Residents respond to NoMa controversy

To the editor: 

As a resident of Riverdale on Hudson (NY Central Hudson Division rail stop designation circa 1860) for more than 60 years, I’d like to weigh in on the NoMa controversy.

Real estate marketers have every legal and business right to market their properties as they deem appropriate, so long as they are truthful in their advertising. 

However, the marketing ploy of designating a NoMa zone appears to me as disingenuous or misleading at best, and some cynics might even consider it dishonest or fraudulent at worst.

The obvious purpose is to distance Riverdale from “da Bronx” and associate it with Manhattan. But what Manhattan? 

Riverdale/Kingsbridge is less than a quarter of a mile away from the northernmost part of Manhattan via two bridges spanning the Spuyten Duyvil. This part of Manhattan, Inwood/Washington Heights, obviously is not the area of Manhattan the marketers are trying to package with Riverdale. 

They want the prospective buyer to think in terms of the vibrant Manhattan of Columbus Circle, Lincoln Center, the Broadway Theater District and even SoHo and Greenwich Village, with their exciting nightlife and superior restaurants — all of them a good eight to 10 miles south. 

In all candor, the appropriate acronym should be NoNoMa — North of Northern Manhattan. Try selling that one!

In the past, Riverdale has done a pretty good job of distancing itself from the rest of the Bronx, while still extolling the virtues of the Botanical Garden and the Bronx Zoo, Arthur Avenue’s Little Italy and City Island and, well, you get the message.

Furthermore, creating a new real estate marketing zone is counter-productive because it downplays the historic cachet that Riverdale has always enjoyed, serving as a nation-wide magnet for families seeking a suburban lifestyle within an urban center.  

In my travels over the years, when meeting strangers in far-away places, when exchanging the  “Where do you live” question, I have constantly been surprised at the recognition factor of “the Riverdale section of the Bronx.”  It ranked right up there with Grosse Pointe.