Photograph: ANY TAKERS? Abandoned buildings the city will auction off on Friday. Photo Credit: Erin Texeira.
By Erin Texeira, Staff Reporter
The city hopes to sell three South Bronx properties in a public auction on Friday, but business owners and residents predict that they will go unsold because of an unwelcoming economic climate.
The bidding for two buildings on the corner of Brook Avenue and East 148th Street in Mott Haven will start at $5,000.
Two vacant lots, one on Soundview Avenue and Newman Street in Classons Point and one on Gleason and Fteley Avenues in Soundview, will also be up for auction. Bidding starts at $1,000 and $6,500 respectively.
Most properties -- among six up for auction throughout the borough and 108 citywide -- have been confiscated for unpaid taxes, city officials say.
The vacant lots in Soundview and Classons Point are strewn with illegally dumped garbage. Business owners and investors are often turned off by unsightly streets and persistent crime.
Winston Rodriguez, who distributes Cafe Caribe and Cafe Suprema coffees citywide, needs storage for delivery trucks he now keeps in Brooklyn. The vacant lot down the block from Finefair grocery store at 1221 Fteley Ave. sounded good at first.
But Rodriguez has reconsidered. "I would have to spend so much money on security, it wouldn't be worth it," he said awaiting a shipment.
Neighborhood shop owners and residents say the two Mott Haven brick buildings on the block, containing a total of more than 21,000 square feet, have been vacant for more than a decade and are havens for people who have nowhere else to go.
"The police come and clear people out all the time," said Cholo Gonzalez, who owns Cholo's Record Shop on Brook Avenue. "If someone would just fill up that building, put some people to work in there, my music business would get much better."
Small business owners and community groups often snatch up such properties at the public auctions, according to Charles V. Walker Jr., public affairs officer for the General Services Department, which holds the auctions two or three times a year.
But Kenneth Johnson, who lives three blocks from a 700-square-foot vacant lot in Classons Point that will be auctioned, doesn't think buying property in his neighborhood is a good idea.
"It's like the recession is still happening out here," he said, gesturing to the cream-colored townhouses of Shorehaven housing complex at Soundview and Stephens Street in Classons Bay, where he lives.
