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Volume XIX • Number 45 • November 22 - 28, 2012 •
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Cohen throws hat in ring for Council run By MIAWLING LAM It’s official: Community Board 8 member Andrew Cohen has entered the race for Councilman G. Oliver Koppell’s seat in the 2013 citywide elections. Koppell is currently serving his third and final term and must vacate office due to term limit rules. Cohen, a Riverdale resident, ended weeks of speculation and declared his intention to jump into the electoral race during a press event on the steps of City Hall in Manhattan on Tuesday. The announcement means Cohen will now be pitted against Cliff Stanton, the only other candidate in the hotly anticipated City Council District 11 race. Cohen, flanked by Congressman Eliot Engel, Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, state Senator Jeffrey Klein and Koppell, said he would run a campaign centered on improving the district. “I’m going to run a positive campaign with honesty and integrity,” he said, citing education, economic development and advocacy for seniors as issues that will shape the council race. “While we have good schools, I think our schools can improve.
Education is a cornerstone for the community—if we have good schools, we’ll have a good community. “The real problem we have at the moment is a top-down administration where decisions come out of City Hall instead of each individual school, and so I really think we need a good advocate.” Cohen, 43, a graduate of Cardozo Law School, is a private attorney and an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He served as chair of CB8’s youth committee until September, when he switched over to lead the aging committee. He denied the change in committees was a political ploy to grab the senior vote—Riverdale boasts a disproportionate number of elderly residents—and said aging was simply an area that interested him. In addition to holding a CB8 post, Cohen is a board member for Friends of Van Cortlandt Park and a member of the Bronx County Bar Association, the New York State United Teachers Union and the Benjamin Franklin Reform Democratic Club. He was recently elected vice chair of the Bronx
Democratic County Committee and has coached the mock trial teams of several Bronx schools. When asked how he would
separate himself from Stanton—who is also running on an education platform—Cohen said having the support of all four lo-
cal elected officials was a major advantage. “I’ll be someone who can work Continued on Page 18
Bidding war erupts as Delafield Estates goes under the hammer
By TESS McRAE and MIAWLING LAM A Long Island-based developer has snapped up the remaining lots in the troubled Delafield Estates development for a whopping $6.375 million. The 22 parcels were sold off as a single lot during a frenzied public auction at the Conservative Synagogue Adath Israel of Riverdale on Monday, November 19. Despite extensive media attention, only two parties registered to bid: The Long
Island-based developer and a resident of Delafield Estates. Both parties declined to provide the Riverdale Review with their names or their company affiliation. The starting price was $4.75 million, but because that bid was made by a stalking horse offer—industry lingo for an initial bid on a bankrupt company’s assets to test the market in advance of an auction—the auctioneer started the bidding at $5 million.
A frenzied bidding war soon erupted, and bids went up by increments of $25,000 until the Long Island-based developer emerged victorious. Tobias Schapiro, the listing broker with Brown Harris Stevens, said he was thrilled with the auction. “That was about the price range we figured it would go for,” he said. “This is a good thing. The lots have been bought and now the winner can move forward with the project, and Brown Harris Stevens will be there for him every step of the way.” The winning bidder was reluctant to provide details about his plans for the site but indicated he would stay true to the initial project. “I am going to do what was originally planned for the estate,” he said. “I want to stick to it and make sure the homeowners association is happy with all of our plans.” The 10.5-acre plot, located between West 246th Street and Douglas Avenue, has been an ongoing construction site since the 1980s. Plans to develop the estate into a gated community comprised of 33 compact houses and shared woodland were approved in 1980, but a weakening real estate market meant three separate developers
have failed to finish the project. Each group has fallen on hard times, including its most recent owner, Abraham Zion, who filed for bankruptcy protection in 2005. As a result, more than 30 years later, just 11 houses are occupied. Following his loss, the other bidder was visibly upset and said his opponent was not familiar with the auction bylaws that had been clearly laid out in an information package given to each bidder. A couple of fellow estate residents were also disappointed by the loss. The winning bidder declined to provide a construction timeline, but Schapiro predicted last month that the completed houses could hit the market as early as 2014. “I think it would take a year to get the first properties up, but I would assume early 2014 or spring 2014,” he said at the time. The sprawling grounds once belonged to Edward Delafield, an early president of Bank of America, and doubled as a Columbia University-run botanical garden in the mid-1960s. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who found global fame because of his ability to respond to sign language, called the estate home at one point in his life.