Metro-North Railroad and Harrison town and village officials this summer will start preliminary work for a mixed-use project on which a private developer could break ground in 2010 near the commuter rail station downtown.
The focus of Metro-North”™s second transit-oriented development in partnership with a local municipality is a 3.3-acre stretch of commuter parking lots on Halstead Avenue owned by the railroad. Branded “It”™s Happening in Harrison” by rail officials, the project, on the south side of the Metro-North tracks, would redevelop the lots and more than double downtown public parking with a 596-car parking garage.
As designed by Scarsdale architect Richard Henry Behr, the garden-roofed garage will be faced on two sides with a four-story building with 32 apartments on the top three floors and 25,000 square feet of ground-floor retail stores and restaurants.
The complex also will include public esplanades and possibly a new municipal building at the corner of Harrison and Halstead avenues. Harrison Supervisor/Mayor Joan Walsh, though, said she prefers to give a developer the option to build more retail space at that corner. “From everything that I hear on all sides, that”™s the most important corner in town. That”™s the most valuable part of the property,” she said.
One year ago, when the joint project was unveiled for public comment, Walsh described “an endless stream” of developers drawn to her municipal office by the proposed redevelopment. In the last two to three months, developers haven”™t been heard from, she said last week. Yet officials think that “because it”™s such an interesting proposal,” developers will respond to the request for proposals that Metro-North expects to have ready in about six months, she said.
Walsh said she knows two developers interested in submitting proposals. Metro-North and town and village officials aim to select a developer by next summer, or within 13 months of the partners”™ recently signed pre-development agreement.
A title report and land survey of the parcel, the surrounding neighborhood and the train station will be done this summer, followed by a site environmental assessment and a geotechnical investigation. Design guidelines will be developed at the same time and draft zoning regulations will be proposed to reflect the transit-oriented development concept.
Metro-North officials said that kind of development generates jobs, expands the tax base and revitalizes downtowns with a mix of uses while offering a solution to “a perennial headache” for municipalities, long-term and short-term parking in central business districts.
“This effort will have a favorable impact on our downtown, which has been the goal of many administrations for the past 30 years,” Walsh said when the agreement was signed.
Harrison resident Donald Cecil, Westchester County”™s representative on the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Metro-North”™s parent agency, called the agreement a “huge step forward for the people of Harrison. It”™s a win-win for the town and the railroad.”
Metro-North President Howard Permut in a statement said rail officials were moving ahead with the project despite the bad economy “so as to stimulate economic development while planning for a better future” in which public transportation is more accessible and a project such as Harrison”™s will be a model for smart growth and sustainable development.
In 2007, Metro-North launched its “Be in Beacon” development project at its Beacon train station in Dutchess County. The proposed 18-acre mixed-use development, which would reclaim the city”™s Hudson River waterfront and link it to Beacon”™s downtown, is in the zoning and RFP phase, Metro-North officials said. Another joint project is being planned at the Metro-North station in Poughkeepsie.
