Nick Garber

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A ribbon was cut Wednesday to mark the completion of a long-awaited renovation of the Blackwell House, a historic building on Roosevelt Island whose rehabilitation has been years in the making.

The house, built in 1796, is the oldest building on Roosevelt Island and will become a museum, housing the island's historic artifacts, archives and records.

The $2.9 million renovation was funded by the office of City Councilmember Ben Kallos, the Roosevelt Island Development Corporation (RIOC) and the city.

During the ceremony, Kallos said the push to renovate Blackwell House began during the tenure of his predecessor, Jessica Lappin — who was also in attendance Wednesday — but was delayed more than 13 years due to battles with city agencies over funding.

"To be clear, projects like this should not be celebrating their Bar Mitzvah at their ribbon cutting," Kallos said.

One day after it reopened, Kallos said the playground was already jam-packed when he stopped by on Friday, with more than one birthday party underway. The yearlong closure was bound to be a hardship for the neighborhood — and the events of the last few months only amplified that, he said.

"If I knew that the pandemic was going to happen, I probably would've wanted to delay it a year," Kallos said.

A small bit of the renovation remains to be done — the Parks Department still needs to replace one piece of equipment and add an ADA-accessible swing, Kallos said.

Still, most of the work wrapped up just in time: the next few days' forecasts call for 70-degree highs.

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Parents pleaded with the city on Sunday to expand its citywide remote learning center program to Roosevelt Island, where families have struggled to care for children attending class from home.

The city's Learning Bridges program, rolled out in September, is intended to allow parents to drop off their children at one of dozens of sites around the city on days when students are scheduled for remote learning, rather than in-person class.

Roosevelt Island, though, was not approved for a Learning Bridges site by the city's Department of Youth and Community Development — even though the applicant, the childcare center Island Kids, is "an institution" with a devoted following of families, according to City Councilmember Ben Kallos, who represents the island.

Beyond the island's permanent residents, board members also expressed concern that students and employees at the island's Cornell Tech campus, as well as patients at the city-run Coler nursing home and rehabilitation center, might be inconvenienced by the absence of services.

City Councilmember Ben Kallos, who represents the island, told Patch on Thursday that he has been in touch with state and federal officials about restoring banking services.

The developer Hudson Related, which has built up parts of the island, has also "reached out to a laundry list of banks" to inquire about setting up a new branch there, Kallos said.

After presenting the two options to neighborhood groups including the East River 50s Alliance and Sutton Area Community, Kallos said that residents' preference was clear.

"What I will say is, people love Trader Joe's," Kallos said.

Trader Joe's will be committing to the space through June 2026, with an option to renew until 2036, according to a copy of the lease which was shared with Patch.

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — For years, Upper East Siders have observed growing numbers of vacant storefronts in the neighborhood. Then the pandemic hit.

The coronavirus threatens to unleash a retail apocalypse on New York City, having already shuttered scores of beloved neighborhood eateries and other businesses facing unfulfillable rent payments and a lack of aid from the federal government.

Before the crisis, vacancies were already mounting — a trend that Upper East Side City Councilmember Ben Kallos blames partly on landlords "demanding rents that only national chains and banks could pay."

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — It is once again time for Upper East Siders to weigh in on how to spend more than $1 million to improve their neighborhood through the city's participatory budgeting process.

The process — which has residents brainstorm, pitch and vote on ideas for local funding — opened this month in District 5, which includes the eastern stretch of the Upper East Side as well as Roosevelt Island.

Councilmember Ben Kallos has $1 million for capital projects — brick-and-mortar, physical infrastructure work — to allot to his constituents. (City Councilmember Keith Powers, who also represents part of the Upper East Side, has not yet announced a budgeting program for this year.)

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Officials and families cut a ceremonial ribbon at an Upper East Side pre-K center Friday, marking the start of a new French dual language program nearly a year in the making.

The program's origins date back to a December 2019 meeting with City Councilmember Ben Kallos and local school leaders and parents at the Stanley Isaacs Center.

That meeting gave rise to a petition signed by more than 200 parents pledging to send their children to a French dual language program if such a program was created, Kallos's office said.

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — When Rebecca Lamorte arrived at Carl Schurz Park on Wednesday, she almost missed the official-looking, red-and-white sign affixed to a post near the park's East 86th Street entrance.

"It didn't dawn on me right away until I stopped to read it," said Lamorte, one of the co-founders of the group Upper East Side for Black Lives Matter (UES4BLM), which has held nightly demonstrations against racism in the park since June.

When she examined it more closely, she realized it bore a startling message: "ABSOLUTELY NO PROTESTING ALLOWED."

"I was like, oh, this is an encroachment on our First Amendment right," she said. "So I immediately took a photo — I did what millennials do, I put it out on social."

Lamorte's tweet triggered a quick response from city agencies, who said the sign was not official, and from City Councilmember Ben Kallos, who represents the neighborhood.