Apartment plan would save a building with a history

A developer wants to subdivide a property on a busy road in Dobbs Ferry and build an apartment house on one of the two new lots. Preserved on the other lot would be a single-family house that was built in 1850 as the gatehouse for a Vanderbilt estate. The existing house is at 94 Ashford Ave. and the new building would have an address of 95 Ashford Ave. even though its frontage would be on adjacent side street Beacon Hill Drive. The size of the lot for the new building would be 0.41-acre.

The project’s application was submitted by Leonard Brandes, an architect from Scarsdale, and identifies the owner as James Judge of Ardsley. The project would cost an estimated $4 million and would consist of a 14-unit apartment building with 22 parking spaces.

The Dobbs Ferry Board of Trustees approved a resolution for it to be lead agency for the environmental review of the proposal and approved sending the submission to the village’s Planning Board and the Westchester County Planning Board for review.

The proposed building would require a variance for the rear yard setback and building height. The required rear yard setback is 25 feet and the application calls for ten feet The maximum height allowed in the Downtown Transition Zone, where the property is located, is 35 feet and the application shows the building with a parapet that raises the total height to 43 feet and four inches.

Brandes said that in the 1850s the main entrance to the space was from Beacon Hill.

“It still has some of the gatework, it has some of the details of the house and I think it is a very known building in the town,” Brandes said. “We don’t want to eliminate that building. In fact, we want to use that as a concept for our new building.”

He said that the part of the property where they would like to construct the new building is basically an empty lot right now. He said that most of the development around the site consists of small low-rise houses with a parking lot close to their property.

“Were looking to create a new space within this area to try to feel like it’s part of the original buildings,” Brandes said. “We’re not trying to create something completely new.”

Brandes said that of the 14 rental units, there would be nine two-bedroom apartments and five one-bedroom apartments. He said that two of the units would be accessible for the disabled and that one unit would be priced as affordable housing. He said that the parking would be partially underground. Brandes said that solar panels would be used to generate electricity for the building’s lighting and electric vehicle recharging stations.

“In terms of recharging bikes and things like that we may have to create a private closed-in area,” Brandes said. “I would want that as an isolated area so that if there is a fire, if there are problems with that as we’ve seen all over the country now we would have that contained within a separate room, a fire-protective room.”