State, county and local officials joined with Wilson Kimball, CEO of the Municipal Housing Authority of the City of Yonkers (MHACY) to celebrate the arrival of new electric stoves for residents of the Palisade Towers complex. The approximately 1,000 residents of the eight buildings in the 415-unit Palisade Towers have been without gas since August 2024, due to gas leaks and corroded gas pipelines. As a result, residents have not had stoves for cooking, with the MHACY providing residents with microwave and convection appliances. The hot water supply for the buildings also was interrupted and temporary equipment had to be installed.
The current project, expected to be completed by 2027, is to make the buildings all-electric. This includes installing new electrical feeder cables, upgraded electrical panels in the buildings and new conduits to support electrified hot water, heating, cooling, and cooking systems. It also includes the installation of high-efficiency heat pump systems to create hot water for the complex and individual heat pumps in each apartment for heating and cooling that for the first time will allow residents to accurately adjust the temperature in their apartments.
Replacing the old gas stoves are new electric induction cooktop stoves that require the use of special pots and pans that react to electrical energy and create heat. A donor who wished to remain anonymous has provided sets of new pots and pans for induction cooking to go with each of the new induction cooktop stoves.
The $35 million in funding allowing the project to proceed was put together by the city, county, and state governments that have worked in close cooperation. The transition at Palisade to all-electric service is overseen by Palisade owners L&M Development Partners and The Mulford Corporation, with Touchstone Builders as the general contractor. Palisade Towers was originally built in 1954.
Kimball described the electrification project as turning “lemons into lemonade by taking what was a crisis and turning it into a win for the residents of Palisade Towers. This is a major step forward in our overall mission to create sustainable, modern housing for the future.”
At an April 14 gathering at Palisade Towers, Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano criticized the federal government for not stepping up and providing all of the support it could have for the people living at the MHACY housing development. He said the federal government did come up with extra dollars for cosmetic improvements to the buildings but failed to provided money to make necessary changes to the guts of the buildings.
“The electrical, the gas mains, that was not sexy enough for them, couldn’t give us that much,” Spano said. “We generally go to the federal government and say ‘this is what we need.’ There’s really no support being sent to urban centers out of Washington these days.”
Spano praised State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins of Yonkers, Gov. Kathy Hochul, the State Legislature and the county for helping “find the dollars to make this happen. It’s more money than the local Yonkers taxpayers could ever afford.”
Samantha Pearce of New York State Homes and Community Renewal (HCR) said a grant of $12.9 million from HCR’s $250 million Climate Friendly Homes Fund is helping to pay for the Palisade Towers project.
Pearce described the fund as an effort to help “multifamily building owners across New York state transition to high-performance all-electric heating, cooling and hot water systems. We’re aiming to retrofit at least 10,000 units with this money.”
The project also is supported with $1.5 million through NYSERDA’s Low Carbon Pathways Program, and almost $1 million through a New York Power Authority grant. The Westchester County Public Housing Assistance Initiative provided $4.6 million.
Westchester County Executive Ken Jenkins described what’s happening to upgrade Palisade Towers as a great example of what can happen when different levels of government work together with residents and other partners.
“At the end of the day this is 1,000 residents who call Palisade Towers home,” Jenkins said. “When their gas systems were shut down it created a real challenge. We all came together to invest in what is the long-term permanent solution. This project is not just about replacing what was lost, but about building something better.”
