Riverdale (Marble Hill) Shopping Center

[Walter Greenspan]

Originally Posted by bmwguydc

Marble Hill gets no respect: the zip code is The Bronx; the land is attached to the mainland, yet is part of the Borough of Manhattan; and, even the area code is 718. It's confusing, even to many area residents who do not know the demarcation between the two areas.

More importantly, it's in New York County.

Compare Marble Hill, a neighborhood in the New York City Borough of Manhattan, coterminous with the New York State County of New York, with the island Hamlet of Fishers Island in the Town of Southold, Suffolk County.

Fishers Island is located in Long Island Sound and is to the northeast of Plum Island and the Hamlet of Orient, also in the Town of Southold, and is just 5 miles offshore from New London, CT.

In order to get to Fishers Island, you need to drive to New London, CT and take the New London-Fishers Island Ferry, and while Fishers Island has a 631 area code, it has an "06390" ZIP code. Yes, a part of New York State has a Connecticut ZIP Code.

Ownership of Fishers Island was claimed by both Connecticut and New York. State ownership was not settled until 1878 when a joint commission from the two states finally decided that "New York has the title having had actual possession for more than a century". The decision was based on a prior 1664 decision that the southern boundary of Connecticut was the northern shore of Long Island Sound. (I translate this to mean that the southern border of Connecticut is the low water mark.)

Fishers Island has two additional geographic quirks:

1. It is the only part of Suffolk County not in the R.C. Diocese of Rockville Centre. Fishers Island is in the R.C. Diocese of Norwich.

2. Between Fishers Island and Orient (Orient, as its name suggests, is the eastern most point on the north fork) is Plum Island. Plum Island is the U.S.D.A.'s animal disease experimental station.

[vcinoster]

Originally Posted by bmwguydc

That site was a disused industrial property that is now the shopping plaza on W225th. I would not say that it has done anything in terms of propping up the neighborhood...

Being hemmed in by the Deegan, and the railroad tracks, there's not much in the surrounding area that could take on new character...

Previously, the immediate area was desolate, due to the former fatory being shuttered... though as to spurring any discernable change, it's not as evident, save for some new traffic on Broadway and W225th. It did not spur new commercial or residential development in the area, for example, but did improve shopping options in the surrounding areas.

You mean the car auto repair shops that use to line the street where the mall is. They only emptied out and became empty "factories" just after the owners were bought out or pushed out for the rezoned commercial area.

Of course it helped the area. Area's in the Bronx lined by those repair shops are always disgusting: Their are usually major potholes (maybe some conspiracy to ensure that cars that get repaired immediately get damaged pulling out of the drive way and have to return).

Those shops are always trashy, greasy water all over the place, buildings only being kept up by the will of god since they were leaning off the the right, left of looking like they were about to fall into the creek... It was a disgusting eye sore. Good riddance.

Once it was proposed that the shopping area would be built, bunch of new housing projects started going up. There is a luxury apt/condo building that you could see right from the 225th street train station (one block west, parallel to broadway) that was constructed the second the mall was proposed and Target signed up. I tried getting an apartment there until i saw how small those apartments were for the price they were asking (900-1100 for a STUDIO the size of some peoples walk in closet) and although it was slow to fill up, eventually the building sold a large percentage of those apt/condos. Buildings in the area followed suit by investing more into remodeling their apartments to attract the young college kids from columbia, manhatten college, mount saint vincent and even as far down as NYU who were looking to move to the area.

follow up the hill on kingsbridge there are three new apt builings (condos and one for retired folks). Many of those new restaurants that have popped up have the mall to thanks for enticing people to come to the neighborhood.

The projects themselves even started shaping up as law enforcement started cracking down on many illegal activities to improve the security of the area (the 50th PD almost lived there for 2 years!)...

I use to walk by that area every day while going to high school, college, elementary school, that shopping mall has made a great difference in the marble hill, kings bridge area.

Now the only really sour thumb is that disgusting looking milk outlet that is on exterior street...

Their are many proposals to make the Kingsbridge Armory into a Chelsea type complex and converting the strip that runs adjacent to the Deegan expressway (old Putnem county train line) into another major shopping area (much of that land has already been bought out; gas station, parking lot...) but it has been very tricky... but it's going to happen, and it's going to completely change the face of Kingsbridge which is lined with mom and pop shops.

[bmwguydc]

There were some auto places in the area, but IIRC, the site where Target is now was some sort of injected mold plastics factory, a medium industrial use property.

[vcinoster]

Originally Posted by bmwguydc

Marble Hill gets no respect: the zip code is The Bronx; the land is attached to the mainland, yet is part of the Borough of Manhattan; and, even the area code is 718. It's confusing, even to many area residents who do not know the demarcation between the two areas.

All they know is that they get cablevision instead of optimum and can actually vote on the NY1 snap polls... hate it when they rub that in...

[vcinoster]

Originally Posted by bmwguydc

There were some auto places in the area, but IIRC, the site where Target is now was some sort of injected mold plastics factory, a medium industrial use property.

??

There was a big welfare/wic center that took up the whole plot of land that target now sits on... there were two auto body shops that were adjacent to the west of that wic center (i was one of the volunteers that drew on the wall). I can't remember the plastic mold factory there. R you sure you don't mean further down the Deegan on the old putnam county line?? There were two huge factories that I remember well that weren't too far from there that were taken down, but not on the plot of land that target now occupies. It was a huge center that stretched back just about to the water... was it before the wic center? I don't recall anything behind it...

[vcinoster]

Originally Posted by bmwguydc

There were some auto places in the area, but IIRC, the site where Target is now was some sort of injected mold plastics factory, a medium industrial use property.

I just saw this factory as I passed over the 225th street bridge. It is still standing. I do remember some sort of tanks that us to stand upright, that use to be part of the factory that are no longer there. But the building itself is still standing just a couple of yards off from Target.

It's a curious thing that it was not demolished... I'm thinking of going to give it a closer look.

[tlynn105]

I live in NC and visit my mom periodically and was surprised to see all of the new stores. I makes it real easy to me to shop for her in her own neighborhood instead of going to Cross County or downtown.