Costs soar at filtration plant site

2007

Notable endings

Costs at the Croton Water Filtration Plant in Van Cortlandt Park skyrocketed from an estimate of less than $1 billion to more than $2 billion. Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, who had opposed the facility from the first minute it was proposed, began calling for a probe into where all the money was being spent. Despite his best efforts, work on the site began - again.

2006 was also the year of some notable endings.

Grace Belkin, Community Board 8's first district manager, who took the job in 1977 and was known by virtually everyone in the Riverdale/ Kingsbr idge area, stepped down, making way for Nicole Stent, the current incumbent.

Cornyn's Coach 'n Four, another Riverdale institution though it was located a block into Yonkers, closed. According to The Press, the bar and restaurant was a favorite place for Riverdale politicians, grandees and others to celebrate victories and anniversaries. Happily, the owners heard the plaintive cries of loyal patrons, reconsidered and reopened.

The other passing was that of June Bingham, the descendant of one of New York's most prominent political and banking families. She died at 88. A Press appreciation had this to say: "Her first husband, Jonathan B. Bingham, was a groundbreaking reform Democratic congressman and her second husband, Robert Birge, is a financier with a master of divinity degree. She was the mother of four children, grandmother of 10 and great-grandmother of 14. But she was very much her own woman."

In the same year, The Riverdale Press published online for the first time.