STOP & STAIR
$10.7M renovation completed for W 229th St. Step Street
The West 229th Street Step Street. Photo by Edward Watkins
Assemblyman Benedetto, WELL Campaign
promote youth health and wellness
BY PATRICK ROCCHIO
The WELL Campaign, a statewide
advocacy effort to develop
the health and well-being of all
students visited Throggs Neck
on Thursday, May 16 to speak
about their work and release
their new research on a school
wellness programs in school districts
statewide.
The WELL Campaign used
their fi ndings to call on the state
to take a leadership role in prioritizing
school wellness, said
Claire Raffel, leadership of the
WELL Campaign, with an eye
toward creating a basic framework
for programs that address
students physical, emotional and
psychological well-being that
then could be fi ne-tuned to suit
the needs of local schools.
“Our state government must
take a leadership role in prioritizing
school wellness,” said Raffel.
The press conference took
place outside Assemblyman Michael
Benedetto’s district offi ce,
with Raffel saying that Benedetto
is very helpful in introducing
wellness legislation in the NYS
Assembly.
Benedetto said he trying to
have a NYS Department of Education
wellness coordinator position
fi lled that has been vacant
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for nine years, and wants to create
a statewide effort beginning
here in the borough, around programs
that provide all students
the nutrition they need so they
are ready to learn.
“We want to create a statewide
movement to get people interested
in youth wellness as a whole
and making it work in all of our
schools,” said Benedetto. “Then
MP Road
Diet hearing
rescheduled,
court date set
BY ALEX MITCHELL
The Morris Park Road Diet remains
delayed - for now.
A Bronx court upheld the injunction
on Wednesday, May 29,
halting planned work by the NYC
Department of Transportation’s
to redesign the avenue.
This decision is still only temporary.
After two judges recused themselves
from the case and another
one did not attend the planned
session on that Wednesday, the injunction
will be revisited on Monday,
June 10.
For Morris Park Community
Association president and Community
Board 11 chairman Al
D’Angelo, he hopes that this stay
of execution will give the court
time to consider why upholding
the injunction would be in the
best interests of his community.
“Traffi c studies and reports
are showing that fatalities are increasing
with this new road diet
style, obviously it doesn’t work,”
D’Angelo said after returning
from court.
He was additionally perpexed
after claiming that his trip to
court took a painful 45 minutes to
cross the Bronx without even using
the Cross Bronx Expressway.
“We couldn’t get out of Morris
Park. Even the side streets were
jam packed,” he said.
Side street crowding has been
a major concern for D’Angelo who
along with Councilman Mark
Gjonaj fear will only get worse
if the road diet is to be implemented.
“The city is taking a cookie
cutter approach to doing these
kind of road diets,” D’Angelo said
noting that a similar road diet
proposal for Southern Boulevard
was also met with community op-
BY ALEX MITCHELL
A street in Kingsbridge just
took a step in the right direction…
about ten fl ights of them to
be exact.
The West 229th Street Step
Street between Kingsbridge Terrace
and Heath Avenue was offi -
cially reopened after a two year
renovation on Friday, May 24.
The new and improved step
street now boasts an approximate
230 feet of smooth granite
steps split between nine different
landings and at total elevation
difference of 65 feet all done at a
fi nal cost of $10.7 million.
Also installed during the expensive
renovation were: new
trees, drainage and lighting systems
plus a few benches and an
outer stone retaining walls were
repaired. Bike tracks for pedestrians
to carry bicycles up and
down the stairs were also added
into the mix in efforts to meet
modern safety and construction
Your Neighborhood — Your News® June 2, 2019
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