From May to Co-op City was constructed and allowed residents to move in as early as the winter of However, as these populations began to move away in later decades, the neighborhood began to reflect the primarily Black and Hispanic population of the Bronx as a whole. The entire housing complex is split into 5 sections, which collectively contains 15, units. Only a fifth of the region was developed leaving space for parks and green areas.
Co-op can be considered a city within itself. It has three grade schools, two middle schools and a high school with a planetarium. It also boasts a firehouse, three shopping centers, a power plant and a 4-story air conditioning generator.
Although Co-op City revitalized this far off region of the Bronx, it has also dealt with setbacks. Despite the maintenance issues that have plagued this area of the Bronx since its fruition, it has a surprising legacy as a theme park and a current standing as a well developed housing community.
This is a nice overview of Co-op City with interesting details of its earlier life as a theme park. However, this is a tricky post in a way because it deals with neither the Recession nor the Depression yet is still a good, worthwhile read.
Co-op City is partly famous because it was union-built—the Amalgamated Clothing Workers constructed it for working class New Yorkers, and it was integrated from the beginning—although white flight quickly took place against the backdrop of the s urban crisis in NYC.
Finally, a little more discussion of how the Recession has impacted Co-op City would strengthen this post as well check the New York Times, which has run stories on CC in the last few years. I remember going to work with my father Charlie Santoro when he worked for Civetta. The site plan arranged the buildings into five sections, each with a traffic cul-de-sac providing car access.
The complex also contained two shopping centers anchored by cooperative supermarkets There were also two elementary schools, an intermediate school, a community center with a two-thousand seat auditorium, and parking lots. Rochdale also had its own power plant. Opened in , Rochdale Village prefigured some of the struggles that would beset Co-op City.
One issue was racial integration. By the time Rochdale Village was completed, it had also managed to become more integrated than previous cooperatives. While 80 percent of new residents were white—and most of those Jewish—the remaining 20 percent were mostly African American.
As Rochdale Village was grabbing headlines, Jessor, Kazan, and a host of dignitaries had just broken ground for Co-op City, which was designed to be three times larger than the project in Queens. Could the lessons learned from Rochdale Village be translated to the Bronx?
In the s, the part of the Bronx that would become Co-op City had been set aside for a new municipal airport. Opened in the summer of , Freedomland was laid out to mimic the geography of the United States, with areas such as Little Old New York, the Great Chicago Fire which burned down multiple times a day , and a Wild West that included a recreation of the San Francisco earthquake.
Within days of the park opening, visitors were injured when a horse-drawn stagecoach overturned, and Freedomland was beset by other problems, not the least of which was that it was millions of dollars in debt. We are willing to pay for something practical, but we are unwilling to pay for art. And residents flocked to the complex.
Schools would soon follow, along with an influx of independent retailers on the outskirts of the complex. Yet even as the final buildings were being completed in the early s, cracks, both literal and metaphorical, were beginning to show. Paradise soured very quickly. She interviewed children who complained of being ticketed for riding their bikes anywhere but on the loop path, and talked to adults who bemoaned the lack of basic services like hospitals, a fire department, and a post office.
But with immediate maintenance requirements looming and the fiscal crisis of s New York City in the background, Co-op City could do little in the short term to dig itself out of the financial hole. When the New York Times reported on the complex in , the tenants were on the verge of voting whether or not to raise the carrying charges an additional There are too many fingers in the pie, and there always have been. Co-op City was put together with spit, glue, and graft.
Not enough spit and glue. But plenty of graft. And, as Steven H. Last year, Cylich told me, a mere families moved out. With approximately 8, families on the waiting list, that brings the vacancy rate essentially down to zero.
As we walked around the complex, Cylich was quick to note that some of the original construction defects have never been fully solved. We have to go in every so often and level it off. Today, the demographics of Co-op City reflect that diversity—and the changes in the racial makeup of the Bronx in general.
Rosen pleaded guilty to felony charges of grand larceny and forgery, and a misdemeanor count of obstructing government administration. Aulenbach pled to the same, except the forgery charge. Eventually, the organization reorganized — replacing the director, board and 90 percent of its staff — and reopened. Charlie Rosen had been a longtime and respected community activist, best known for leading the year-long Co-op City rent strike in the early s.
In September , a report by the New York Inspector General, Kristine Hamann, charged that the Division of Housing and Community Renewal DHCR , which is responsible for overseeing Mitchel-Lama developments, was negligent in its duties to supervise the contracting, financial reporting, budgeting and the enforcement of regulations in Co-op City and other M-L participants during the period of January to October The DHCR was instructed to overhaul its system of oversight to better protect the residents and taxpayer money.
In October , a former board president, Iris Herskowitz Baez, and a former painting contractor, Nickhoulas Vitale, pled guilty to involvement in a kickback scheme.
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