Schools, Community Space, A YMCA And — Oh Yeah — A Multiplex

Plans for Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx may be closer to Fine:

Ten years after winning control of the gigantic, castle-like Kingsbridge Armory, the city may be close to figuring out what to do with it.

Developer Peter Fine has pitched a plan — including schools, a YMCA, big and small retailers and a multiplex — to the local community board, and the process is inching forward.

. . .

The city inherited the 408,000-square-foot state armory — covering four city blocks — in 1996. Since then, plans have come and gone — but none garnered the required combination of financial backing, local support and political will.

Fine, head of Atlantic Development Group, one of New York’s largest developers of affordable housing, may become the first to nail down all three.

“We worked closely with local residents, civic leaders, clergy, education advocates and elected officials to create a community-oriented plan that delivers schools, jobs, athletic facilities, entertainment, retail and community space,” said Fine.

Fine has cultivated good relationships with many of the elected officials on a city task force overseeing the approval process, making significant campaign contributions. Like the plans preferred by the community, Fine’s includes public schools for 2,000 students, a 57,200-square-foot YMCA, another 13,000-25,000 square feet of community space, a retail portion with a major department store, a cinema and a parking garage.

Location scout: Kingsbridge Armory.

Ground Breaks On The House That Construction Jobs Built

The House That Ruth Built is a sacred cathedral that inspires great reverence . . . which is why it must be demolished to make way for a more functional version of itself:

Declaring the start of a new era for the Yankees and for the Bronx, officials broke ground yesterday on a $1.2 billion project to build a 51,000-seat replacement stadium. The ceremony took place as throngs of police officers cordoned off protesters who oppose the project because it will eliminate most of two parks and require $400 million in public subsidies.

Gov. George E. Pataki and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg dismissed those complaints. The governor said the project would create more parkland than it would destroy and noted that the team would be responsible for any cost overruns. The mayor said the stadium would help revitalize the long-neglected South Bronx and create 6,500 construction jobs over the next four years, as well as 1,000 permanent jobs.

The ceremony, which drew the likes of the former Yankees catcher and manager Yogi Berra and the actor Billy Crystal, occurred on the 58th anniversary of the death of Babe Ruth.

The groundbreaking seemed to put to rest decades of speculation that the Yankees might return to Manhattan, where they played until 1923, or abandon New York altogether for New Jersey.

. . .

Bud Selig, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, recalled discovering Yankee Stadium as a teenager with his mother. “To many fans, the ballpark is a cathedral, because it’s a place that inspires great reverence, and it is a place for comfort. If ballparks are indeed cathedrals, then Yankee Stadium is one of the most revered.”

The five-level, open-air stadium will replicate the entry facade, roof frieze, auxiliary scoreboards and right-field bullpen of the current stadium, which opened in 1923 and was substantially modified in a 1974-75 renovation. The stadium is to be completed in 2009, and the Yankees will pay the $800 million construction costs using tax-exempt bonds.

The groundbreaking occurred on a running track at Macombs Dam Park, which will be largely eliminated, along with John Mullaly Park. Across River Avenue, where the No. 4 subway line runs overhead, demonstrators from Save Our Parks, a community group, chanted and shouted. Metal police barricades kept the demonstration separate from the ceremony.

Previously on . . .

That Was Fast*

Seriously, that was really fast:

The Yankees plan to break ground today on their new $1.2 billion open-air stadium in the Bronx, less than 24 hours after a state judge rejected an attempt by a community group to block construction.

The new 51,000-seat stadium, with echoes of the distinctive copper frieze and limestone walls of the original ballpark, will go up in Macombs Dam and John Mullaly Parks, across 161st Street from the team’s historic home. Various elected officials are expected to join George Steinbrenner, the team’s principal owner, at a ceremony today signifying the start of construction.

“The courts have now ruled that the review process was thorough and complete,” said Randy Levine, president of the Yankees. “We’re excited to be breaking ground for what we think will be the best stadium in the country.”

Opponents of the project will also be on hand. “We’ll be out there demonstrating,” said Joyce Hogi, a member of Save Our Parks, who lives nearby. “We need to let people know how their rights have been trampled on. There’s nowhere else they can get the kind of economic bonanza they have in the Bronx. But the Yankees have not always been good neighbors.”

Save Our Parks, a community group, and a number of environmental organizations objected to plans to eliminate most of the popular Macombs Dam and Mullaly Parks and replace them with smaller parks scattered across the neighborhood. Some of the new parks, as well as ball fields, a running track and basketball courts, would be built on the roofs of new garages for stadium parking.

Save Our Parks had unsuccessfully sought an injunction barring construction, saying that the city’s environmental review failed to gauge the true impact of the new stadium on the neighborhood parks, open spaces and schoolchildren. The group also objected to plans to remove 377 mature shade trees from one of the poorest communities in the city.

“We’re not opposed to the Yankees having a new stadium,” Ms. Hogi said. “We always felt they could have done better by the community by reaching out and getting input into how they were proceeding with their plan.”

But Justice Herman Kahn [sic] of State Supreme Court refused to issue an injunction, saying the city would replace 22.42 acres of lost parkland with new parks totaling 24.56 acres.

Some contend, however, that the city isn’t actually getting all that much extra parkland in return:

“The judge just accepted their word on everything,” complained Geoffrey Croft, president of NYC Park Advocates. “But these guys haven’t been telling the truth.”

In his opinion, [Manhattan State Supreme Court Judge Herman] Cahn also repeats the city’s contention that the community will get 2.14 acres more than it is losing in the stadium swap. But Croft claims that calculation includes existing parkland and paved walkways. He points to the state’s application to convert the parkland, which claims the new waterfront park will be 6.42 acres. “But 1.37 of those acres are underwater,” Croft said.

*How fast? Wasn’t this announced just last June? What is taking the Mets so long?

Don’t Dump On The Bronx!

The one-time official flower of the Bronx blooms in Brooklyn:

A bizarre, stomach-churning and, for some, unprecedented display is not the scene of a sensational crime, but far from it. The long, hot room at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, usually occupied by a stately bonsai museum, has been cleaned out for the macabre main event, a rare blooming of the Amorphophallus titanum.

The species last bloomed in New York in 1939 in the Bronx. The botanic garden has kept one behind closed doors for 10 years, until now, as the plant completes a remarkable growth spurt of seven inches a day and prepares to flower and unleash its pollen as early as tomorrow. And then the reason will become clear for its grim nickname: the corpse flower.

“People will say, ‘Do you have a dead animal in here?'” said Patrick J. Cullina, vice president of horticulture and facilities at the botanic garden, who has worked with similar plants of different species. The literature posted beside the harmless-looking plant describes what to expect, the “revolting smell of putrefying meat.”

There is no smell yet. A trickle of visitors gazed up yesterday at the cream-colored, rigid spathe, the fast-growing spike that has taken over the plant, resembling a giant squash and now bigger than a man’s leg. Days ago, it burst horror-movie style through the green leaves that wrapped it. More visitors are expected as the bloom approaches, and the flower’s progress, but not its smell, can be tracked from the garden’s Web site, www.bbg.org.

In 1937 and again in 1939, thousands turned out to watch bloomings in the Bronx. According to The New York Times, the odor “almost downed” newspaper reporters, and was described by an assistant curator at the botanical garden there as “a cross between ammonia fumes and hydrogen sulphide, suggestive of spoiled meat or rotting fish.” It became the official flower of the Bronx, until 2000, and it seems the bizarre specimen — why the heck does a flower smell like bad meat? — can still draw a crowd. More than 10,000 people visited a blooming corpse flower at the University of Connecticut in Storrs in 2004.

The flower was first discovered in Sumatra, its native terrain, in 1878 by Odoardo Beccari. It was an immediate sensation. An English artist assigned to illustrate the plant is said to have become ill from the odor, and governesses forbade young women from gazing upon its indelicate form. (Its formal name ends in “phallus” for good reason.)

Honey, Did A Tomahawk Missile Just Spill Out Onto The Cross-Bronx?

Well now that’s odd:

Some would argue that there is nothing scarier than morning rush hour on the New England Thruway passing through the Bronx.

Throw a Tomahawk missile in the mix and you make it even scarier.

It happened to New Yorkers Friday when they found themselves nose to nose with a missile — that’s right, a missile — fell off a flat-bed truck on the thruway.

There was never any danger, however, as the missile wasn’t really a missile, just an inert, 18-foot long, 2,900 pound replica of the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile.

The real McCoy carries can hold a nuclear warhead and got rave reviews when it was first used — sans the warhead, of course — in Operation Desert Storm, in 1991.

The replica, it can now be told, is capable of slowing the morning rush hour to a crawl, as it did Friday.

The 4:47 a.m accident sent the NYPD Bob Squad racing to the scene, fearing the worst. But police quickly realized they were dealing with a replica.

“It just resembles a missile,” said Lt. John Gay, spokesman for the U.S. Navy. “It’s the same size,the same shape as a missile. We use it to train personnel how to load missiles onto submarines.”

By midday, the dupe was on its way to the police facility at Randalls Island. A Naval representative will arrange for transport to its home, a naval station in Norfolk, Va.

It had been at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, a Research and testing facility in Newport, Rhode Island.

Its trip back south was scheduled to go through New York City, but as it neared the Hutchinson River Parkway entrance ramp the trailer carrying the missile stalled in the center lane and was rear-ended by a truck, police said.

The trailer then jackknifed and the case in which the missile was stored fell onto the roadway.