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I'm honestly this thread made it to 5 pages. It is a study in narcissism.
OP, if you don't feel safe being in Parkchester, then simply don't move to the Bronx. Keep your apartment and keep your tenant but don't live there. If you have a beautiful home in Boston and in San Francisco then surely you can sell them when you retire and purchase a small studio or somesuch in a nicer area of NYC.
I fail to see how this thread has stretched out so agonizingly thin.
I'm honestly this thread made it to 5 pages. It is a study in narcissism.
OP, if you don't feel safe being in Parkchester, then simply don't move to the Bronx. Keep your apartment and keep your tenant but don't live there. If you have a beautiful home in Boston and in San Francisco then surely you can sell them when you retire and purchase a small studio or somesuch in a nicer area of NYC.
I fail to see how this thread has stretched out so agonizingly thin.
On the other hand, I am failing to understand why some people read something that doesn't interest them, and then complain that it is not interesting. Simply don't read if it is not your kind of thing. I don't go on bowling or basketball threads to tell people who bowl or play basketball that their interests are stupid and pointless, just because these things are not interesting to me. If you look at my ratings in the corner, I have slightly more thumbs-up than I have posts, so somebody somewhere must be sharing my interests. Please refer to my original post where I am specifically ASKING people who are not interested in Parkchester to NOT read this thread.
Btw, what does it mean to "own the play"? I just looked up in an online urban dictionary, but did not come up with anything. Is it a Bronx expression? What does it mean?
We ARE interested in Parkchester! We are New Yorkers. You are not interested otherwise you would not be asking these questions...
Sorry, I am failing to follow your logic. I bought a studio there, I'll be staying at the studio when I am in NYC, I might still move there in retirement (your posts ARE actually informative regarding that decision :-), so what makes you think I am not interested in Parkchester? Are you a Parkchester condo owner? I am. Do you pay New York taxes? I do. So?
Btw, I'll be 59 in a few weeks. First time I visited NYC was in 1976 (that was a foreign travel, yes), first time I visited the Bronx was in Jan 1984 (I was in the US for grad school then, lived Upstate for 3.5 years, and went to NYC about once per month - usually to see a band at CBGB, then stay at Martha Washington Hotel for Women, or at a friend's place in Washington Heights when I was with the boyfriend). I assume you weren't born yet. It looks from your posts that you want the Bronx to go back where it was when I first saw it. Well, I don't want that, for the Bronx or any other place in the world. I want everything everywhere to improve.
This discussion just reminded me of Martha Washington Hotel (in Midtown), so I looked it up, to see what is there now (I knew it was closed in the late 1990s). It has been refurbished into something more upscale, but the MWH name was returned to it apparently a couple of years ago. Last time I stayed there for a week, in the fall of 1991 (interviewing for something that I ended up doing in Boston), a single room with common bathroom down the hall (it was still a women's hotel) still cost $12 per night! In fact, I still have the receipt from that hotel stay! That receipt is an example of the kind of things I have in 50 bins - completely worthless to anybody but me... but it brings such memories! That is basically why any possibility of burglary concerns me - people ransacking something that means nothing to them (but means everything to me) out of sheer malice, the same hate and malice displayed in some of the reactions to my Parkchester threads.
There is no "hate and malice." It's just pure annoyance.
If you don't want to get robbed then why would you buy in a neighborhood you think is unsafe or even contemplate moving to an unsafe neighborhood? What are you doing about it instead of rambling to yourself about your possessions, your visits to NYC, etc. for 6 pages? I'll repeat myself: if you own a home in both Boston and San Francisco then you can sell them and retire to a nicer area of NY. Want a nice area with beautiful architecture? Literally throw a stone anywhere on a map of NYC and you'll find a place. Parkchester isn't special. Stop trying to make it happen.
Nice areas with beautiful architecture:
Tudor City
Jackson Heights
Forest Hills
Sunnyside
Carnegie Hill
Bay Ridge
Shall I go on?
To answer your question about "the Bronx going back to where it was when [you] saw it": Nope. I'm all for neighborhoods changing and improving for the better. What I am not for is a whiny 6 page thread where we provide a number of solutions and you ignore them all just to whine some more. COME ON.
There is no "hate and malice." It's just pure annoyance.
If you don't want to get robbed then why would you buy in a neighborhood you think is unsafe or even contemplate moving to an unsafe neighborhood? What are you doing about it instead of rambling to yourself about your possessions, your visits to NYC, etc. for 6 pages? I'll repeat myself: if you own a home in both Boston and San Francisco then you can sell them and retire to a nicer area of NY. Want a nice area with beautiful architecture? Literally throw a stone anywhere on a map of NYC and you'll find a place. Parkchester isn't special. Stop trying to make it happen.
Nice areas with beautiful architecture:
Tudor City
Jackson Heights
Forest Hills
Sunnyside
Carnegie Hill
Bay Ridge
Shall I go on?
To answer your question about "the Bronx going back to where it was when [you] saw it": Nope. I'm all for neighborhoods changing and improving for the better. What I am not for is a whiny 6 page thread where we provide a number of solutions and you ignore them all just to whine some more. COME ON.
The real issue is that she's trying to up sell the idea of Parkchester because she would like it to be more gentrified. A lot of people here have "bougie" sensibilities, from what I witnessed at the Metronorth workshop. The problem is lack of understanding how to do that. Having six pages of discussion about "i think its a lot safer than I thought it was" is god awful marketing. As someone who works very closely with communications strategists (I execute the tech part of those strategies), it's just bad, bad marketing. By saying one thinks things are better than they were, actually introduces doubt in people's minds. It isn't a vote of confidence.
I feel perfectly safe in Parkchester. I grew up in NYC and lived in some sketchy areas, and more upscale areas. It's fine. I can't speak about the past because I never went to the Bronx in the past. I can only speak for it now.
People here, for the most part, want better dining options, recreation options and better commutes. There are also a lot of people with small kids here. The townhall style meetings related to the Metronorth project reflect that. Whether that happens depends on a whole host of conditions, but mainly if there is a political will in combination of investors to make that happen. I look forward to 2022 to see how that pans out in conjunction with the roll out of the new train stations.
Okay guys. I am honestly not marketing anything. I am honestly trying to get a better feel for the long term safety of the area. From just walking around, it seems perfectly safe, but (same as holding door for random safe-appearing people who don't have a building key), I can't know whether my personal impression of safety reflects reality. From your posts, I gather that the Bronx, including Parkchester, is filled with malignant people who would see me as a "gentrifier" and would want to hurt me just for the heck of it.
Since I won't be coming to NYC for long stretches for 6 more years (while being based primarily in Boston), and don't want to deal with scummy tenants any more, I'll keep the Parkchester condo empty for a few more years, will stay in the empty condo for an occasional week in those years, then sell the Parkchester and Boston condo, and buy in Tudor City. There is an airport shuttle that stops one block from Tudor City, so I'll retire in San Francisco, Tudor City, and the rest of the world excluding the Bronx. Metro North or not, there appears to be truly no hope for the Bronx.
But, for people not knowledgeable about architectural history, Parkchester Condo complex IS architecturally special. I was just in NYC, to make a direct comparison with Tudor City. Parkchester is a far better built, far more comfortable living space, possibly the best one I have ever seen anywhere
Okay guys. I am honestly not marketing anything. I am honestly trying to get a better feel for the long term safety of the area. From just walking around, it seems perfectly safe, but (same as holding door for random safe-appearing people who don't have a building key), I can't know whether my personal impression of safety reflects reality. From your posts, I gather that the Bronx, including Parkchester, is filled with malignant people who would see me as a "gentrifier" and would want to hurt me just for the heck of it.
Since I won't be coming to NYC for long stretches for 6 more years (while being based primarily in Boston), and don't want to deal with scummy tenants any more, I'll keep the Parkchester condo empty for a few more years, will stay in the empty condo for an occasional week in those years, then sell the Parkchester and Boston condo, and buy in Tudor City. There is an airport shuttle that stops one block from Tudor City, so I'll retire in San Francisco, Tudor City, and the rest of the world excluding the Bronx. Metro North or not, there appears to be truly no hope for the Bronx.
But, for people not knowledgeable about architectural history, Parkchester Condo complex IS architecturally special. I was just in NYC, to make a direct comparison with Tudor City. Parkchester is a far better built, far more comfortable living space, possibly the best one I have ever seen anywhere
If you had to put a percentage on it, how much of NYC have you actually visited? Aside from the motifs on the buildings and the fountain at Metropolitan Oval, Parkchester's exterior bears a close resemblance to NYCHA. I'm surprised you're not fond of NYCHA architecture as well.
Side note - I've seen people mistake Stuy Town for NYCHA on this forum!
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