Board still looking for a place to hang its hat

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Just talking about it is painful for Rosemary Ginty.

“I hate opening up on this note,” Ginty said at the start of the March 13 Community Board 8 meeting. In fact, the CB8 chair compared it to tearing off a Band-Aid.

The mayor’s management and budget office had turned down a storefront location at 5740 Broadway where CubeSmart Self Storage is — a place Ginty had hoped would become CB8’s new home.

The reason? “The price per square foot was too high,” she said. But how high? That’s a mystery even to Ginty.

“They wouldn’t tell me,” she said, referring to the citywide administrative services department — or DCAS — who negotiated with the landlord, Storage Deluxe Management. DCAS then sent an agreement to the budget office, Ginty said. But it just wasn’t CB8’s lucky day.

It’s a particularly precipitous letdown for Ginty, considering how hard she worked to convince the city to let CB8 explore leaving their windowless first-floor space on the northern part of Riverdale Avenue. Yet, she still has an ally: Councilman Andrew Cohen.

“I wish he were here to tell us the latest episode,” Ginty said at the meeting. “He’s in Albany, but he is fighting to get that decision reversed. I will go down the road with DCAS to squeeze some more sites out, but I’m broken-hearted.”

It’s not just that the rent was high, said Daniel Johnson, Cohen’s chief of staff. “The proposed rent was significantly more expensive than the monthly rent of any other board throughout the city.”

Steve Novenstein, a partner at Storage Deluxe, refused to comment on what he called an active negotiation.

Ginty hasn’t given up, and apparently neither has DCAS. The agency has sent the board several other sites, although Ginty couldn’t provide exact addresses. She’s focused on finding a location close to public transportation, and big enough to hold large groups for board and committee meetings.

“That it’s good for the staff, that it’s easy for people to get to in this community. That’s what I care about,” Ginty said. “The subway lines, bus lines, mass transportation — that’s what this whole move is about.”

CB8’s current home at 5676 Riverdale Avenue is close only to the Bx7 and Bx10 bus lines. Other locations — like in the Staples shopping center around West 234th Street and Broadway — would put the office closer, at least, to the 1 train. 

But there are other locations as well, like what Ginty described as an empty dress shop on the north side of West 231st Street in Kingsbridge. 

Then there’s a first-floor or basement-level space in a new residential building “at the very beginning of Riverdale Avenue,” but that last one isn’t ideal, Ginty added, because it’s outside the Broadway corridor CB8 had hoped to set down roots in. 

“There is no sense in moving if we don’t accomplish the goal of getting to the center of our community,” she said.

Ginty is pulling out the big guns now, working not just with Cohen, but also reaching out to the other councilmen who represent part of CB8 — Fernando Cabrera and Ydanis Rodriguez. 

“They got DCAS off the dime to say, ‘OK, we give you permission to look for a space,’” Ginty said. “That was the first hurdle, and it was the three council members who did that.”

CB8 has called 5676 Riverdale Ave., home for more than 30 years, and Ginty isn’t even the first to try and get out of what seems like a small, cave-like space. CB8 tried to move as recently as 2015, but was denied it because it didn’t have a health or safety reason to move.

CB8’s population has shifted a bit over the last 30 years, where the central part of the district — especially east of the Major Deegan Expressway — has become much bigger. The board’s main hub is now along the Broadway commercial corridor from West 225th to West 242nd streets. 

The amount of space at CB8’s North Riverdale offices also is a problem where some 1,300 square feet is typically too small to hold a board meeting or even committee gatherings, where residents can air concerns about crime, transportation, sidewalk problems, construction noise and other issues. 

A larger space would mean CB8 wouldn’t have to scramble to nail down a suitable location each time it holds a meeting.

The March 13 meeting, for example, took place at the Schervier Nursing Care Center at 2975 Independence Ave., in Spuyten Duyvil, to accommodate the board as well as dozens of residents.

Board member David Gellman applauded Ginty’s tenacious pursuit.

“I’d love taking the credit for it,” Ginty said, “but the fact remains, it’s the board that has the desire to get more centrally located, for the good of all of us.”

“I never give up,” Ginty added later, in a phone interview. 

“We’re in a state of flux. You never know.”

Community Board 8, Rosemary Ginty, DCAS, Andrew Cohen, Steve Novenstein, Zak Kostro

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