Daily News from New York, New York • 903

Friday. March 4, 1983 DAILY NEWS 3 QuOaDD fe HDD3 yg gOTl) By KEITH MOORE Daily News Staff Writer Mayor Koch was not very welcome on the upper West Side yesterday, where shop owners were blaming him for escalating commercial rents in the area. They said the mayor had created a crisis for small businesses by opposing commercial rent control. By JOHN LEWIS But a mayoral spokesman, Bob McGrath, dismissed the linos hurt by fire hlTcfcostcr Two power lines in Westchester County failed shortly after 1 p.m. yesterday, causing power dips throughout metropolitan New York's electrical system, Con Ed said.

The failures did not interrupt service, the utility said, but the dips, which were substantial, affected delicate electronic equipment The power failures were at the Dun wood ie substation in Yonkers, where a fire broke out shortly after 1 p.m. The fire and the first line failure occurred at around the same time, 1:02 p.m., said a spokesman for Con Ed. Two minutes later, another line failed. The spokesman said four power dips were noted, and to protect equipment another feeder was shut down. The Yonkers Fire Department declared the fire under control at 2:45 p.m.

Damage was consid-erable, the Con Ed spokesman said. organizer of a group of demonstrators that gathered outside a West Side shop, by as-serting, "They have a solution in search of a crisis." The organizer of the protest was Stephen Null, who heads a group of small-business owners called the Coalition for Fair Businesses. He led about 20 shop owners in distributing what he said were about 10,000 posters of a scowling Mayor Koch that were to be pasted in the display windows of stores in the neighborhood. A blowup of the mayor's head was targeted in a red circle with a red slash painted across hiz-zoner's face. Shop owners chanted periodically outside Helena Stuart's lingerie shop at 281 Columbus "Evict Koch! Evict Koch!" Stuart, who has owned her shop, called "Only Hearts," for 10 years, said the shop owners were at a crisis point because they were being asked to pay exorbitant rent increases they could not afford.

Stuart said that she paid rent but that the amount at the 150-square-foot shop was due to go up to $5,000. Her landlord, Nick Brusco, was not very sympathetic. "She should have been out of here in November," he said. ZS Daily News Staff Writer A decision last Friday by the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to close the Melrose Station at 161st St and Cortlandt is described as "beyond comprehension," by Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, because it is "smack dab in the center of the $80 million 161st Street redevelopment plans for the Bronx." The 161st Street-Concourse Plaza development has been in the forefront of the Borough President's plan for economic revitalization of the Bronx. The plan calls for a multiplex theater, a supermarket among other retail enterprises, and parking spaces for 2,000 cars.

According to Ferrer, the developers did a survey showing that more than 30,000 families live within walking distance of the site. Hitting the Bronx Ferrer has been on the war path with the MTA and its subsidiary, Metro-North, for virtually red-lining the Bronx. "Metro-North, in its infinite widsom, arbitrarily shut down the Melrose Station on the Harlem Line. Why the Melrose Station is beyond comprehension. But, the authority obviously punches the clock the way it wants." Ferrer said that he had advised MTA Chairman Robert Kiley that from 4 to 7 p.m., trains leave Grand Central Terminal every two to five minutes, while only four of those trains stop in the Bronx.

"And why must a commuter at the Tremont Station who misses the 7:30 a.m. train to Manhattan have to stand around until 9:06 a.m. for another train?" he said. "Ki-ley's answer is, close Tremont on weekends." Peter Stangl, the president of Metro-North, said that he is sending a letter to Ferrer, asking to meet with him and the Concourse Plaza developers to see what can be done about opening the station. "There is nothing we want more than good development around our stations," he said.

Being boarded up Daniel Brucker, a spokesman for the railroad, said that Metro-North recommended closing the station because it had only 20 passengers in the morning and 20 in the evening. He said that the station is being "land banked," in that it is being boarded up. But, if ridership increases, it will be reopened, he said. Meanwhile, he added, the Tremont Station is being closed on weekends. Ferrer said that "banking" the station for future use is only a verbal escape clause for the officialdom under criticism.

STEPHEN NULL (with bull horn) leads protesters, oene kapmck DAILY NEWS Joare softs By ROBERT GEARTY government witness disavowed his testimony. Again Kunstler was unsuccessful. On Wednesday the jury asked for a read-back of a portion of the testimony of government witness Roy Gray, who said he was ripped off by Davis a week before the slayings. Reporters remembered Gray, a rougish character, because when he appearead during the trial he showed up with dried blood on his face and alleged on the witness stand that cops had beaten him. Gray said he had been a member of the drug trade for 19 years before retiring to become a chief of a crew that provided protection on his block in Washington Heights.

Asked how many were in his crew. Gray started counting on his fingers and then paused for about three minutes and replied, "736." Security has been tight throughout the three-month trial. Anyone entering the courtroom has to pass through a metal detector. Packages are inspected by an X-ray scanner before they can be brought into the courtroom. ly upset because all he was given to eat for dinner were two leftover peanut butter sandwiches.

His lawyers wanted to bring him a slice of pizza, but were stopped by court officers. Davis' lawyer, William Kunstler, the civil-rights advocate, has waited for a verdict by doing crossword puzzles and talking about his career with reporters. The other night a reporter said to Kunstler, "If you pull this off. "No, if justice triumphs," interjected Kunstler, knocking on the courtroom wood railing. Kunstler, long a champion of a free press, found himself on the other side of the fence at the end of the trial when he sought to subpena a reporter to reveal a confidential source.

"My client's right to a fair trial overrides a free press," argued Kunstler. His plea before Supreme Court Justice Bernard Fried was unsuccessful. But a week later Kunstler was again fighting for the cause of a free press when he sought permission to release a tape that he said showed that a key Daily News Staff Writer The Bronx jury in the Larry Davis murder case broke a record yesterday when it returned to the jury room at 10 a.m. and resumed its deliberations. It marked the ninth day the jury has discussed the case, believed to be the lengthiest deliberations in a Bronx court Shortly after noon the jurors said they were deadlocked, but were told to return to the jury room and keep trying.

Burton Roberts, administrative judge for the Supreme Court division, said that the longest a jury had deliberated before the Davis case was eight days before convicting Jesus Torres of child abuse in a case that was linked to the Praca Day Care scandal. Davis, accused of killing four drug dealers in a crack den on Oct 30, 1986, in a robbery, has showed little emotion during the long wait for a verdict He faces life in prison, if convicted. But last week, during the third day of deliberations by the panel of eight women and four men, Davis was mild.