"Building Yonkers By Building Business Relationships"
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"Building Yonkers By Building Business Relationships" |
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2 plans rekindle hope for downtown Yonkers
By Len Maniace
YONKERS - In the space of two weeks, two massive development plans have
won key environmental approvals, raising hope that they may soon
transform the skyline and fortunes of Westchester's biggest, and
sometimes troubled, city.
While the ambitious plans still need additional city approvals and face
threats from the nation's faltering economy, the hurdles the projects
have cleared are often the longest and most controversial steps in the
development process.
"Whether it is karma or purposeful, they seem to bring a sense of
momentum to downtown," said Debra Cohen, who as an attorney for downtown
property owners has closely followed and often criticized the plans.
"They also seem to be preparing the people of Yonkers for a significant
change on the horizon, namely a taller downtown."
Taken together, the plans would transform what is now a mostly low-rise
downtown of largely pre-World War II buildings:
- A $1.6 billion proposal by Struever Fidelco Cappelli would bring new
development to four sites, the most ambitious being River Park Center, a
megadevelopment that includes an 11-story mall topped by two 28-story
apartment towers and a minor-league baseball stadium.
- The Alexander Street plan would redevelop a narrow, 1.3-mile-long
stretch of forlorn waterfront with residential towers up to 30 stories
tall.
The two projects face different sets of issues.
Unlike the SFC redevelopment, there is no single developer behind the
Alexander Street plan. It is largely the vision of the city, with input
from residents and at least three prominent property owners of parts of
the 112-acre site. Since the plan's Nov. 20 approval, two of the
property owners have said they want to build taller buildings than
envisioned in the environmental review, which would limit buildings to
30 stories, with the tallest buildings near Metro-North stations at the
northern and southern ends of the site.
Daniel Tartaglia, senior vice president of Homes for America Holdings,
which owns property near the northern end of the site, said taller
buildings allow for a greater financial return because upper-story units
rent or sell for significantly more than those on lower floors. A higher
percentage of apartments with views can help convince leery investors
that a project is a good investment, Tartaglia said.
The other property owner with a similar take happens to be SFC, which
also owns land along the Alexander Street corridor. The environmental
review would place some of SFC's property in a high-density,
transit-oriented district, with the rest in a lower-density area where
buildings would top out at 11 stories.
"To suggest our property is not close (to the Metro-North station) is
silly, because planners draw a line and the line only goes so far," said
Marc Berson, chairman of the Fidelco Group, which is a partner in SFC.
In contrast, the environmental review for SFC's River Park Center and
related developments was reached through negotiations with the city that
appear to have settled the size of the planned structures.
But the development faces other hurdles. The city and SFC would need to
negotiate a land disposition agreement, essentially a sales contract,
for the municipal Chicken Island parking lot on which the planned River
Park Center would rise.
The city and the developers also would need to work out a plan to
finance over $200 million in infrastructure cost, such as parking
garages, sewer lines and road improvements. The city is proposing to use
a method never implemented in New York state. Known as tax-increment
financing, the plan would tap increased tax revenue from rising downtown
property values as a result of the redevelopment effort to finance the
infrastructure improvements.
Looming above all of these issues is the matter of the economy.
One of the Alexander Street property owners, Altman Lighting, saw one
proposal to redevelop its site unravel because of the Wall Street
meltdown. The company's president and chief executive officer, Robert
Altman, said he had been optimistic about forming a partnership with
Collins Enterprises, the Connecticut-based company that pioneered
redevelopment on the Yonkers waterfront a decade ago. Then one of
Collins Enterprises financial backers, American Insurance Group, was
caught up in the economic crisis, Altman said.
"It appears we were headed for a deal, but then all of a sudden the
world fell apart," Altman said.
In separate interviews, several of the downtown Yonkers developers said
they were in a financial position to wait out the bad economy,
particularly because they believed their plans have potential.
"When this economy comes back, the first thing somebody is going to want
to develop will be a 30-acre clean site on the Hudson River waterfront,
next door to a train station," Tartaglia said of his site. "You are not
going to find 30 acres, clean, on the Hudson River (anywhere else). It
just doesn't exist." |
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