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You Be the Developer: What Should Replace the Bengal Tiger Block

Posted on July 12, 2010 by John Bailey

WPCNR MR. AND MRS. AND MS. WHITE PLAINS POLL. July 12,2010 UPDATED 8:40 A.M. E.D.T.:

What was a disaster for 13 businesses last week: The Bengal Tiger fire, now presents an opportunity for White Plains, if the city has imagination to revitalize the moribund East Post Road corridor with something either completely different or the lack of imagination and deliver more of the same.

THE BENGAL TIGER BLOCK TODAY. DEMOLITION WAS IN FULL SWING OVER WEEKEND

As demolition proceeded on the site over the weekend, WPCNR thought of just a few possibilities for the block which of course could be reconstructed the way it was or turn into something completely different and dynamic.

WPCNR thought of just a few possibilities (at the right in our brand-new poll) which the city might consider seriously to counter the economic stagnatio of pay-and-keep-out parking policies, a rowdy drinking district and a deteriorated West Side. The city has been talking for years about revitalizing the West Side and even still has yet to tell specifics of the Lexington Avenue plan even though the developer has already been picked. Now, there is an opportunity to key note it as the Bengal Tiger block has to be rebuilt.

Here is Mr. and Mrs. and Ms. White Plains opportunity in the survey at the right to tell the city how to plan and what it needs on the burned-out block. If any of the choices appeal to you at the right, vote early and often:

New Bengal Tiger/Restaurant Mall: Rebuild the block similar to before with a new improved (sprinklered) Bengal Tiger, and shops as before.

Bi-level Retail Shopping Mall: A two-or-three story mall with parking deck, with shops, restaurants and retail, creating a dynamic upscale presence complimenting the Downtown Drinking District on Mamaroneck Avenue.

Multi-story Office/Mixed Use Building: A 10 or 20 story combination residential/office/with retail at the street level, bringing new residentialites, professional office space and a cosmopolitan mix of retail to the street.

New Performing Arts Center: The White Plains Performing Arts Center in the City Center has failed to ignite the imagination of the public. It lacks funding or street presence. How about building a Lincoln Center for White Plains on the Bengal Tiger block and Municipal Parking lot behind it, which would be a regional draw for concerts, theatre, a home for the Westchester Philharmonic, theatre groups and more – something the White Plains Performing Arts Center management has failed to do thanks to high rents and failed programming over the last 7 years.

City of White Plains Museum: White Plains played a significant role in New York State history but you would never know it because there is no museum in the city. The site could be transformed into a Revolutionary War history, a history of the four White Plainses: 19^th century, turn-of-the-century, the 1950s, urban Renewal, and of course, the just-ended Renaissance. The museum could serve as a base for a freedom trail through the city, and much more. Such a White Plains facility is long overdue.

Permanent Farmers Market/Food Court – Take the Bengal Tiger block, combine it with the Municipal lot behind it – acquire the office building behind the BT Block and create a Faneuil Hall International Food Court, a permanent destination with parking underneath.

Chain Food or Entertainment Complex: This would envision White Plains and the Bengal Tiger owners who own the block, again removing the office building behind the BT Block and attracting some destination chain such as SHAKE SHACK, HARD ROCK Cage, ESPN ZONE, SCORES (a neat fit with the Drinking District a weaving stroll away),

Sports Arena Convention Center Complex: Sports Arenas are a mainstay of communities I’ve visited: Charlotte, Providence, Grand Rapids. Westchester needs an intermediate facility and White Plains would benefit from a 10,000 seat facility for hockey, basketball, and big concerts. You’d fill it up with state tournaments which now are held in places like Albany, Lake Placid and Buffalo. It would also attract conventions which White Plains cannot do now.

RETAIL CHAIN BIG BOX: Think Best Buy, Bed Bath & Beyond.

Transit Center: White Plains needs a center city hub. Take out the office building behind the Bengal Tiger block, and combine the Municipal Parking lot with the Bengal Tiger block and you create a retail/transit center hub which could be a center for the Department of Transportation Bus Rapid Transit station, a taxi station, and a hub for the Ben Boykin Trolley System (coming someday to White Plains). What do you think?

New City Hall: The City again could acquire the Bengal Tiger Block and the office building behind it and combine it with the Municipal Parking lot and build a new City Hall (right across from the county office complex. Makes great sense – and opens the very attractive old city hall site for development. The new City Hall could combine all city offices in one place. Call it the Adam T. Bradley City Hall.

New Public School; The block could be swapped out to the School District for a new public school to handle the growing elementary school population that is exceeding district estimates. Growing at a 100 kids a year, the district will need a new elementary in five years.

The Garden Scrambles to Pick Up Players Any Players.

Posted on July 11, 2010 by John Bailey

WPCNR VIEW FROM THE MEZZANINE. By WPCNR’S SPORTSTALK Morty Slickman. July 11, 2010:

So I am sitting here in the old Madison Square Garden in the blue smoke of the rafters of the mezzanine in the arena of memory.

Richie Guerin in the old garden, going up against Paul Arizin of the Philadelphia Warriors, 1958. That’s the Knicks Kennie Sears (12) and Mendy Rudolph is the Ref in the old garden of memory: where even in the third balcony you were on top of the court, the cigar smoke smelled like sports and the Knicks played hard.

I’m reading the sports pages Saturday and Sunday, and I am musing to myself should I ignore the upbeat spin being spun out by the hapless New York Knick management? Swallowed hook, line and sinker by the sports press? Who are already beating drums for the Knick Brains now out signing everyone in sight?

Should I ignore the urge to tell it like it is, and be a warmer, kinder gentler commentator?

Should I push my fedora back on my head, loosen my tasteless tie, puff my White Owl panatela and drink my black coffee and be positive and upbeat? And get on the Knick bandwagon to the crusade for 12 more wins? Shall I resist the urge to rap out in staccato fashion on the old Smith Corona a blistering indictment of the Knick-Knacks? Shall I show love and compassion?

Absolutely not!

What’s a sports columnist for anyway?

We serve no moral purpose except for creating myth and selling tickets and perpetuating fallacies and ignoring the raw, ugly underbelly of “professional” sports and “knowledgeable management,” who “understand the game.”

I just have to point out the flaws in the spin being floated out there by the desperate Knick-Knack management.

If I own those courtside seats, I’m shortselling.

No less an authority than The Times wrote yesterday that their alternate plan B, and I quote “It appears to be enough to get the Knicks in the playoffs for the first time since the 2003-04 season.”

The Knicks, having fanned on LeBron James – but having signed Amar’e Stoudemire, the Phoenix star—and traded David Lee now have a starting five consisting of three players from the Golden State Warriors, that perennial playoff contender. (NOT!)

The Warriors won three less games than the Knicks last season with these new hopes the Knicks have picked up from the “Wha?yers”: Anthony Randolph, Kelenna Azubuik and Ronny Turiaf. Anthony Randolph is supposed to be a forward, teaming with Stoudemire.

They have signed Ray Felton from Charlotte who is expected to point guard, but his history is as a shooting guard. Well he better put it in the hole, and pinpoint his passes to Stoudemire otherwise the Knick-Knacks are going to be seeing the same scoring droughts that have plagued them the first two years of this sorry regime. A regime that gives up on players too soon and does not recognize the value of defensive play, let alone effort.

Is this talent from the Kansas City A’s of the NBA – the Warriors– have enough potential undeveloped talent to pick apart the Dee to get the ball to Amar’e? Can they make stops? Can this untried combo of Randolph and Felton compete in the half court as well as the open court and swing that ball?

Unlike the Knicks, the better clubs in the NBA play defense.

More to the point, does the Knick coach have the patience to develop the young talent? He had no patience with the young players he has struggled with the last two years. Remember how the man the Knick Coach unloaded became a key part of the Celtics? That said a lot about the Knick coach.

However the Knick goal, as usual is modest.

They have to win just 12 more games. Even a one-dimensional coach should be able to squeeze 12 more games out. That would give the Knicks a .500 mark which would have given them the last playoff spot in the Eastern Conference this year.

But, if as I alluded to Friday, the supporting cast is inconsistent, auccombs to being not quite ready for prime time, Stoudemire will assume the Bernard King role, the only man you have to stop to beat the Knicks. With the rough guys bumping Stoudemire big time, there is the risk of injury. Not only that but Felton and Randolph have a history of injury. The Knicks have Danilo Gallinari coming back and Eddie Curry. Gallinari, whom I always will recall sleeping on the sideline, while the Knicks were staging a comeback last season, has to be won over by the coach.

Is this the best backup plan they could come up with? Scoop up the nucleus of a 26-55 team and two “maybe babies?”

We shall see.

The Knicks lost a lot of games last season because of lousy defense and panic.

Without improving the way they defend, rebound and make stops, they could shoot their way to .500.

Heck, pal, they just have to win 12 more games and they are investing let’s see maybe, what $2 Million per game for each of those 12 more wins? I can’t do the math. I’m a sportswriter.

Get this: if they played defense last year they would have made the playoffs with 12 more wins.

But make no mistake, should the Knicks win those 12 more games, the sportswriters will laud the Knick management is being on the right track, and 2011-12 will be Carmelo Anthony time and a return to glory.

The sportswriters always do, no matter what they do.

Photographs of the Day

Posted on July 9, 2010 by John Bailey

WPCNR PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE DAY. By the WPCNR Roving Photographer. July 9, 2010:

Today’s shots to remember are the aftermath of Wednesday’s amazing 11-hour fire on Post Road that left 13 businesses affected, 7 of them destroyed after the fire raged too soon and too hot for firefighters to attack it inside the building. The Roving Photographer shows the implacable, remorseless damage. A pungent, sharp acrid smell of smoke lingered in the air throughout the day Thursday in the vicinity of the White Plains downtown.

At 7:15 Thursday evening. Fireman were still putting out hot spots at the Bengal Tiger. Photo by Patti Cantu.

For more photos, CLICK READ MORE…BELOW

The Street –Noon Thursday

OVERHEAD VIEW OF BLOCK FROM CHESTER & MAPLE GARAGE.

Court Street–what once was a beauty salon.

Behind the Bengal Tiger. Firefighters pump out water at noon Thursday.

Air Ball!

Posted on July 8, 2010 by John Bailey

WPCNR VIEW FROM THE MEZZANINE. By WPCNR SPORTSTALK’s Morty Slickman. July 8, 2010:

It’s not good, like Nedicks.

The New York Knickerbockers “Believe in us. We have a plan. Lose now. Lose a lot. So We Can Win Next Year with signing free agents” just threw up a brick.

The way it used to be in New York Hoops. George Mikan right hooking with Sweetwater Clifton defending at the Old 69th Regiment Armory.

The biggest air ball ever. They let the clock run out without taking a shot.

The Miami Heat sold their season tickets out for 2010-11 overnight.

The Knickerbockers negotiate like they play ball. No defense. No bench. No consistency.

The hardwood wasteland in the world’s most ghastly arena for seeing anything (Madison Square “are those ants down there?” Garden) is forever now, because the grand strategy of clearing cap room to sign (like the Yankees) two or three super free agents has failed big time.

The Knicks are not the Yankees and that’s obvious.

If the Knicks make the playoffs before I die I will be amazed.

Could the Nets owner buy them, too?

Why? Because the present management has a lousy track record. Pat Riley who runs the Heat has a great track record.

The Knicks did not get LeBron. They did not get his two pals They got LeBron’s other pal, who has to be admired for convincing the Knick Knack management that he is close to LeBron. What a salesman! I want him selling downtown White Plains.

His next conversation with his pal LeBron will be a beaut.”How could you leave me with this terrible team?”

Remember what all those astute sophisticated New York Knick season ticketholders were told the last two dreadful years?

That the New York sports press and know-nothing talk-show hosts supported this strategy to my everlasting scorn, and the genius of sports radio and the papers did not even consider the Knicks not signing one of these guys?

We’re clearing the cap, the Knick-Knacks told the expense account crowd (the dumbest rich people in America) to give you an NBA title when all those free agents are free to come to New York. We’ll win for years. Wait…

Now they are going to lose for the next decade.

And the fans who remember Carl Braun, Sweetwater Clifton, Kenny Sears, Howard Komives, and the fabulous Knick Fives of the late 1960s remember when it hurt when the Knicks lost.

Now we are numb.The true fan wants to win every game. He wants to believe management does,too. There is something sick and unamerican about mailing in a game — well we Knick fans have watched the Knickerbockers mail in three seasons worth of games.

It was not pretty.

Well the prime meat did not want to come to New York, anyway.

Why? Because this would mean they would have to play for Cablevision, the organization that took the Rangers and the Knicks from Champions to Chumps of the NBA and the NHL.

Both teams are run by suckering the season ticket holders every year with big promises who run out of gas at playoff drive time (the Ranger strategy) and worse on the Knick side where they build teams around bench players, what a strategy!

So now LeBron’s pal assumes the Bernard King the job of the aging superstar that might keep the greatest suckers in the world: New York fans coming back to entertain their clients.

We know the name of that tune.

There is no joy at 33^rd and 7^th tonight. Nor over in Newark where the Nets never really had a chance, but at least they have new ownership who has not made a bad decision yet.

The Cablevision boys have never made a good Knickerbocker or Ranger decision.

The Knickerbocker strategy – never even second-guessed by the New York sports press —has failed utterly. They have all this cap and no one wants their money. They have nobody on their roster anyone wants except LeBron’s “friend.”

Perhaps Omar Minaya would want him for the Mets stretch drive.

You know the Knicks should call Walt Frazier and work him out because nobody in his or her right mind is going to go watch the Knick Knacks next year.

I feel very badly for the purgatory of sportscasting: all the guys who do Knick and Ranger pre and post-game shows day-in, day-out living the never-never-land that those organizations care at all whether they win.

They don’t.

And Frazier could at least even at his age break down a defense in the half court.

I love it.

And why did the three basketeers not come to New York?

No nucleus. No coach. You have a coach at the Garden who does not believe in defense. LeBron James knew he was not going to win here and the fat boys who feed off the Knick press buffets would rip him to shreds when the Knicks can only do .500 with him.

The big 3 went to Miami because they know how to win. They play D.

Where is the Knick backup plan?

Can we hear it please?

Ho hum – another 30 and 50 season next year.

But wait–we’ll win the lottery next year.

The Knicks don’t win anything. They don’t work at it at all

If that.

Another year of lousy pro basketball and tired hockey.

The Old 69th Regiment Armory where Knickerbockers played and fans learned to love them.