Development partners in the revitalization of downtown Yonkers last week assured worried City Council members they are committed to and will have the resources to deliver their estimated $1.6 billion mixed-use project as financial markets reopen.
The city”™s master developer, Struever Fidelco Cappelli L.L.C., and the council, however, still have several issues separating them from an agreement on the sale of city-owned land in the Getty Square area and on the Hudson waterfront. The roughly 95-page agreement is needed to move ahead the project and keep SFC”™s lending banks from calling in some $24 million in loans. The agreement could be hammered out by June, said Council President Chuck Lesnick, who last week called it “an evolving document.” Â
At their real estate committee meeting last week, council members said their concern over the Yonkers project”™s future was stoked by news reports that Cappelli Enterprises Inc., managing partner in the SFC venture, was seeking from city officials in New Rochelle a sixth-month extension on its exclusive rights to develop a downtown location where Cappelli has proposed to build LeCount Square, a $500-million mixed-use project. It was the eighth deadline extension sought by the developer since 2005.Â
That New Rochelle project, together with the Cappelli company”™s focus on its planned $1-billion Catskill resort and casino development in Sullivan County, had both the Yonkers public and council members worried “that maybe the Cappelli organization is pulled too thin, too many irons in the fire,” Council Minority Leader Liam J. McLaughlin said. He said the council was concerned the Yonkers project “could get put on the back shelf” for several years by the Cappelli-led development team.
“On one end, you”™re asking us to hurry up and do this” land agreement “and in New Rochelle you”™re asking them to hold on and wait,” McLaughlin said.
The New Rochelle project “is viable and it will happen but we have to look at the financial markets,” said Joseph Apicella, executive vice president at Cappelli Enterprises in Valhalla and SFC”™s executive project manager in Yonkers. Though the projects differ in scope, the same market conditions apply in Yonkers.
Apicella said SFC has accrued more than $28 million in soft costs for the Yonkers project, compared with about $4 million for the Cappelli project in New Rochelle, which includes about one-fourth the square footage of the proposed River Park Center, Cacace Center and Palisades Point developments in Yonkers.
The city in turn has invested in SFC as its master developer, he noted. In the current economy, if SFC pulled out of Yonkers, no other developer is likely to step in. “I think we are your best opportunity for downtown,” Apicella said. “Can we guarantee anything? No, we can”™t.”
“I think we”™re here for the long haul. You don”™t invest nearly $30 million in a project you don”™t believe in.”
“The real estate world is a market-driven world,” Marc E. Berson, chairman of the New Jersey-based Fidelco Realty Group and a partner in SFC, told the council. “We”™re going to be here and we”™re going to get this project done and we”™re committed to it.”
“Nothing has changed about the need for this community to generate taxes, to generate jobs and to generate the bustle of activity” needed to revive its downtown, Berson said. “The faster we can get this (city approvals process) done, the faster we can get into the ground” for construction.
Apicella said the developer will continue to pursue grants and other government financing for the first phase of the project. As a condition for the council”™s recent approval of a $4.2-million federal Housing and Urban Development loan to SFC, the developer agreed to include an estimated $40 million, 6,500-seat minor league ball park and 400-unit residential tower off Getty Square in the first phase of construction.
“We”™re going to beat the bushes,” he said. “We”™re going to work the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and get that money to build that stadium.”
Regarding the land sale agreement, “We think we”™re far along with it, but there are still three, four, five issues that are major” to be resolved between city officials and the developer, Apicella said.
