Developer wants to build in Yonkers
by John Golden
Jul-30-2010
A Yonkers developer’s plan to raze a burned-out movie theater and
vacant commercial row on Yonkers Avenue and build an apartment tower
with retail store space has some prospective neighbors worried about
traffic and parking congestion and the height and bulk of the proposed
development.
Cottage International Development Group will submit to city officials an
environmental assessment of its proposed 15-story, 220-unit apartment
building for persons 55 and older on the 1200 block of Yonkers Avenue,
near the city limits and the Mount Vernon West Metro-North Railroad
Station. The Yonkers Zoning Board of Appeals in September will resume a
public hearing on the developer’s request for zoning variances to allow
the project.
The proposed project includes 4,500 square feet of ground-floor space
for four retail stores and a four-level, 235-space underground parking
garage. One of every five of the one- and two-bedroom apartments would
be rented at Westchester’s affordable-housing rates.
The development would replace the boarded-up Kimball Theater and five
other vacant commercial buildings on the north side of Yonkers Avenue.
Cottage International Development Group (CIDG) is the parent company of
the zoning applicant, Blue Real Estate Holdings L.L.C. The L.L.C.’s
managing member, Thomas J. Conneally, is founding president and CEO of
Glenman Corp., a construction company the Irish immigrant started in
Yonkers in 1990. Conneally is principal of CIDG, Glenman’s development
arm since 2000.
According to its website, Conneally’s company has developed 500,000
square feet of residential property valued at more than $250 million,
including Seton Manor, a senior citizen apartment complex, and 25 N.
Broadway, a live-work loft conversion in Yonkers, and more than 400,000
square feet of mixed-use property worth $100 million. CIDG also has
projects totaling $300 million in various stages of development in New
York and Europe, including the 245,000-square-foot Orangetown Sports
Center in Pearl River.
Conneally could not be reached for comment on the Yonkers Avenue
proposal.
Evelyn Petrone, an attorney for two co-op apartment owners’ associations
in Yonkers, said her clients are concerned the project will add to the
scarcity of street parking and to traffic congestion off the Bronx River
Parkway, noise and auto-emission fumes in their neighborhood. “In our
opinion, it can’t be anything good,” she said. Petrone said the
developer might be asked to set aside spaces for neighborhood residents
in the new private parking structure.
Their attorney said apartment owners in the Bronx River Road area also
are concerned the proposed building’s 220-unit bulk and 15-story height
will overshadow their neighborhood of single-family and multifamily
houses and apartment buildings typically six to eight stories high.
“It’s just too big for the area,” she said. “It should be scaled down.”
Petrone said her clients do not oppose development on the site. “The
neighborhood could use some sprucing up,” she said. But the residential
project being reviewed by city officials “is a very big and very
different project that is seemingly out of place in the neighborhood,”
she said.
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