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Janae Pierre: Welcome to NYC Now, your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Friday, January 31st. Here's the midday news. I'm Janae Pierre.

No panhandling, peeing, or taking up multiple seats on the subway. Those are some of the directives coming from two new NYPD quality-of-life enforcement initiatives. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch says the initiatives will also enforce transit rules like drinking, sleeping, and smoking in the subway system.

Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch: Our officers will not simply walk by someone who is violating the law and disrupting passengers. We're going to correct the condition.

Janae Pierre: Tisch says the new quality of life initiatives would be coupled with proactive measures to help homeless and mentally ill people. While major crime on the subway is rare for the MTA's millions of daily commuters, data show serious assaults in transit more than tripled between 2009 and last year. Tisch says cracking down on quality-of-life issues will help people feel safer.

New York City's public hospital system is confronting misinformation spreading on social media. WNYC's Arun Venugopal has more.

Arun Venugopal: On social media, New York City health and hospitals says patients should seek care without fear. Its statements read, "We care about your health, not your immigration status." The assurances are in response to social media posts that falsely claim Elmhurst Hospital in Queens reports anyone who doesn't have proof of citizenship to law enforcement. Immigrant rights activists worry the misinformation could make people stay away from the hospital. For years, sensitive locations like schools and houses of worship were off-limits to immigration officers. Last week, the Trump administration said the prohibitions were no longer in place.

Janae Pierre: Cloudy skies this afternoon, 42 degrees. Stay close. There's more after the break.

Sean Carlson: I'm Sean Carlson. If you've ever been to the corner of Kingsbridge Road and Jerome Avenue in the Bronx, you may have noticed the huge red brick castle-like structure that seems like a remnant from another era. Well, that's the Kingsbridge Armory and it was once an active armory, but for decades now it has sat empty. Leaders in the neighborhood, like our next guest, are hoping that will soon change. New York City Council Member Pierina Sanchez represents the area. She joins us now as the city has chosen a developer to reimagine the site.

Okay. Council Member, before we get into the specifics of that deal, let's just spend another minute here talking about the site itself. In a city where space is at such a premium, thousands of square feet of unused space is just sitting there? There's been a lot of interest and urgency about what to put there. Some listeners may even remember when hockey legend Mark Messier was part of a group that wanted to turn it into an ice skating facility. What have your constituents told you about what they want to see at the site?

Council Member: 760,000 square feet. That is six football stadiums. I don't know how many of my neighbors have made it to a football game lately, but that is a lot of space. In conversations with our neighbors, there's just a lot of hope for the Armory. People want to see jobs for the community. People want to see a space that is intergenerational, that can serve the elderly, that can be a place where youth can go after school and have things to do and remain active. Folks want to see the promise that is part of our community. They want to see that realized in the Armory.

There's a lot of hopes and dreams. 4,000 Bronx sites, many of them concentrated right around the Kingsbridge neighborhood, participated in a community process in 2023 and shared their opinions. There's generally an openness to the final uses, but these priorities about our kids, about our elderly, about the community having access to the space, those were resounding themes.

Sean Carlson: How does the proposal that was chosen address all of those concerns?

Council Member: I think that there's a lot of conversations to be had because the announcement that came from the City of New York, it's pretty open-ended right now. What's in there? There's 90,000 square feet for a sports field, 62,000 square feet for retail. There's film space allocation, cultural space allocation, an events venue. It's pretty broad right now, what Maddd Equities and Joy Construction, which is the chosen team, have committed to working on with the City of New York.

Over the next year, we're going to have to be very vigilant about what are the tenants that are being considered for this site? What are the end uses? These plans that the development team is putting forward, how do they comport with the community's vision for the Armory?

Sean Carlson: Have you heard from anybody who's disappointed by the plan? Like maybe somebody hoped for more affordable housing or maybe wanted more recreational space for their kids.

Council Member: In the community planning conversations where these 4,000 neighbors were participating, we often had the conversation about affordable housing. Folks were really upset when the city would always answer, "We can't do affordable housing here because it's a historic structure." You can't actually change the layout of the space of the Armory in certain ways that would give enough, say, light and air for an apartment.

The good news is that there's a site on the Kingsbridge Armory that is currently being used by the National Guard. The governor's team and the State of New York have committed to allowing that to be redeveloped as affordable housing. We're talking about just about 450 units, so that missing piece is actually reflected, which is very exciting.

Sean Carlson: When will your constituents actually be able to take advantage of what's coming to the Armory, supposedly?

Council Member: That's an open question, but we estimate that it's about four to five years before the doors are open and folks can walk in and take advantage, with all of the processes that need to happen and approvals, financing, finalization, and everything.

Sean Carlson: Can anything stop this development from happening at this point?

Council Member: Yes. Look, the pitfalls that faced us in the past could come and rear their ugly heads again. I think that even in the process of where we are today, there has already been some of that, and this development team is supposed to not have some of those pitfalls. These questions are all being asked. Do you have the money? What are your plans to continue engaging with the community? How are you comporting with the community's priorities to serve the people and bring good-paying union jobs, for example?

I'm again hopeful that all of those answers are in the affirmative and they will continue to be, and the answers will only get stronger over time. If they do not get stronger over time and we get stuck on any of these pieces, that could present a big challenge. I'm going to try my best to do everything that I can to ensure success, and then it's the financial institutions that have to do the other part. I'll do the community, I'll do the council, I'll do the politics, and then the team just has to make sure that the money is in order.

Sean Carlson: That's New York City Council Member Pierina Sanchez talking about the redevelopment of the Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx. Council Member, thanks so much for coming on.

Council Member: Thank you so much for having me.

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Janae Pierre: Thanks for listening. This is NYC Now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines and occasional deep dives, and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. We'll be back this evening.

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