A nonprofit group headed by Giants co-owner Robert Tisch, which specializes in developing athletic facilities around the city, is eying the long-derelict Park Slope Armory for its next project.
Take the Field, which already has refurbished 18 sports fields around the city since it was founded 18 months ago, is considering the crumbling, castlelike structure on Eighth Ave., between 14th and 15th Sts., as well as similar sites, for a makeover as a year-round community recreation center.
"This is a great opportunity because we happen to have these buildings available," said Richard Kahan, president of Take the Field and the former head of the state Urban Development Corp.
Right now the 14th Regiment Armory is only partially used - for several offices and as a homeless shelter for up to 70 women.
Building such facilities from scratch could cost hundreds of millions of dollars, but renovating each armory can be done for less than $15 million, he said.
Plans call for turning the armory's century-old drill floor into an indoor track, complete with four different sports courts the size of four full-sized gyms. It would be open for use by local schools during the day and by neighborhood people in the mornings and evenings.
Take the Field has only just started meeting with community groups on the project.
And it is still working to raise the necessary funding from public and private groups for the plan.
But already, many who live in the area say the project could be a tremendous boon for the chronically underused structure.
'Wonderful idea'
"I think it's a wonderful idea," said Robert Lucas, assistant director of the Park Slope Women's Shelter, which cur-rently uses the building.
"From what I've heard, it sounds like nothing but a positive thing to me," he said. "And it would certainly be a good utilization of the space."
Take the Field also is drafting plans to overhaul three other similar structures across the city - the Bedford-Atlantic Armory in Bedford-Stuyvesant and one each in Queens and the Bronx. But officials said the Park Slope project is best poised to go first.
Kahan said his group is hoping to raise mostly public money for the project, in contrast to its field renovation pro-gram, which relies more on private money.
"We're going to try to be very aggressive about it," he said, adding that Take the Field intends to work with officials at the federal, state and city levels to fund the project.
Courtesy of the NY Daily News
May 6, 2002, Monday
Monday, May 6, 2002
ARMORY EYED AS REC CENTER
Sunday, February 3, 2002
IN A FIRST, COPS WILL PATROL HOMELESS SHELTER
For the first time, uniformed cops will be posted in a city homeless shelter to reduce crime.
Beginning this week, two officers will be posted from 4 p.m. to midnight at the Bedford-Atlantic armory shelter, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told the Daily News yesterday.
The 350-bed men's shelter in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, was chosen, Kelly said, because "based on anecdotal information, that place has a reputation as a bad spot."
Within days of taking office, Mayor Bloomberg said he wanted to make the shelters safer for the homeless, some of whom would rather stay on the streets, even in frigid weather, than risk assault or robbery in a city-run dwelling.
About 29,000 people are being housed in shelters throughout the city.
Kelly directed his borough commanders to survey all the city shelters last month. "This is the one they recom-mended putting someone in," Kelly said.
Kelly visited Bedford-Atlantic last month. "There were people who had just come out of jail. I saw someone there with a Rikers uniform on," he said. "If people feel unsafe in the shelters, it exacerbates the homeless problem on the street."
He said that statistics show crime is down in the shelters, but "the issue with shelters is underreporting of crime. You can look at the statistics and see they're down, but still feel unsafe."
Kelly, speaking by telephone en route to the Waldorf-Astoria, site of the World Economic Forum, did not have shelter crime statistics at hand.
"We will try these things. They are not absolutely etched in stone. We will see what the impact is," Kelly said, add-ing that it is possible cops could be assigned to other shelters in the future.
He also said that police will increase training for the peace officers and security guards who regularly work in the shelters. There is no plan for the NYPD to formally take over the security personnel, as it has with school safety offi-cers.
The Bedford-Atlantic armory has been one of the most notorious shelters since the mid-1980s, when it housed 1,000 men during the homeless crisis.
Courtesy of the NY Daily News
February 3, 2002, Sunday
Thursday, January 10, 2002
In Making Crowded Homeless Shelters Safer, Some View the Issue With a Sense of Security
On Monday, outside the Bedford-Atlantic shelter, Peter Engler, 23, said that current security personnel were overwhelmed. ''You can bring drugs in here, you can bring weapons in here, anything you want,'' Mr. Engler said. ''No one does anything. The N.Y.P.D., that's what I'd like to see in here.''
Dawn Witter, 45, who has stayed several times at Brooklyn Women's Shelter since 1989, said that while she has seen improvements over the years, she is still frightened. ''You got to have friends, you got to be careful,'' Ms. Witter said. ''You don't know where these people are coming from. Sometimes people come in from prison and they walk around bullying people. You have to watch your back.''
Steven Banks, the Legal Aid lawyer for the Coalition for the Homeless, said that emergency cots provided by the city during winter months leave the homeless especially vulnerable, without lockers to secure their possessions. Mr. Banks said he would meet with city officials today to discuss winter accommodations. He planned to request the statistics for tracking crime in shelters.
Courtesy of the NY Times
Read the full article here
Wednesday, January 9, 2002
NY: Bloomberg Touts Quality of Life Crackdown
The New York Post (1/9) reports, "Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly yesterday unveiled 'Op-eration Clean Sweep' -- the NYPD's quality-of-life crackdown that aims at wiping out public urination, prostitution and squeegee men." Bloomberg also "said his top cop had spent Monday night touring some city homeless shelters to assess their safety." And the mayor "said he had personally met with officials from the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, where homeless people are permitted by a court ruling last week to sleep on the steps." Bloomberg, who has said he's "trying to work out an arrangement with church officials to keep the homeless off the steps, credited Kelly with being the first top cop to target quality-of-life crimes."
Long Island Newsday (1/9) reports, "Hundreds of so-called quality of life offenders were arrested or ticketed over the weekend, and officials said Tuesday that more action is on the way." The "arrests and summonses, issued in 50 'tar-geted areas' that include Hell's Kitchen and Long Island City, are the focus of Police Commissioner Ray Kelly's first major initiative: a crackdown on the kind of low-level offenses that became a hallmark of the Giuliani administration." But in "signs that this initiative may be kinder and gentler than in the past, police officials said some offenders were issued desk-appearance tickets, instead of being forced to go through the booking system, and Kelly said he made a surprise visit to the Bedford-Atlantic Men's Shelter in Brooklyn Monday night to check on safety conditions there."
Courtesy of the Bulletin's Frontrunner
January 9, 2002, Wednesday
Monday, January 7, 2002
MAYOR EYES PUTTING COP IN EACH SHELTER
Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday he'll put a cop in every city shelter, if necessary, to keep homeless New Yorkers safe.
Bloomberg's comment came as the city braced for its first winter storm of this season, and also followed his vow last week to improve shelters - even as he promised to aggressively move the homeless off the streets.
The new mayor tackled the homelessness issue during a busy day in which he attended the inaugurations of Man-hattan Borough President Virginia Fields and Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro and a post-inauguration reception for Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion.
"I want to make sure that there are beds for anybody that needs them and that those beds are safe," Bloomberg said yesterday in a radio interview on WABC-AM. "The police commissioner is checking into that, and if we have to we'll post a police officer at each shelter."
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly is conducting a safety study of city shelters. Sources said last week that he plans to institute a crime-tracking system for the shelters modeled on the NYPD's Compstat program, which helped drive down crime on city streets.
"Commissioner Kelly has ordered his borough commanders to embark on a survey of security at all city-run shel-ters to determine what can be done to make those shelters safer," said NYPD spokesman Michael O'Looney. "That may include better alarms, better locks, and it may include placing police officers in some shelters."
Many homeless people refuse to stay in city shelters, saying they are unsafe and dirty.
"This is like one of the worst neighborhoods with a roof on top," said a 25-year-old man named Maldi, who stays at the Bellevue Hospital shelter. "It's like being on the streets with a roof." More than one aspect Mary Brosnahan Sulli-van, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, said Bloomberg has good intentions, but more needs to be done.
"Physical safety is one aspect of this problem," she said. "Posting a single officer at the doorway of the Bedford At-lantic armory [in Brooklyn] is welcome but not enough. It's filthy, dangerous and chaotic. What a single beat cop can do at the front door is limited."
The city's Department of Homeless Services said it has increased its security budget by 50% in the past three years. Private security officers and better-trained peace officers are used at shelters.
At the Sony Plaza Public Arcade on Madison Ave., homeless people seeking shelter from the winter weather yes-terday had mixed reactions to the possibility of police at shelters.
George Mellos, 60, said he has been homeless since 1989 and swore off shelters after being robbed at the Fort Washington shelter eight years ago.
"I don't know if the cops will do anything, I don't know if they won't do anything," he said. "But that's the reason we don't go to the shelters. They have security guards but they don't do anything."
Courtesy of the NY Daily News
January 7, 2002
