Five years after their purchase of a former chemical company campus for a mixed-use redevelopment over which Dobbs Ferry residents and officials were deeply divided, partners in the $130 million Rivertowns Square project hosted a ceremonial groundbreaking on Tuesday at the ramped-up construction site off the Saw Mill River Parkway.
“A lot of people thought we would never get it done,” including three former village mayors, said current Dobbs Ferry Mayor Hartley Connett, describing a lengthy municipal approval process for the project application of developer Saber Dobbs Ferry LLC. That included 81 public hearings, he said. “I thought we would never get it done at times. But we climbed a mountain.”
- An artist rendering of the Rivertowns Square mixed-use development.
Partners at Saber Dobbs Ferry LLC last month cleared another obstacle to the 450,000-square-foot development that will surround Chauncey Square Shopping Center when M&T Bank approved a $42 million construction loan for the developer. The two-year loan will support the $52 million, 120,000-square-foot construction of Rivertowns Square”™s retail, dining and entertainment facilities and the structural base of a 138-room hotel to be built atop a gutted central research building on the 18-acre hillside campus formerly occupied by Akzo Nobel Chemical Co.
Following demolition and excavation work, construction was delayed for a few months this spring and summer while the developer sought an operator for the 83,000-square-foot Hilton Garden Inn planned on Livingstone Avenue after XSS Hotels, a New Hampshire company that operates a Hampton Inn and Suites in Yonkers, pulled out of the project.
Saber Dobbs Ferry last month announced a division of Maryland-based Baywood Hotels Inc. will operate the $17 million hotel.
At the north end of the property across Danforth Avenue, a contractor for Dallas-based Lincoln Property Co. has begun work on a 202-unit, 277,000-square-foot luxury rental apartment building. In August, Saber Dobbs Ferry announced its $9.6-million sale of the parcel to Lincoln.
The project also includes an 8-screen, 39,000-square-foot movie theater complex to be operated by IPic Theaters, a Florida-based theater chain.
“That”™s the wall for Mrs. Green”™s” Martin G. Berger, a managing member of Saber Dobbs Ferry said, pointing out to the Business Journal where an 18,000-square-foot Mrs. Green”™s Natural Market is rising at the northeast end of the complex.
Construction crews, briefly idled by the nearby groundbreaking ceremony, also have started work on retail and restaurant building sites off Lawrence Street at the south end of the complex.
Berger, a joint-venture partner in Rivertowns Square who is managing principal of Saber Real Estate Advisors LLC in Armonk,  wryly recalled for guests at the ceremony he was told at the start of planning for the mixed-use development the village approval process would take six months. He noted the same in a subsequent meeting with Mark Weingarten, the White Plains land use attorney who represented Saber Dobbs Ferry through the village”™s project review.
“About a half-hour later, Mark stopped laughing,” Berger recalled.
Berger said financial incentives from the Westchester County Industrial Development Agency to Saber Dobbs Ferry ”” a mortgage tax exemption of $551,200 and a sales tax exemption estimated at $2.2 million ”” was vital to the project.
“This development, like many others, got to the one-yard line and needed more assistance,” Berger said. “We wouldn”™t be here without your assistance,” he told county officials at the ceremony.
“The regulatory process in this state tends to be pretty lengthy,” Westchester County Executive Robert P. Astorino told Berger with a smile. “I”™m actually surprised you got it done in six years. That”™s pretty quick.”
Astorino congratulated Connett in his role as mayor for “not being an obstacle to progress but seeing it through.”
“This happened because we listened to the community,” Connett said, “and incorporated that input into the final project,” which the village board two years ago narrowly approved by a 4-3 vote. “And it helped.”
“At the end of the day, this is going to be a positive thing for Dobbs Ferry,” the mayor said.
Rivertowns Square is expected to open by late 2016.
