Groups Want Webster Property Renovated By MATT BROADUS
Community leaders want to get in touch with Falack, whom they hope will be the first owner in years to successfully fix up the site. A member of the Queen Webster real estate group in Brooklyn, Falack acquired the arcade's lease last August. He bought it from its old owner, Jaffe-Webster Properties, for $4.4 million, according to city finance records. But community groups still haven't heard anything substantive from Falack. Wilma Alonzo, executive director of the Bronx Council for Economic Development (BCED), says the only information that she has received from Falack is that he has plans for the site but is short on funds. She says she would be glad to "guide him in reference to city grants for whatever he has in mind," and that she hopes to be able to discuss the matter with him. Joe Muriana, associate vice president of Government Relations and Urban Affairs at Fordham University, has spoken with Falack but would like to be in closer touch. Muriana said the Arcade building is probably not structurally secure and probably needs to be torn down, and that Falack has acknowledged this. But Muriana's immediate concern is garbage and rodents. "Part of the problem is that there is a fence designed to keep people out," Muriana said, and this leads people to dump garbage around the perimeter. He said it's Falack's responsibility to dispose of the garbage. The rat problem, Muriana says, is due in part to the location of the Metro-North station across the street. "Falack was supposed to hire an exterminator in November," he said, but no one has yet contacted him to confirm that this happened. The Arcade has sat dormant for longer than most community residents can remember. Muriana doesn't think its doors were open in the '80s, and business owner Tom Reilly can't remember it functioning when he owned a deli on 194th Street in 1970. The pace of redevelopment frustrates community leaders. "I understand that development takes a while - the Fordham University library took a long time," Muriana said. But if [Falack] doesn't act, he said he may have to get the Buildings Department involved to ensure that some improvements are made. According to Alonzo, local groups like the BCED, the Fordham Bedford Organizing Project and the Fordham Road business district, have not yet compared notes on improving the site. The issue has been raised at public meetings, but Alonzo says the groups "need to get their follow-ups on the same page." New owner Samuel Falack has done little, so far, to renovate the Fordham Arcade.
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Half a block from Fordham Road, at 2543-51 Webster Ave., stands the Fordham Arcade,
a building that has been abandoned for years. The site has received negative attention
lately, for its rodent infestation and the garbage dumping that occurs around its perimeter.
Neighborhood groups have begun pushing for renovation of the site, but the
building's
new owner, Brooklyn developer Samuel Falack, has yet to respond.
