Fordham Road Festival to Show Off Strip's Strides

By HANNAN ADELY

The Bronx's largest street fair, the fourth annual Fordham Road Renaissance Festival, is just around the corner. The festival, set for Aug. 29 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. has been dubbed Fiesta '99 and will promote the area's 300 stores while celebrating the borough's diversity.

But is Fordham Road really undergoing a renaissance?

"There is definitely a transformation," said Jose Velez, executive director of the Bronx Council for Economic Development (BCED), pointing to a flurry of recent developments. The commercial vacancy rate, he said, dropped from 11 percent to six percent in the past year and the number of stores in the area has also increased, partly because stores are subdividing. The former Caldor building is currently being restored to house new stores including Old Navy. Other retail chain stores like Kinko's, GapKids and Pizza Hut are also moving to the area, bringing quality and permanency to the area, Velez said. Starbucks has already set up shop and plans are also under way for a sports arena at the former Loew's Paradise Theatre on the Grand Concourse at East 188th Street.

Velez expects 60,000 people to attend the festival. Sponsored by the BCED, a nonprofit economic development organization, the festival will run over five blocks along Fordham Road between Kingsbridge Road and Morris Avenue, bringing outdoor shopping, arts, crafts, food, and live music to the strip. Festivities will include live jazz and salsa performances as well as local talent on two music stages which will be shown on Black Entertainment Television's summer concert series.

The festival is only part of BCED's recent economic development efforts, which include shuttle buses for holiday shopping seasons along Fordham Road. (The shuttle will run the week of August 30 for the back-to-school season). BCED also provides garbage bag liners for wastebaskets in the area, replacing them three to four times a day. And an anti-graffiti campaign has been very successful, Velez said. "The Caldor building is much better," he said. "We paint over the graffiti again and again until the graffiti people get tired."

These initiatives will get a tremendous boost if BCED's Business Improvement District (BID) plan for Fordham Road is approved by the city. The proposed Fordham BID would offer free parking and shuttle-bus service for shoppers, street cleaning, graffiti removal and security patrols; it would also provide promotional services for Fordham businesses through radio, television and newspaper advertisements. To get the city's OK, 60 percent of Fordham Road property owners must agree to the plan, and Velez said he is very close to that mark. In a BID, all property owners pay additional taxes to the city and that money is used to fund BID services and programs.

"It is the glimmer in my eye," said Assemblyman Roberto Ramirez about the BID, which he has been working to get off the ground for the past several years. Ramirez, who also heads the Bronx Democratic Party, said Fordham Road is the third largest revenue producing strip in the city and "the center of the universe of the Bronx."

Velez, optimistic about Fordham Road's future said he would like to see the "formal organization of the BID" in the new millennium "and would like to work with landlords and merchants to generate more jobs in the area." Velez, who has been with the BCED since its founding in 1995, worked in community development for 22 years and at the city's Office of Management and Budget.

As the largest shopping district in the Bronx, Fordham Road gets a lot of Velez' attention, but BCED also works to enhance northwest Bronx business districts include those on Burnside Avenue, on Kingsbridge Road, and on the Grand Concourse.

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