NYC Mayor Adams unveils more details about South Bronx revitalization as questions still linger about housing plan

Mayor Adams and several top officials unveiled more details of their plan to revitalize the South Bronx on Wednesday, including expanding mobile health clinics, picking up trash from neglected blocks and altering streets to make them safer for pedestrians.

The announcement, which was made in Hunts Point at Barretto Point Park, comes three months after Adams released a $140 million preliminary plan for the neighborhood that laid out $100 million in spending for the nearby Hunts Point Produce Market and $40 million in investments for the surrounding area.

At the time, Team Adams didn’t offer many specifics about how the $40 million would be spent. On Wednesday, they released more details.

“The Bronx is back because they had my back,” said Adams, of the borough that overwhelmingly supported him in last year’s mayoral election. “What are we doing? We are going to improve pedestrian traffic safety at many intersections by making crossings shorter, addressing signal timing and improving bike connections.”

Other upgrades in the plan include improved street lighting, efforts to ensure local stores are stocked with healthy food and job fairs for local residents.

The release of the 111-page Hunts Point Forward report came a day after Adams drew criticisms over aspects of his housing plan for the city. While some praised the plan, which he announced on Tuesday, others criticized it for lacking detail, particularly when it comes to how many units of affordable housing the city plans to produce in the coming months.

Asked by the Daily News if he intends to release more specifics of that plan at a later date — as he did Wednesday with his Hunts Point plan — Adams wouldn’t say precisely, but again doubled down on his assertion from the day before that setting a goal regarding housing units would be counterproductive.

“This is what I learned. Those of you, like you, in media, you criticized Bill de Blasio for focusing on units,” Adams said of his predecessor. “You guys were right. Everyone was talking about units. That is not what we should be talking about. … Talk about how many are allowing people to be in. That’s our focus — how many people are going to be in those apartments.”

While Adams’ Hunts Point plan included some clear benchmarks to measure success by, other aspects of it were more vague. Of the dozens of “action items” in the report, some included plans to “investigate” expanding Hunts Point Riverside Park, to “explore the potential” for an urgent health care facility in the area, and to “advocate for the allocation of 1% of the city budget to NYC parks.”

The City Council approved Hizzoner’s budget earlier this week, and budget documents show that much less than 1% of it went to the Parks Department, which is slated to receive about $452 million out of a total budget pot of $101 billion.

Parts of the Hunts Point plan — like clearing trash from local streets — also clearly have not yet begun in earnest. While Barretto Point Park appeared lush and immaculate for Adams’ press conference, the streets leading to it were littered with garbage, overgrown weeds and unkempt sidewalks.

“You should not be seeing trash on the streets,” Adams said when asked about that. “There’s no excuse to have dirty streets.”

Andrew Kimball, president of the city’s Economic Development Corp., which is helping spearhead the revitalization efforts, then added that short-term parts of the plan include adding an acre to Barretto Point Park, improving crosswalks and adding bike lanes.