The Week in Rewind spotlights some of the editorial work of the Bronx Times for the week of Dec. 8- Dec. 14.

Kristy Marmorato sworn in as new East Bronx City Council member

A historic City Council election in the Bronx was made official this week.

Kristy Marmorato, the Republican council member-elect for District 13 (CD-13), was sworn into her new post at City Hall on Wednesday, alongside her new colleagues on the council’s Common Sense Caucus. Marmorato replaces the current seat holder, Democrat Marjorie Velázquez, in joining the 51-member body after the New Year.

“It was energizing to speak to colleagues on both sides of the aisle and hear their enthusiasm to start working together,” Marmorato told the Bronx Times on Thursday. “It meant everything to my team and was the result of what we worked so hard for over the past nine months.”

CD-13 includes the neighborhoods of Throggs Neck, Allerton, Morris Park, City Island and Pelham Parkway.

Marmorato-Velázquez was one of the most widely watched City Council races across New York City this election cycle, as the public and media had one primary question in mind: Can a Republican actually win in the Bronx?

Marmorato did just that — becoming the first Bronx Republican elected to the City Council in 50 years, removing the one-term incumbent from office and giving her party a small foothold in the heavily blue borough.

The Republican said her win “shows how powerful the voices of the Bronx are, particularly those of District 13.”

Meet the twins developing an indoor navigation app for the visually impaired — all while navigating a new life in NYC

Despite having trekked all the way from the Bronx down to Morningside Heights — and enduring train transfers and delays in the process — 17-year-old twins, entrepreneurs and full-time high school students Alp and Mert Kanıbir seemed to have retained every ounce of their energy throughout their over-an-hour-long journey.

As soon as they sat down, they started gabbing away in Turkish with me, talking about their train ride down, asking about how the interview would go, and explaining how they’d applied to colleges earlier that week. They were animated conversationalists, having much to say and to inquire about.

To the classic tell-me-about-yourselves question, they had a 25-minute long response — and even that extent of an answer does not do them justice. They told their story linearly, leading with their upbringing in Turkey, explaining the accident that led Alp to lose his eyesight, their subsequent move to New York until they eventually arrived at their project which was at the center of our conversation.

So the Kanıbirs uprooted themselves in June 2022 and moved to the Williamsbridge neighborhood in the Bronx in pursuit of an education that would be more accommodating toward the visually impaired.

Initially, Alp Kanıbir was looking to enroll in a school for the blind, but later decided against it. “He wanted to challenge himself by coming to my school … to excel in a normal school with this academic rigor that he had,” Mert Kanıbir said. The twins currently attend the Collegiate Institute for Math & Science on Astor Avenue.

The summer the twins arrived in the U.S., they joined a program organized by Virtual Enterprises, in which they developed their business idea of NAVINDOOR.

“The whole idea started from the fact that we were trying to allow (Alp) to go to the supermarket by himself, and shop by himself, so we started exploring how we can do it,” said Mert Kanıbir.

While there were other products that they could buy to help with indoor navigation, they were expensive and not widely accessible. Sooner or later, the twins realized that they would have to take matters into their own hands and develop an app — something like Google Maps, but for indoor spaces.

Their idea eventually gained a lot of traction and they started joining competitions, winning them and getting on the radar of other entrepreneurs and investors. They started working with Mission 3A, a company that calls itself a “venture studio,” helping startup founders in their entrepreneurial journey. “That’s when we started to focus on making this real rather than a project,” Mert Kanıbir said.

Northwest Bronx business owners protest eviction, gentrification ahead of Kingsbridge Armory redevelopment

A white sign that sits atop the New Capitol Restaurant at 2 Kingsbridge Road in the Bronx caused business owners and local politicians to protest last week. The sign’s message: “Development property for sale, 2-12 Kingsbridge Road thru 252-67 Jerome Ave.”

Dozens gathered on Dec. 7 to demonstrate against what business owners are saying is landlord Henry Kessler and his real estate company’s attempt to gentrify the neighborhood by evicting them and selling their properties for the potential business ventures to come from the neighboring Kingsbridge Armory redevelopment.

Joined by local pols and members of the Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition, the business owners are demanding long term leases they say they don’t have currently, and by extension, their spot in the community.

“What are the first signs of a neighborhood that’s being gentrified and displaced? Evictions,” Juan Nuñez, the lead armory organizer with the Northwest Bronx Community & Clergy Coalition, said in the 32-degree weather last week. “Not just residential evictions, which this district has some of the highest, but commercial evictions too.”

According to Kessler, however, the tenants in question along Kingsbridge Road and Jerome Avenue have been paying 20% to 30% of the value of their individual retail spaces for the six-plus years he’s owned the properties.

“I don’t know what they’re belly-aching about, because they shouldn’t be,” he told the Bronx Times on Dec. 11. “They should be really very happy of what they’ve had all these years.”

Bronx building collapse: Adams admin says it wants to ‘sharpen’ efforts to target building owners with outstanding safety issues

The day after Monday’s partial building collapse in the Bronx, officials with Mayor Eric Adams’ administration on Tuesday said they want to “sharpen” the city’s tools for fining building owners who fail to rectify safety issues.