Developer Marc E. Berson traveled from New Jersey to join in celebrating his company”™s mid-November groundbreaking for a redevelopment project that will add retail space and apartment units to downtown Yonkers. This project, though, is far smaller in size, far less costly and about two blocks west of the stalled one that first drew Berson and partners in Struever Fidelco Cappelli L.L.C. to the hilly city on the Hudson several years ago.
At the city”™s vacant former public library at 5-7 Main St., the chairman of Fidelco Realty Group was joined by city and state officials at the start of construction to convert the approximately 39,000-square-foot building, built in the 1930s as a department store, to 7,300 square feet of retail space on its massive-columned ground floor and 22 upper-story rental units. Berson said the redevelopment will include parking space for tenants below street level.
Due to be completed by spring or summer 2012, the project is estimated to cost $8 million to $10 million, said Fidelco vice president and project manager Peter G. Klein.
The building”™s facade will be restored and its historic character preserved. The city last year was awarded a $5.45-million Restore New York Communities Initiative grant for the project from the state Empire State Development Corp.
The city is investing $1.54 million from the sale of the property ”“ vacated in 2002 with the opening of the city”™s new Riverfront Library at 1 Larkin Center ”“ for more redevelopment on adjacent Mill Street. City officials are working with Mill Street property owners and seeking proposals from landscape architects to convert the back-alley space into a shopping-district courtyard open to pedestrians.
Berson said he was “particularly excited” by the Main Street building”™s connecting location between the renovated downtown Metro-North Railroad station on the city”™s partly redeveloped waterfront and Getty Square and the site of SFC”™s stalled River Park Center retail, entertainment and residential complex.
“We have lots and lots of interest right now for the River Park Center project,” Berson said. The partners are looking to sign national big-box retailers for the redesigned, approximately 600,000-square-foot complex unveiled in architectural plans about 18 months ago.
At River park Center, “The most important (tenant) is what drives your residential communities ”“ the modern supermarket,” said Berson. The revised plans include a 75,000-square-foot supermarket and a 325-foot-high apartment tower with 200 to 250 units.
Berson said the city must acquire surrounding private properties needed for the Chicken Island redevelopment before prospective retailers can commit to lease deals.
Speaking at the Main Street ceremony, Yonkers Mayor Philip Amicone, SFC”™s public partner for eight years in the downtown and waterfront redevelopment effort, acknowledged that “the greatest project in this city”™s history” will not break ground and “didn”™t work out” in his mayoral tenure, which ends Jan. 1. “In this economy, the project cannot be built,” he said.
