Sound Shore

Here’s a story that wouldn’t ordinarily make the local news report.

It’s a love story from Larchmont, shared by art gallery owner Kenise Barnes. She helped conspire, with the best of intentions, in her employee’s recent engagement. And this is a good day to pass it along.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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Romance lives.  It lives right here in our midst.  Cupid and Eros together could not have come up with a story as good as this.

Leanne is the charming, effusive Gallery Manager at Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Larchmont.  She and Jorge have been a couple since their student days at Stony Brook University.  Friday January 27th marked their six-year “anniversary,” and Jorge, being the romantic type, wanted to give his darling Leanne a surprise she will always remember.  It unfolded like this:

First, it’s important to know:  Leanne and Jorge have endured a lot of time apart.  An ambitious, young professional in the financial field, Jorge has been posted to his company’s Paris office for the last two years. Leanne joined him there for a number of months last summer, but their romance in the past half year has been sustained mostly with Skype and text messages.

The time had come to do something about that.  Leanne and Jorge both knew they were meant to be together, but Leanne had no idea they’d be together on the day of their sixth anniversary.  Or that she would receive a proposal and a diamond and the promise of a many more days together.

To pull this off, Jorge conspired with Leanne’s boss, Kenise Barnes, way back in November, and made her promise that, under no circumstances should Leanne be allowed to take January 27th off.  His worst fear was that she would fly to Paris to surprise him on the exact day he was flying to New York to surprise her.

Kenise, being a romantic type herself, was happy to oblige.  And she recruited Alex, the proprietor of Le Wine Shop on Palmer Avenue, to help.  Alex, as it turned out, was quite a romantic too, and pulled off his role brilliantly.

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Mamaroneck, Pelham, Harrison and New Rochelle have all had reports of armed robberies in recent weeks near local train stations. Rye police sent out an alert today telling residents to be on the lookout, though no such incident has been reported there.

Theresa Juva-Brown reports on LoHud.com today:

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Police are warning commuters to watch out for an armed mugger who robbed two men, injuring one of them, in separate incidents as they walked from the Mamaroneck and Harrison train stations on Thursday.

A 59-year-old Mamaroneck village man told police he was walking from the Metro-North train station at 8 p.m. near Stanley Avenue when a man came up behind him with a gun and demanded his property. The robber fled on foot with undisclosed property.

An hour later, as a man walked from the train station near South Road and the Interstate 95 bridge in Harrison, he was struck in the head with a blunt object. The mugger then took his cell phone at gunpoint. The victim was taken to White Plains Hospital with a head injury.

Investigators believe the two incidents are connected and said the robber may have taken the train between robberies.

The suspect is approximately 5 feet 10 and weighs 180 to 200 pounds. He was last seen wearing a black hooded sweatshirt, blue jeans, and a light-colored bandanna or mask. He was carrying a silver or black handgun, police said.

Anyone with information should call Harrison police at 914-967-5111, Ext. 1, or Mamaroneck village police at 914-825-8541.

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Crime Stoppers had an alert earlier this month:

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The fire just after midnight Tuesday in a large commercial building in Port Chester would have been a lot worse if DJs from an entertainment network hadn’t been inside.

Alarms linked to the sprinkler system, which should have alerted the Fire Department automatically to the fire at 200 William St., were faulty, as were exterior alarms that should have sounded, according to Port Chester code enforcement officials. The sprinklers alone probably would not have stopped the blaze, Port Chester Fire Inspector Kevin Brennan said. Luckily, people at the entertainment network Zedalza called 911.

“Had they not been in the building, we probably would have lost the entire block,” Brennan said. The structure is a 139,000-square-foot former factory-warehouse bordered by William, Oak and Smith streets. It includes woodworking shops, a commercial photographer, the Zedalza radio station and other offices. The fire apparently resulted from self-combustion from a buildup of dust in sanding equipment at a businesses called Avanti, according to fire officials. Inspectors found  construction work had been done there without a permit, and issued a stop-work order. The fire damage was minimal, charring the floor beams, Brennan said. Inspections are continuing throughout the building.

Code-compliance work is continuing at two other large commercial properties in town where fires occurred: a set of businesses at Westchester Avenue and Main Street and and a retail parcel at North Main and Adee streets with apartments on the upper floors. Both properties are only partially re-occupied and have been cited for numerous electrical code violations.

The Port Chester – Rye Brook Public Library reopened today after extensive renovation work over the last month, offering a first look at the new elevator, reconfigured space and brand new seats and tables. These chairs are designed for a parent and child reading together:

The biggest changes are in the children’s areas in the older part of the building facing Westchester Avenue. A crowded office was relocated to provide a big open room for young readers and for storytimes. The checkout and reference areas are also reconfigured with a more open design and new tables and armchairs. The children’s section also has new tables and chairs with more space to move around. Below, Christopher Loja reads aloud about zebras today for his mother, who was delighted at the changes.

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Westchester County has canceled the Route 76 bus service that connects Port Chester and Rye despite legislators’ decision to restore funding for it, Gerald McKinstry reports today on LoHud.com. Rye city leaders had also spoken up for preserving the route.

The cutoff is affecting senior citizens in the Milton Road area, where service is no longer offered, says a resident who protested the sudden change.

The line was run by an operator separate from Liberty Lines, which contracts with the county to operate the Bee-Line system. Part of the service will be picked up by the 13 bus, officials said. Read more here.

Port Chester’s November amnesty on overdue parking tickets failed to bring in the shot of cash that  proponents hoped for. Revenue increased that month, but the amnesty didn’t bring anything like the $200,000 net gain that officials banked on for the 2011-12 budget.

That budget line was one of the items hotly debated in May, when the village board made a slew of last-minute changes to reduce the property-tax levy by 5 percent. How far did the estimate fall short? Here are the receipts from the last several months from contractor Complus, according to the village treasurer:

June: 4,111 tickets paid, $144,970 collected.

July: 3,240 tickets paid, $104,995 collected.

August: 3,951 tickets paid, $125,535 collected.

September: 3,358 tickets paid, $87,343 collected.

October: 3,403 tickets paid, $93,155 collected.

November: 5,882 tickets paid, $152,285 collected.

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If you’re following the news on the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester – its planned comeback as a concert venue – you might want to see some photos of the famously ornate interior. Here a few photos from The Journal News archive.

Behold the dome … and disco ball.

WFUV’s Dennis Elsas, who lives in Westchester, is one of the people I spoke with yesterday about the theater’s brief but memorable period as a rock venue during the early ‘70s. He and others are welcoming the prospect of more live music offerings in Westchester.

The great appeal if you lived in the area was that you were seeing this great band and you weren’t that far from your house. And I’m sure that Westchester residents, and folks in the nearby area, are very excited that there will be this diversity of artists coming back to play this side of the county.

Entrepreneur Peter Shapiro said he got to know Capitol owner Marvin Ravikoff over the course of a year as the plan took shape. Ravikoff’s son Howie said they made a careful choice:

There are lots of different types of venue operators and concert promoters, but we singled out Peter Shapiro to be the right combination of experience, familiarity with the locale, and expertise in the music industry. So hopefully we have the triple play with Peter Shapiro.

Leave a comment if you have some memories to share or thoughts about the plan. We’ll be following up on various angles in The Journal News.

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Port Chester’s Capitol Theatre will be revived next year as a big-name concert venue, recovering its legendary status in live music, according to entrepreneur Peter Shapiro. The stage has seen the likes of the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, Pink Floyd and many nights’ worth of other acts. Built in 1926, the historic landmark fell into disuse during the 1980s and lately has been a venue for private events.

Shapiro, whose ventures have included Wetlands in Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bowl, is teaming up with concert promoter The Bowery Presents and General Manager Tom Bailey of The Blue Note in Manhattan.

We’ll have more at LoHud.com, and you can follow the developments at The Cap is Back website.

Route 1 in Port Chester is one of the areas being studied as part of the village’s comprehensive plan, and  officials are asking for input from the public. “Stakeholders” are invited to a meeting Thursday at 9 a.m. the Village Hall conference room, 222 Grace Church St. Breakfast starts at 8:30.

The topics: a survey of shoppers and merchants, redevelopment and the retail market, transportation, infrastructure and urban design. For more information, call (914) 939-2200.

 

Sleigh repairs? Scheduling conflict? No, the reason for postponing Santa’s visit to Port Chester is the bad weather forecast.

The annual event at the Marina Parking Lot will be at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, instead of Wednesday. Gifts for children, visits with Santa, hot chocolate, music and a tree lighting are part of the program.