Bronx News Network

Harris Clean-up Costing Other Parks

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Construction at Harris Field, this October (file photo by Layza Garcia)Editor’s note: this article is from this week’s Norwood News, our special 2010 year in review issue, which hits the streets today.By Alex KratzThere’s a new twist to the saga that has become the remaking of Harris Field in Bedford Park. Last year, the Norwood News uncovered the Parks Department’s finding of heavy lead contamination underneath the soil at Harris, which caused delays and cost the city $5.2 million to mitigate. While the city searched for a company to do the clean-up work, residents continued to use the contaminated site, but it wasn’t until a decomposing dead body was found inside the park’s weak fencing in July that the Parks Department got serious about keeping people out. Now apparently free of contamination, construction of the new ball fields has re-started and Parks is hoping to complete them in time for youth baseball leagues to start using this spring. The twist is that it is now clear how the problems at Harris are affecting other parks that were in line to receive funding from the Department of Environmental Protection, which injected more than $200 million in capital funding for Bronx parks in exchange for taking public parkland (in Van Cortlandt Park) to build the Croton Water Filtration Plant.Regatta Park, which sits on the Harlem River and is more of an idea than an actual park, was supposed to receive $1.6 million to help transform it into something public and usable.

Bronx News Network

Send in the Plows

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The wheels of a backhoe are lifted up into the air as it attempts to pull a stranded sanitation truck at the intersection of LaSalle Avenue and Gillespie Avenue (photo by Lenny Shutterman)It’s been three days since a blizzard dumped nearly two feet of snow on our fine borough and the rest of New York. Since then, the Sanitation Department and Mayor Bloomberg are getting

Bronx News Network

Bronx News Roundup, Dec. 29

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Despite the snow, Yankee Stadium is ready to host this Thursday’s Pinstripe Bowl, the college football showdown between Kansas State and Syracuse University. Cleanup crews at the stadium said they’d prepared for the storm by covering the field with tarps.Meanwhile, Syracuse players will take local kids from the Kips Bay Boys and Girls Club and the Bronx Colts Youth Tackle League on a walk-through of the stadium before the game. Neighbors of the Harlem man accused of killing a Bronx woman and stuffing her body in a suitcase say they heard screams coming from his apartment the day of the murder. Hassan Malik was arraigned yesterday on second-degree murder charges, for the alleged killing of 28-year-old Betty Williams.Tomorrow night, Bronxnet will host a live screening of its culinary program “Bronx Flavor,”at the Paradise Theatre as part of a holiday benefit performance.Bronx resident Jose Ramos is one of many across the city to turn this week’s storm into financial opportunity by shoveling sidewalks for extra cash. A family of Bronx rocker siblings, who go by “Graveshift,” are spreading holiday cheer with a new song and feel-good music video, which you can watch below, courtesy of the Daily News.