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Carrión Predicts Action on Armory

By JORDAN MOSS

Pronouncing himself “sick and tired of talking about the Kingsbridge Armory,” Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión, Jr. said he expected “action” in the long-delayed renovation of the Kingsbridge Armory within the next 24 months.

“We need some action, and I think, I am confident, that working with the Bronx leadership, we’re going to be able to, in the next 24 months, see the kind of action we haven’t seen in [a] dozen years at the Kingsbridge Armory to create educational space and retail space and jobs, and construction jobs, and opportunity for the Bronx,” Carrión said in his State of the Borough address at Lehman High School last week.

Carrión did not provide the reasoning behind his new-found optimism regarding the project, which has been hopelessly mired in political squabbles and general bureaucratic inertia since the state handed the vacant landmark over to the city in 1993. Any attempt to redevelop the armory hinges partly on finding a new home for the National Guard, which occupies two buildings behind the armory’s massive drill hall.

But the Bloomberg administration’s indecision on the matter also may be playing a role keeping the facility in mothballs.

The Norwood News reported in the previous issue that administration officials are debating the possibility of moving the police academy to the armory. That prospect is unpopular with the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition which, in conjunction with a large real estate developer, has drafted detailed plans that include the same components Carrión delineated in his speech.

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