Residents’ street fight with city finally ends in victory

Last Friday, Nat Solomon opened his email to find a piece of news he and his neighbors have been waiting more than three years to hear: The city transportation department would finally repair the potholes and cracks along Stevenson Place and Sedgwick Avenue.

The message itself was simple. The transportation department inspected the road’s condition — something the 76-year-old Van Cortlandt Village resident called “a mess” — and would repair it within 30 days.

While it might seem a quick resolution to a simple problem, instead Solomon and others living around Stevenson Place have had a long road getting a repair date. That included a previous promise to fix the road more than two years ago, only to have the transportation department renege recently, and then this past week, change its mind again.

Just a month before, Solomon received a letter from the department stating the area “does not warrant resurfacing at this time.” But after a phone call from The Press looking into the issue on his behalf, the transportation department called Solomon last week, letting him know they were sending a representative to meet him and inspect the area.

“He was already marking up Stevenson Place with a yellow marker, the yellow spray paint,” Solomon said, “He said it had to be redone in some way. I wasn’t expecting a complete repaving or the entire area, and we went over why we couldn’t do it at this point.”

Solomon first began working to get Stevenson Place repaired in 2011. In 2014, he asked elected officials like Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz and state Sen. Jeffrey Klein for assistance. Dinowitz reached out to then Bronx commissioner Constance Moran seeking to repair the potholes and sidewalk until resurfacing could take place.

Moran responded the following January to say the transportation department would “place the location on our maintenance list for pothole repairs.”

But two years passed, and nothing happened. When asked by The Press for an update, a transportation department spokeswoman said in an email the street “does not meet criteria for resurfacing.” When that previous promise was pointed out, however, the transportation took a different approach.

In fact, in a new email sent to The Press after the transportation department’s meeting with Solomon, a spokesman said that “while the street is not eligible for resurfacing, we would continue to monitor the stretch, and conduct maintenance repairs as needed.

Stevenson Place is on a curved hill with a blocked view. The condition of the street makes it “very, very risky” for people like Stanley Auster, 88. He uses a walker, but it does not help much when the road becomes slippery and the walker’s wheels slide.

“I have seen many, many people tripping, sliding and twisting their ankles because it’s so irregular and so full of little minor potholes,” Auster said last January. “If there is a little drizzle, you have a puddle here. And if it’s cold, you have ice over there.”

Marilyn Newman, 81, said last January she fell on Stevenson Place in 2015, adding “it’s very bad going up that hill.”

During a recent visit, two potholes located on the upper portion were filled with water and appeared to be more that two inches deep. The pothole on the lower portion appeared wider than it had in January. At the same time, however, the two areas were marked with yellow paint, suggesting they would be repaired.

“I feel good that they’re going to do the work back there,” Solomon said. “I’ll feel better when the work is done and it’s done well.”

What’s next for Solomon? He said he is working to get safety measures such as a crosswalk, stop signs or traffic lights installed along Sedgwick Avenue.