News coming out of the Bronx in 2023 ranged in breadth.
From the tale and ultimate death of Godzilla the alligator at the Bronx Zoo in March, to a July proposal for a 34,000-seat cricket stadium in Van Cortlandt Park and a surprising local election outcome in November — the Bronx was anything but short on content last year.
So after a whirlwind 2023, here are the top three Bronx stories to keep your eyes on in 2024.
The rookie Republican and development in District 13
Kristy Marmorato was the Bronx’s, and perhaps the whole city’s, largest upset in the November General Election after she pulled off the unthinkable — unseating incumbent Democrat Marjorie Velázquez for the Council District 13 seat in the East Bronx, and by extension, becoming first Republican from the Bronx elected to the City Council in 40 years.
And while Marmorato’s victory sent shock waves through the city, mostly notably through prominent NYC Democrats, the first-time candidate told the Bronx Times early in her campaign that she never really had political aspirations of her own.
The impetus for her run was her stark opposition to a controversial housing proposal in the district — the Just Home project, which would house formerly Rikers Island-jailed houseless people with medical needs in a vacant building on the Jacobi Medical Center campus in Pelham Parkway.
Opposition for Just Home runs deep in CD-13. Chaos erupted at a Bronx Community Board 11 meeting in September 2022 among people opposed to the Fortune Society project (and later sparked a CB11 ethics committee investigation), about a month before the board ended up rejecting Just Home in an advisory vote in October 2022.
The implications of Marmorato’s opposition to the Just Home proposal (her predecessor Velázquez has said on the record she is also against it) has a lot of New York City’s attention as she takes office. That’s because it could serve as an experiment of whether or not the vast…
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