Bronx, NY – The smells of one South Bronx building are about to get a lot better, thanks to green guru Majora Carter.
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The MacArthur “genius” Award winner is planning to pump a “bright, grassy” new perfume into rooftop air unit of a Hunts Point apartment building to replace the usual sewage plant and truck exhaust odors.
Carter hopes her new fragrance – called L’Eau Verte du Bronx du Sud, or “Green Water of the South Bronx” – will perk up tenants and brighten their day.
“The connection between everyday life and nature,” said Carter. “I want to remind people of that.”
The celebrated founder of Sustainable South Bronx partnered with Parisian perfumer Pascal Gaurin, creator of Vera Wang for Men, and Bruno Jovanovic, who has concocted perfumes for Lagerfeld, Armani and Donna Karan, to create the fragrance.
She boasts it is an essence of grass, rain and citrus.
The whiff of citrus in the large-scale air freshener comes courtesy of a posh ingredient from Tunisia called neroli or orange flower absolute, which costs $4,000 per pound.
The nonprofit SEBCO hopes to release the perfume into a rooftop air unit at Sister Thomas Apartments, a low-income building it manages on Southern Blvd. in Longwood.
The building is within the smell zone of a noxious sewage treatment plant and a trash transfer station.
No date is set, and the tenants haven’t given the okay yet.
Carter’s pastoral aroma would waft into the building’s hallways and common areas, not the 103 apartments.
Sister Thomas tenants were skeptical, but some were willing to give it a try.
“It’s the smelliest building I’ve ever been in,” said Adriana Contreras, 27, who complained of her neighbors’ food smells. “It has a lot of odors.”
She worried about her 5-year-old daughter, who has asthma.
“I don’t know if it’s going to be bad for her,” Contreras said. “We’ve got to test it first.”
Yolanda Rivera, 51, who can smell sewage from her seventh-floor apartment, gave the plan a thumbs up. “Anything to make the Bronx smell better,” she said.
Building manager Sal Gigante said tenants will definitely prefer L’Eau Verte du Bronx du Sud to a more traditional borough bouquet – “decaying rat carcass.”
“It has a nice outdoorsy aroma,” he said. “The purpose is for people to feel good and feel at home.”
Borei meenei besumim?!
Now the building will smell of neroli, grass, sewage and dead rat. I’m sure the good folks at Chanel, Cartier and the rest of em are going to come up with their versions of this olfactory delight.
A much cheaper solution: glade plugins in the hallways?!
People who are allergic to grass may not appreciate the new odor, even if it doesn’t trigger an allergic reaction. I’d rather not be reminded of the substance that makes my airway constrict.