A Sheet Gets Hotter

With the foundation set, and the hourly rates are next:

There are no heralded restaurants or strobe-lit nightclubs nearby. The area has no tourist attractions. Finding a yellow cab would be akin to spotting a U.F.O.

Still, a hotel is in the final stage of construction in a remote stretch of Hunts Point, wedged between the Sheridan Expressway and the Bronx River. Neighbors of the four-story, butter yellow building, which will have at least 60 rooms, include a body repair shop, a boiler repair outfit and a junkyard.

But rather than hailing the hotel as an economic boon to the gritty industrial area, community leaders wish it would simply go away.

“Who in their right mind is going to come from Oklahoma and stay in a location like that?” demanded Francisco Gonzalez, the district manager of Community Board 9. “It’s a deleterious location.”

Central among local concerns, said Albert Alvarez, chief of staff to City Councilman Joel Rivera of the Bronx, is that “this hotel, opening up in an area that’s pretty much desolate, is going to be a haven of prostitution and drugs.”

Mmm . . . Sweet, Smoky, Buttery, Fecal Fried Chicken . . .

The anecdotal evidence well established, DEP officials will perform a formal olfactory survey of Hunts Point:

The city’s Department of Environmental Protection has tapped an engineering consulting firm to conduct an odor survey of Hunts Point over four days starting tomorrow, with the public asked to be the bloodhounds — phoning in when they pick up the scent.

The purpose of the survey is to identify the odors prevalent in the Hunts Point area and establish their sources.

The new pungency patrol is part of a seven-page agreement City Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo (D-South Bronx) wrangled from the DEP as the price for dropping her opposition to an expansion and upgrade of the Hunts Point Wastewater Treatment Facility to be built in her district.

The $235 million project was approved by the City Council Monday by a 48-to-0 vote.

The Council approval of several land-use actions will allow the DEP to begin work, expected to take eight years, on four egg-shaped, 130-foot-high “digester” tanks, where bacteria will break down sludge into a bio-solid for use as compost and fertilizer.

Tomorrow, inspectors from the Malcolm Pirnie Inc. consulting firm will be in Hunts Point from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., ready to track down odors called in by residents to a special hotline.

They’ll be back in the evenings from 5p.m. to 10 p.m. on the following Monday and Thursday, then again on Tuesday, Sept. 25.

. . .

The DEP has even offered a list of descriptors useful for characterizing odors under three broad categories:

“Almond-like” odors might be sweet, smoky, earthy, metallic, acidic, oily or like mothballs.

“Sulfidic” odors could be yeasty, fruity, putrid, fecal, buttery or honeylike.

“Alcohol-like” smells may be rubbery, sooty, coffee-like, chemical or like fried chicken.

What, Frighted With False Fire?

As city officials stumble upon even more impressive ways to waste money (a $114,762 electricity bill for a building not even open, for example*), one of the better Leona Helmsley anecdotes is resurrected:

In 235 counts in state and federal indictments, the Helmsleys were accused of using money from their hotel and real estate empires to buy a $1 million marble dance floor above a swimming pool, a $210,000 mahogany card table and $500,000 worth of jade objets d’art. Mrs. Helmsley was also charged with defrauding Helmsley stockholders by receiving $83,333 a month in secret consulting fees.

Mr. Helmsley, then 80 and suffering deficiencies in reasoning and memory, was found mentally unfit to stand trial. As Mrs. Helmsley was tried, a series of prosecution witnesses described a spiteful, extravagant, foul-mouthed woman who terrified her underlings. In the most celebrated line of testimony, a former Helmsley housekeeper testified that Mrs. Helmsley had once told her, “Only the little people pay taxes.”

*They must not have gotten to the David Owens’ piece in last week’s New Yorker that refutes the argument for security lighting; maybe it’s still sitting next to the leaky toilet?

Who Needs Surveillance Cameras When You Have Webcams And MySpace?

Come on — seasoned criminals know to keep a low profile online:

A photograph lifted from MySpace.com and handed to a grieving relative of a victim in Sunday’s fatal subway shooting led to the arrest yesterday of a 16-year-old Bronx boy, police sources said.

“This is the kid who shot your nephew,” a man unknown to the family told the aunt of Rayquon Story, 19, who was killed early Sunday on a parked No. 5 train in Eastchester, the Bronx, police sources said.

After handing her the photo, the tipster went on to tell the aunt that the suspect, identified by police as Robert Denis, lives in Co-op City.

She turned the photo over to detectives, who then spoke to Co-op City security. They recognized the teenager and he was taken into custody.

Denis is accused of squeezing off five rounds during a 2:30 a.m. confrontation at the Dyre Ave. and E. 233rd St. subway station, striking four people, including Story, cops said.

He made a videotaped statement at the 47th Precinct stationhouse, and was awaiting arraignment at Bronx Criminal Court on charges of murder, attempted murder, manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon last night.

Who Needs Squeegee Men? The Outer Boroughs Are Still Gritty!

Those pining for the bad old days should take comfort knowing that the bad old days are alive and well and they’ve returned to the Bronx to revisit an old friend:

In the age-old contest for most despicable vandal, stealing from a preschool that serves autistic and other special-needs children is bound to earn you a spot on the list. But when the object you steal is part of a memorial to the school’s longstanding and recently deceased principal? Automatic top 10.

So congratulations to the mystery thieves who on the night of Thursday, June 7, visited 2778 Bruckner Boulevard — the home of These Our Treasures, Inc., also known as TOTS — and walked away with a Japanese cutleaf maple tree — a tribute to beloved educator Nan Sforza, who succumbed to cancer three years ago.

The small tree — carefully raised in a pot in the school’s front lobby for the past two years — was planted hardly a month ago, in an emotional ceremony that dedicated the entire garden on TOTS’ Brinsmade Avenue side to Sforza. The school’s staff was planning to attach a memorial plaque within a few weeks.

Imagine their surprise, then, when they arrived at work on Friday morning to find an empty hole where the tree had been. Since, the staff has filled the hole with a white-and-red sign reading “Shame on You,” alerting neighbors to the purpose of tree.

. . .

[In a statement to the Bronx Times Reporter, TOTS officials reasoned] that since the exotic maple was carefully uprooted, rather than ripped up or toppled over, the average local hooligan is probably not to blame. “It appeared less like a random act of vandalism,” the staff wrote, “and more like the effort of some misguided gardener to get a lovely little tree at no cost.”

So far, police have been unable to track down the vandal, and no eyewitnesses have come forward. But TOTS is offering a truce to whatever brand of crook lifted its loving tribute: If the maple magically reappears at the school building in the near future — as neatly as it was removed last Thursday — the staff won’t ask any questions.