The Bronx Center Project

The Bronx Center project, a collaborative, community based plan to revitalize a severely deteriorated 300 block section of the South Bronx, is unprecedented in method and scope. As a multi-discipline plan, The Bronx Center encompasses a gamut of different projects such as economic development, health and human services, education and culture, housing and transportation.

In method, Bronx Center features an approach to addressing urban problems that connects community members, academics, urban development professionals, not-for-profit organizations, local businesses, cultural and social institutions, and city officials/politicians in a problem-solving process that is active and collaborative. Through hundreds of frequently convened community forums and smaller working groups, organized with the help of the Bronx Community Forum, participants are discussing and finding solutions to the social, economic and physical problems of this 300 block neighborhood.

One of the primary goals of Bronx Center is to ensure that area residents and businesses gain access to as many jobs, both construction and permanent, and contracting opportunities as possible. Other goals include renovating the Bronx Borough Courthouse and transforming it into The Bronx Planning Center and improving education, housing, and the economic state of the community.

-Bronx Center launched the CLE, a working group consisting of neighborhood residents and construction workers organized to work more productively toward securing jobs from construction projects underway in the Bronx. The CLE has been successful in getting work for Bronx residents during the construction of the Concourse Plaza Office Building. The CLE also is working with the Turner Construction Company on the construction of the Montefiore Clinic, and has received a commitment from Turner for work on Battery Park City. The CLE has also recently begun work with the Mid-Bronx Senior Citizens Council on a senior citizen housing construction project.

- More than $850,000 has been raised to date from public and private sources to renovate the Bronx Borough Courthouse.

Numerous other projects are underway.