely cosmetic solution in the eyes of Arthur Taub, chairman of the Residents
and Merchants of Co-op City a group representing tenants and small businesses in
the community. Taub’s group has recently begun to press for solutions to the
knotty traffic. “Sure they can add another lane, but then the roads will be
too narrow. Trucks and buses will have difficulty getting through and turning
onto the highway,” he says.
Taub
and others believe structural changes to I-95 and the Hutchinson River
Parkway are needed to avoid traffic jams on Bartow Avenue. They have
fanned out to solicit support from every public official around, but to no
avail. At a recent press conference when asked why he hadn’t addressed the
issue of vehicular congestion at Bay Plaza, New York City Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani stated that it might not be a pressing issue. And, according to Taub,
two years ago Democratic House representative Elliot Engle was promised a two
million-dollar grant just to study I-95 traffic jams.
“That
plan must be dormant. We called and called to ask where are the bucks?
[Engle] never responded,” Taub says.
Mounting Frustrations
There
are also meetings that New York State Department of Transportation (DOT)
officials hold with Co-op City residents every 2 or 3 months to discuss traffic
issues. However, according to Taub, the city division has only studied the
timing of stop lights so far. Meanwhile, statistics compiled by the 45th
Precinct of the Police Department show that officers have issued over 300
traffic summonses for hazardous traffic violations over the last three months
alone, while 11 accidents have taken place in the area over the same period of
time.
“It’s
horrendous here, especially on the weekends and holidays,” Taub stresses,
“Our neighbors are moving out because of this. We have dangerous
injuries and traffic tragedies here and we don’t know where to go
now.”
Taub’s
efforts have had some success, however. Prestige has recently hired a third
party company to oversee the developer's plans for expansion to ensure handicap
accessibility including, side walks, ramps and sufficient parking.
Bronx
Overall Economic Corp. president Joe Ithier admits traffic is a problem in the
area. Still, there was little traffic when he visited the grand opening of a PC
Richards electronics outlet in May 1999, Ithier concedes, however, that on
weekends, afternoons and holidays congestion is heavy from theatergoers and
shoppers. “Prestige and the city have created a task force that will study the
traffic and make recommendations for improvements. Progress is slow at the
moment. It may take a back up as far as Castle Hill Avenue on I-95 to get them
to make it a priority,” Ithier says.
According
to Ithier, Prestige is not releasing much information about reconstruction of
I-95 or the Hutchinson Parkway at this time but the developer plans to complete
the expansion of stores in Bay Plaza within three years.
In
a way, Co-op City has always had to cope with outsized plans for the area . The
Bronx site was originally laid out to be a theme park which would compete with
Disneyland some thirty years ago, a plan that was dropped in favor of the
housing development that stands there now. Completed in 1970, Co-op is made up
of 35 buildings which can accommodate 15,372 middle-income families. Also built
were shopping centers, community
centers, a high school, two intermediate schools and two elementary schools.
Residents
of the “city within a city” have endured their share of
challenges. Since its’birth Co-op City has seen many problems with the
environment, transportation, rent strikes and now traffic. Still Spence, and
other residents hope something is done soon to trim time from their commute
home. “I hope someone, somewhere rethinks the mall expansion,” he says.
“Co-op city is already bigger than it should be - I’m afraid we’ll
eventually burst.”
Hear them roar:
Women lead all four Unity
groups
By
Lora Victorio
Unity 99 Convention Online Staff
Move
over, beach blanket Barbie. Make room for women who do more than sit on a shelf,
who are building bridges to change in the newsroom. Traditionally, men have
dominated the media pundit spectrum and have led the way in newsroom leadership.
Not so at Unity ’99. This year, the presidents of AAJA, NABJ, NAHJ and NAJA
are all women – and proud of it. Though some may believe that gender does not
play a part in media management, the question is: What do women bring to
leadership?
“It
was unusual that all four presidents are women in the convention this year,”
said Catalina Camia, Unity ’99 president. “We bring an added perspective and
a different voice.”
Camia,
also the AAJA president, is a Washington correspondent for the Dallas Morning
News. She is a veteran journalist, with 12 years of experience in the field. She
helped found AAJA’s Texas chapter and served as its national secretary from
1993-95.
Vanessa
Williams, Unity treasurer and NABJ president, is also not a new kid on the block
when it comes to journalism. She covers local government and politics for the
Washington Post, where she has been a staff writer for three years. Williams
also covered government and politics at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Actively
involved in NABJ, Williams has also served as secretary and vice president of
the organization.
For
some cultures, however, it is natural for women to be the leaders in the
community. Dawn Thomas, a photographer at WLUK in Greenbay, Wis., is accustomed
to matrilineal leadership. She points to an Oneida tribal tradition in which a
woman is chief and head of the clan.
“It’s
natural for a woman to take charge in leadership,” Thomas said. “Women are
making headway. As people are becoming more and more color-blind, they are
becoming gender-blind as well.”
So,
it is to no surprise that the NAJA president, Kara Briggs, is a woman.
Briggs
is this year’s Unity secretary, although she served as president last year.
She is a metropolitan reporter at the Oregonian in Portland, Ore. She has also
worked with young people interested in journalism careers through NAJA’s
college newspaper project, Native Voice. She played a part in creating NAJA’s
annual Phoenix and Columbus awards for best and worst media coverage of Native
Americans.
Nancy
Baca, Unity vice president, is the assistant features editor at the Albuquerque
Journal, where she has worked for more than 10 years. She started as an intern
and was a minority scholarship recipient. Baca has been on the NAHJ board of
directors since 1993.
Still,
despite their accomplishments, some find it difficult to accept women as
leaders. Others, however, welcome their leadership. Randall Yip, executive news
producer at KPTV in Portland, Ore., said: “The numbers may say that there are
more men then women [in the newsroom], but jus looking at this conference you
can see that that is not the case. More women in leadership roles are reflective
of this conference.”
Donna
Allen, founder of the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press, once said,
“There is no way the world’s communication problems are going to be solved
if women –- 51 percent of the population –- are not included in the
solutions, both in the selection of the solutions and in their
implementations.”
Though
the four presidents of the minority organizations may not have planned their
trend-setting stance, the International Women’s Media Foundation applauds the
occurrence. It studied women’s roles in the media and researched the role
women have in the journalism field. It found that newspapers disproportionately
hire more men than women for their executive and managerial positions. Also, in
the United States, women make up 37 percent of local television news, but only
14 percent have climbed the rungs to reach news director status.
In
other countries, there are even fewer women in the newsroom. The IWMF found that
in Bangladesh, there are only four women reporters of 120 million in a country
of 120 million. In China, women hold 8 percent of executive positions in the
media.
Sherry
Rockey, executive director of IWMF, believes that women can “rise to the
top” and that the leaders of Unity have helped mark the path for that to
happen. “The fact that all the presidents are women is a great testament to
these organizations,” Rockey said. “They are on the cutting edge.”
And
being at the “cutting edge” may be the key to gender diversity. “Media
organizations are including more and more women. As [women] get up in
management, [they’ll] have a greater profile in leadership,” Baca said.
|
