Advocates of affordable workforce housing in Westchester County are pushing Harrison town officials to require developers of the county”™s first apartment complex planned for an office park to include a percentage of units at below-market rental rates.
Normandy Real Estate Partners, owner of The Exchange office parks on the Platinum Mile in Harrison and White Plains, and its co-developer Toll Brothers propose to demolish two vacant and near-vacant office buildings at 103 and 105 Corporate Park Drive and replace them with the Residences at Corporate Park Drive, a 421-unit complex of studio and one- and two-bedroom apartments with a 5,400-square-foot restaurant. The housing is targeted for young professionals and empty nesters working in the area and retirees who have sold their single-family homes and want to stay in the area, according to the developer.
But affordable housing advocates have rallied against Normandy”™s decision not to provide rental units priced below the market rate so as to be affordable for households earning significantly less than Westchester”™s median income. The developers in their draft environmental impact statement for the project noted the town of Harrison “does not have a requirement for affordable housing, and there is none proposed here.”
That omission brought several housing advocates to the Harrison Planning Board”™s June 23 public hearing on the developer”™s draft environmental impact report. The group in a written statement to the board warned that excluding affordable housing from the project impact study could be grounds for legal action.
Coalition members said the lack of affordable housing in Harrison is a “legitimate subject of study” by the developer in a town that “has not produced one affordable apartment or condominium in 25 years” and is “among the most egregious” of the 31 municipalities in the county cited by federal officials for discrimination in housing.
Advocates also pointed to the Westchester County Planning Board”™s recommendation in April to Harrison officials that they adopt the model ordinance provisions developed by the county as part of its housing settlement with the federal government. Like the workforce housing coalition, the county planning board recommended that Normandy”™s draft environmental impact statement include a discussion “on how the development could potentially affirmatively further fair housing in Harrison.”
The county”™s model ordinance provisions require residential developments of 10 or more units to price at least 10 percent of the apartments as affordable units ”” that is, rent and utilities paid by the tenant do not exceed 30 percent of the annual household income for a family earning 60 percent or less of the area median income. County officials advised municipalities to set aside a higher percentage of units as affordable on sites such as office parks where there are no or only marginal land and infrastructure costs for a developer.
Richard Hyman, an urban planner and principal of RH Consulting in Greenburgh, prepared the county”™s pioneering 2008 study that examined the feasibility of adapting underutilized office parks for housing. A member of the workforce housing coalition, Hyman told the Harrison planning board that report recommended setting aside 15 percent of office-park housing as affordable units.
Hyman said it was “unbelievable” that the town would make no provisions for affordable housing for the Corporate Park Drive project, given the county planning board”™s recent recommendation, State Environmental Quality Review Act requirements that draft environmental impact statements consider socioeconomic factors, and an evident willingness by Toll Brothers to build affordable housing units as it has done at other developments in the Hudson Valley.
“All of this takes place in the context of Harrison”™s dismal history relating to affording housing,” Hyman told the board.
“Harrison has the ability, even the obligation” to require affordable housing as a condition for approving the project, he said.
Nada Khader, executive director of WESPAC Foundation in White Plains, said millennials, a prime potential marketing target for Residences at Corporate Park Drive, would especially benefit from affordable housing in the development. Those younger residents are leaving the county because they cannot afford housing costs here, she said. “The best gift you can give them is to give them housing that allows them to live in the town in which they grew up.”
Harrison Planning Board Chairman Thomas Heaslip told Alexander Roberts, executive director of Community Housing Innovations Inc. in White Plains, that questions about affordable housing policy should be directed to the town board. The planning board can only make recommendations to the town board, he said.
“Then recommend,” Roberts replied.
Harrison Supervisor Ron Belmont declined to comment on the affordable housing issue.
