Millie Nieves remembers when things weren’t so rosy around the residential building she has lived in for the last 20 years at 970 Prospect Ave in Longwood.
Any kind of greenery or plant life on her hardscrabble city block? Fugeddabout it.
But the Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association, which manages the seven-story building, is pushing to breathe life into the old building, and Nieves and her neighbors say it’s a sign of how far things have come since the old days.
Banana Kelly officials have teamed with state soil and conservation experts to put a federal grant to use “greening” the apartments with new windows, energy-efficient refrigerators and a cleaned ventilation system. The measures will help tenants preserve energy and keep costs down, they say.
The installation of two 20′ x 8′ wooden planters three-feet-high filled with plants native to the northeast in the building’s courtyard will prevent sewers from getting clogged, they add. Rainwater running off the roof will fill a barrel in the back of the building and then be pumped from the barrel to the planters, watering the plants.
“This is such a relief, at least we can have a place…there’s so much crime and stuff, you can’t be on the street,” she added, gesturing to the planters in the courtyard, then nodding to Prospect Ave. 30 feet away with a frown.
“They can hold as much water as possible,” landscape architect Amanda Bayley said of the planters. Bayley worked for a company that consulted on the project, calling the new plants a “fabricated wetland. They’re all very happy being wet.”
A smaller planter sits next to the native plants, and will be used to grow vegetables.
“I just found out this is going to be on us,” said Nieves after learning tenants will choose what to plant, and will maintain the mini-garden.
Nieves’ friend Francia Villacis, who came to live in the building in the early 1990s from Ecuador, agreed tenants should help shoulder the responsibility for taking care of the property.
“The building is not ours but we have to take care of it, because if not how can we live well?” she said.
“It’s gone through its ups and downs, you get to see the good, the bad and the ugly,” said Nieves.
Tenant participation is a key to the project, according to Banana Kelly’s president Harold DeRienzo.
“We weren’t going to do this unless the residents took care of it,” he said at a gathering of tenants and Banana Kelly officials in the building’s courtyard to inaugurate the improvements. He said the key to the organization’s success upgrading South Bronx properties rests with tenants, and with their pride in their homes.
“We’re trying to get back to that,” he said.