Rumble over rezone in the Bronx

From the Bronx-Times:

Med Alliance employees, patients and friends packed E. Fordham Road’s Candy Lounge on Thursday, February 4 to persuade Community Board 6 that clinic owner Sean Daneshvar offers superb, compassionate healthcare.

Mission accomplished.

But CB6 needs to address Daneshvar’s planned residential tower, not only the clinic he’s started to expand. Daneshvar wants CB6 to okay a rezone of 625 E. Fordham Road so he can build a ten-story tower on top of his planned three-story clinic and retail center.

The Westchester County businessman, who opened Med Alliance on Arthur Avenue more than 20 years ago, explained that his $13 million mixed-use development would bring more shoppers and more doctors to Belmont.

No one seems to begrudge Daneshvar a larger clinic. But some Belmont residents, shopkeepers and property owners, members of the new Belmont Business Improvement District included, worry that the development, at 13 stories, would cause traffic jams and dwarf the neighborhood.

The Department of City Planning has embarked on a study of E. Fordham Road; it hopes to rezone several blocks together, from Southern Boulevard to Bathgate Avenue.

Daneshvar’s development and separate rezone would spoil that plan, delegates from the Bronx Quad – Fordham University, Montefiore Medical Center, the New York Botanical Garden and the Bronx Zoo – told CB6. The development would stand 138 to 148 feet.

“We welcome economic development,” Joe Muriana of Fordham University said. “But we support a contextual rezone.”