Just Out Of Curiosity . . .

How does a firefighter afford a Cadillac SUV? That looks like an Escalade. Prices start at $56,890:

A Cadillac SUV registered to Firefighter Christopher Santana was photographed parked just 3 feet from a fire hydrant on a Bronx street.

And in what seems to be a pathetic attempt to dodge a ticket for the gross — and potentially dangerous — parking violation, a handwritten note was placed on the dashboard alongside a worthless fire union parking placard. “I’m really a fireman,” the note read. “I work in Engine 46.”

“Ask Traffic Agent Maria Daniel,” the note continued. “Thank you for your courtesy.”

The black SUV — boasting the vanity license plate BRAVEST1 — was parked on Van Cortlandt Park South at the corner of Gale Place in Kingsbridge on Sunday afternoon. Neighbors said the car was frequently parked in that spot. It was stationed just 3 feet from the fireplug, far less than the 15 feet required by city law.

“Every firefighter in the City of New York knows not to park in front of a hydrant,” said one high-ranking FDNY source. “Don’t they teach that on the first day of the [Fire] Academy?”

“Could you imagine if a fire engine couldn’t reach the hydrant because of that guy?” the source asked.

Santana, 34, is assigned to Engine 46 and has been with the Fire Department for more than four years, according to an FDNY official.

The Face Of Gentrification . . .

Fewer hot-sheet motels, more places you can put up Mom and Dad:

The people who published AAA’s 2008 New York tour book had a hard time recommending any hotels in the Bronx. They could find only one, in fact, a rather bland-looking building a mile north of Yankee Stadium by a service road to the Major Deegan Expressway.

The hotel fared better than restaurants, since the automobile club’s guide does not list a single place to eat in the Bronx.

It is an odd distinction for that lone hotel in the guide, a Howard Johnson of no particular architectural significance. And given the borough’s long battles against hot-sheet motels that rent rooms by the hour, a casual observer might assume this place was no different.

But it is a real hotel catering to real tourists. One day last week, the parking lot was filled with cars from out of state, most belonging to guests who had come to see the Yankees play Cleveland. Retirees from Oklahoma and families from upstate New York eagerly hauled suitcases upstairs as they prepared to change into baseball jerseys and take in a game.

Chadd Morris and Brandon Bebout had driven eight hours from Cleveland to buy game tickets. They asked a local police officer for the nearest hotel and were directed to the HoJo, at 1300 Sedgwick Avenue just north of 167th Street.

“We got to New York with no idea where we were going to stay,” Mr. Morris said. “I had heard negatives and positives about the Bronx. We’ll see what happens.”

. . .

The hotel itself has Yankee pinstripe wallpaper in the lobby and a breakfast nook dominated by a photo mural of the stadium. The rooms and windows are tiny, but clean and well appointed, with Wi-Fi access (and plasma screen televisions coming soon, too). A southbound highway ramp is nearby. The garage even has a waiting area labeled “High Class Passenger Pick Up and Drop Off.”

“High Class” is not (necessarily) referring to the passengers, but to High Class Bronx, a livery cab service that takes guests to the stadium or back and forth to the subway.

Gaurang Parikh bought the 45-room hotel two years ago when a friend told him the previous owner was having a hard time making a go of the place.

“I came to see the property and fell in love with it,” he said. “It has a river view of the Harlem River.”

Not to mention it was a 20-minute walk to Yankee Stadium. It was his idea to redo the décor in a baseball theme.

“I am from India, but I have always been a diehard Yankees fan,” he said. “For me to have a hotel next to Yankee Stadium is a dream come true.”

. . .

He said that about 40 percent of his guests are baseball fans, and that the place is packed when Boston or Baltimore comes to play. The rest are people who want to visit Manhattan but do not want to pay Manhattan hotel rates. At most, his rooms go for $139 a night.

“Though Nothing Has Been Proved”

But really, when you throw around figures like $545 million for trees and $410 million for biometric punch clocks, $3 billion doesn’t seem like such a bad deal:

In a city of big projects, it ranks among the biggest. New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection is building one of the largest water filtration plants in the world in a 10-story-deep hole it blasted out of bedrock in the Bronx. When completed in 2012, the plant, capable of purifying 300 million gallons of water a day, will be buried there.

But the plant, which will filter water from the Croton watershed in Westchester County, is no Bronx treasure chest. Even as construction moves forward, questions about soaring costs and delays continue to plague the project.

The cost is now estimated at nearly $3 billion, a huge jump from the $660 million city officials estimated when they announced an audacious plan in 1998 to build the plant below the surface of Van Cortlandt Park. They vowed that the park would be made as good as new, even if that meant replacing whatever was lost during construction. They now plan to rebuild a driving range on top of the buried plant.

Some officials and others fear the final tab could climb even higher, and in the process push up water rates. On April 1, the city comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr., announced that he was starting an independent audit to determine whether city officials understated the original price, to get the plant built in the Bronx rather than Westchester. Besides scrutinizing the complicated accounting, Mr. Thompson will have to sort through accusations by some residents and officials of deliberate distortions of costs, and intimations that the project has been tainted by mob influence, though nothing has been proved.

. . .

The city was forced to build the plant because water from the Croton watershed did not meet federal standards for safety and purity. Although the Croton system can supply nearly 30 percent of the city’s 1.1 billion gallons a day of drinking water, generally it supplies just 10 percent, mostly in the Bronx and northern Manhattan. The rest of the city’s water comes from the Catskill Mountains and the Delaware River, and is so clean that the city last year won a 10-year exemption from federal regulations requiring that all surface drinking water be filtered.

Opponents of the Bronx plant have also expressed concern about the federal indictment in February of a key manager for the Schiavone Construction Company, which was the principal contractor responsible for digging the pit and putting in the water tunnels. The company’s offices were raided by federal agents, who seized files, and the manager, Anthony Delvescovo, was charged with having committed extortion beginning in February 2005 — around the time that work was beginning on the Croton project.

Location Scout: Van Cortlandt Park.

Take A Spin In My Zipcar

Automobile use as “alternative transportation” . . . of course it is:

Another Manhattan luxury is making its way to the Bronx — and it’s eco-friendly.

Zipcar, the urban car share service, is bringing 12 cars to the borough that will be stationed in four parking lots. It has plans to have at least 20 more in three additional lots by summer’s end.

“We think New Yorkers everywhere need access to alternative transportation,” said Joel Johnson, general manager of the company. “Traditional services like rental car companies tend to shy away from areas underserved like the Bronx. We are open to serve the entire city.”

Zipcar already operates in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. It has 200,000 members nationwide.

Unlike rental cars, the 12 Mini Coopers and eco-friendly hybrid Toyota Priuses in the Bronx can be reserved by the hour or day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Members reserve the cars online or by phone whenever they want, and have automated access to the cars using a “Zipcard” to unlock the door and drive away.

The four lots to first have the cars are located at 1020 Grand Concourse, 3000 Third Ave., 1752 Morris Ave. and 250 E. 188th St.

Don’t Dump On The Bronx!

Can’t you people quit using the Bronx as the movie set for your amateur Soprano murder plot? It’s unfair to the borough:

A dumped lover hired his cousin to kill his teenage ex and then tried to cover it up as a botched Bronx robbery — even screaming after his bumbling relative, “You gotta shoot me,” too, when he forgot, cops said yesterday.

Carlos Cruz and killer cousin Devon Miller appeared to be within a hair of getting away with their fiendish plot — until Miller’s dreadlocks did them in, sources said.

A woman looking out her apartment window just after the Sunday shooting saw Cruz chasing a man down the street and told cops the thug turned around and fired at his pursuer. She described the shooter as a hulking man with dreadlocks.

When Miller later showed up at Jacobi Hospital supposedly to console Cruz as he recovered from a minor gunshot wound to the thigh, an eagle-eyed detective recognized him from the description.

That set an investigation into motion that ended with Cruz confessing, sources said.

Cruz paid his 25-year-old cousin — a convicted murderer — $1,000 to shoot Chelsea Frazier, his on-again, off-again girlfriend and the mother of their 14-month-old, Elijah, police said.

The explosive end to the case came less than two days after Cruz told cops that he and Frazier, 18, were the random victims of a street robbery gone awry.

Cruz had allegedly lured Frazier to The Bronx from their home in Southbridge, Mass., for a shopping excursion as part of the plot.