Mission

The Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance is a coalition of community-based and city-wide organizations who wish to see a vibrant community in the place of the Sheridan. Through consensus building among community stakeholders, SBRWA works toward a vision of the southern Bronx River watershed that includes a healthy environment, a prolific economy and a community that reaps the benefits of the river as a rich natural and recreational resource.

SBRWA Community-Based Member Organizations

Mothers on the Move (MOM) organizes residents of the South Bronx community around housing, education, and environmental justice issues. Since our founding in 1992, over 1,000 residents have become involved in various MOM campaigns to fight for change. We organize in the neighborhoods of Hunts Point, Sound View, West Farms, Morrisania, Longwood, Port Morris, and East Crotona. Our members are primarily low-income, Black and Latina women. Mothers on the Move is committed to a greener South Bronx with safe places for our children to play. This is a critical issue for neighborhoods that have less than 1 acre of greenspace for 1,000 people, one of the lowest rates in New York City, as well as one of the highest asthma rates in the country.

Nos Quedamos is a nonprofit community development corporation comprised of residents and members of the local business community from the South Bronx, committed to preserving their voice and vision for their community and its future. We will promote, support, and advance ideas of healthy, sustainable growth, both for local communities and the larger society. Nos Quedamos views the urban renewal process as not only encompassing physical regeneration, but also addressing socio-economic and environmental conditions in the area. Our goal is to develop an economically productive, sustainable, and healthy community. This vision is one that respects, supports and involves the existing community in the formulation of plans and policies that address the issues of housing, open space, community renewal and its sustainability.

The Point CDC is a Community Development Corporation (nonprofit organization 501(c)(3)) dedicated to youth development and the cultural and economic revitalization of the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx. We work with our neighbors to celebrate the life and art of our community, an area traditionally defined solely in terms of its poverty, crime rate, poor schools, and substandard housing. We believe the area’s residents, their talents and aspirations, are The Point’s greatest assets. Our mission is to encourage the arts, local enterprise, responsible ecology, and self-investment in the Hunts Point community.

Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice (YMPJ) is a faith-based youth organization, developing the power and potential of young South Bronx residents through youth development and youth organizing. Our mission is to partner with youth in our community to rebuild the neighborhoods of Bronx River and Soundview/Bruckner. We accomplish this by integrating critical education, the arts, community organizing, and wellness in our daily programming. In 1996 our members surveyed the community and found that open space and policing were among the greatest concerns to our residents. Since then, YMPJ youth organizers and staff have worked to address community concerns through initiatives including restoring the Bronx River and parkland in the community, and establishing a Human Rights Zone for community based policing of the neighborhood.

SBRWA City-Wide Member Organizations

The Pratt Center for Community Development is the oldest university-based advocacy planning organization in the United States. Established in 1963, PICCED’s mission is one of working for social, economic and environmental justice by empowering communities to realize their future. PICCED pursues it mission by making the professional skills of planners, architects, and urban development professionals available to community organizations to help them uproot poverty and achieve sustainable development in the New York City metropolitan region and beyond.

Tri-State Transportation Campaign is a non-profit organization working toward a more balanced, transit-friendly and equitable transportation system in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

A Brief History

The Sheridan Expressway (Sheridan) is a 1.25-mile highway connecting the Bruckner Expressway (Bruckner) to the Cross Bronx Expressway serving approximately 35,000 vehicles/day which runs along the southern Bronx River. In 2003, when the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT)’s proposal to extend the Sheridan south into Hunts Point along the Bronx River waterfront moved to the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) scoping phase, the SBRWA persuaded NYSDOT to include an alternative that would consider removal of the Sheridan and increased access to Hunts Point. We subsequently prevailed through several rounds of technical screening and kept our alternative under consideration as a viable option with significant environmental merits.

In 2006, the SBRWA engaged community stakeholders in creating a vision for removal of the Sheridan and redevelopment of its footprint through a series of public charrettes. The charrettes produced a physical vision for the site, including specific detail about quantity and tiers of affordable housing, square footage of commercial and community space, and acreage of open space that would re-connect upland communities with the Bronx River, the new greenway and the new parks being developed on its banks. They also yielded a set of priorities, including housing affordability for the area’s very low-income residents, creation of sustainable infrastructure for energy, water, and waste management, and a land ownership and governance structure that would ensure local residents have a real voice in how the land is planned, developed, and managed. This vision is known as the “Community Plan” [LINK].

In 2010, with the backing of local US Representative José E. Serrano, SBRWA persuaded the New York City Departments of City Planning (NYC DCP) and Transportation (NYC DOT), to apply for a Federal TIGER grant – which it secured – to study land use and transportation options for the Sheridan corridor. That study, called the TIGER Sheridan Expressway-Hunts Point Land Use and Transportation Study, concluded in 2013 with the issuance of a final report that included a series of recommendations, in particular, a large scale transformation of the Sheridan into a community-friendly boulevard and construction of direct access ramps from the elevated Bruckner Expressway into and out of the Hunts Point Peninsula. Containing many major portions of the SBRWA’s original vision and Community Plan, our work is now focused on making those recommendations a reality in the best interests of the community.