Five Hot Neighborhoods for Growth
• The Hub/Third Avenue: This is often called the “Broadway of the Bronx” and considered the retail heart of the South Bronx. The bow-tie-shaped corridor is located between the Mott Haven and Melrose neighborhoods at the intersection of E.149th Street and Willis, Melrose and Third avenues.
• Hunts Point: In the spring of 2015, a group of tenants, including Deals, McDonald's and Red Lobster, are slated to move into the $30 million, 45,000-square-foot shopping mall dubbed The Crossings at Southern and Bruckner boulevards. Also, Hunts Point is the site of the world’s largest food distribution center. The 329-acre facility supplies 60 percent of New York’s produce and provides food for the Hunts Point Cooperative Market and the New Fulton Fish Market.
• Concourse/Waterfront: This formerly run-down area will soon include the new headquarters of FreshDirect. The move from the company’s former main office in Long Island City to the Harlem River Yards is expected to take place in 2016, creating between 1,000 and 2,000 jobs. Meanwhile, the long-planned Harlem River Yards Greenway project, turning a former rail yard into nine miles of walking trails, bike trails and parks along the Harlem River, appears to be gaining momentum.
• Co-op City/Pelham Bay: The Mall and Bay Plaza complex is scheduled to open later this year, making it the first new, enclosed mall in New York City in the past 40 years. The project is expected to create 2,000 construction jobs and leave a legacy of 1,700 permanent jobs.
• Fordham: Fordham Road has grown into one of the top 10 busiest shopping corridors in the world. In October 2013, the Fordham University Center for Digital Transformation also hosted its 2nd annual Summit on Technology Innovation and Start Ups in The Bronx. Attendees included Accenture, Google, Junior Achievement, Latin Business Today, Mass Ideation, Sofito for Your Soul Media Group, Siri Capital and Good-B.
Arthur Avenue: The Real Little Italy
Lower Manhattan may be world famous for its “Little Italy” section, but an equally thriving neighborhood full of Italian-American businesses — from new startups to Old Country institutions — stretches along several blocks of The Bronx’s bustling Arthur Avenue. Some visitors may call it the “Other Little Italy,” but locals consider it New York’s “Real Little Italy.”
Running through the heart of the borough’s Belmont neighborhood, Arthur Avenue is filled with some of the city’s finest, most colorful Italian restaurants, bakeries, delicatessens, pasta shops, butchers, pizzerias and other retail businesses. During the annual Ferragosto Festival, the traditional Italian celebration of the end of harvest time, an average of 20,000 to 25,000 visitors have packed the venues along Arthur Avenue for the last 15 years to celebrate Italian culture, cuisine and music. This year, Ferragasto 2014 will take place on Sept. 7, from noon to 6 p.m.
The famed street is also home to some of New York’s most famous Italian celebrities, including actor/writer Chazz Palminteri, author Don DiLillo and early rock music pioneer Dion DiMucci of Dion and the Belmonts. Actor Joe Pesci is said to have been discovered here when Robert DeNiro met Pesci working as a maitre’d at an Arthur Avenue restaurant.
For a truly immersive experience, there is also the Arthur Avenue Retail Market, an indoor bazaar packed full of merchants selling virtually everything under the Tuscan sun, from handmade sausages to bread bakers to dry goods to fresh-cut flowers.
As for those other Italian-American businesses down on Mulberry Street in Manhattan? Fuhgeddaboutit!
Enzo's on Arthur Avenue – The Bronx
Mario's on Arthur Avenue – The Bronx