As good times call, residents extend half a welcome mat

On a narrow Yonkers street of Â weedy, trash-strewn lots and community garden plots, small neighborhood stores flanked by condemned apartment buildings and metal-shuttered rows of closed retailers, the first visible sign of Â the planned and hopeful future of one of the city”™s oldest neighborhoods is rising on a construction site.

Croton Heights Apartments, a 60-unit, $25.5 million affordable-housing project at the corner of Ashburton and Vineyard avenues, is the first phase of an approximately Â $135 million redevelopment project to revitalize both commerce and housing stock on and near Ashburton Avenue, a major east-west arterial in the city that links the waterfront with Nepperhan Valley and the parkway system.

Ellen Lynch, executive director of the Yonkers Industrial Development Agency, one of several public agencies cooperating with two private developers to execute the city”™s sweeping master plan for the once-thriving neighborhood, called it “a vitally important project” that will “bring great results for the city of Yonkers.”

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2004 awarded the city a $20 million Hope VI grant for the project, which Mayor Philip A. Amicone last year said will create 469 units of rental and ownership housing. That federal money will be joined by a mix of state and county housing grants, loans and tax-credit equity and private financing for a three-site construction project ”“ a fourth site on Nepperhan Avenue could be developed in 2009 ”“ that will replace aged and crime-ridden public housing in the neighborhood and is expected to bring in a wider mix of incomes among apartment renters.

The city also plans to build new infrastructure in the neighborhood, at a cost variously estimated at $5 million to $10 million, and widen sections of Ashburton Avenue to improve traffic flow. Demolition required for street widening will result in the loss of 11 retail and light-industrial businesses and nearly 50,000 square feet of commercial space, according to BFJ Planning officials in their 2006 master plan prepared for the city.

“In order for the project to be a success, we do need new infrastructure, new streets,” said Todd McClutchy, project manager for the Hope VI project. His company based in Greenwich, Conn., The Richman Group of Companies, is a partner in Croton Heights L.L.C. with Landex Corp., a developer of multifamily housing based in Linthicum, Md., and the Municipal Housing Authority of the city of Yonkers.

At Croton Heights Apartments, eligible residents will have incomes that range from 30 percent up to 90 percent of Westchester”™s median income, which is $96,500 for a four-person household. Typical monthly rents will range from the mid-$300s to a maximum of $1,200, McClutchy said. “We”™ve hit all the different income bands, so it truly is going to be a real mix of people,” he said.

McClutchy said that project should be completed in the fourth quarter of 2008.

“We”™ve been working on this for the past six-plus years,” McClutchy said. “I think we”™ve really gained a lot of headway in the last 12 months.”

Just north of Ashburton Avenue, the city”™s Mulford Gardens, a 552-unit public housing complex, stands eerily vacant. The last of its residents were relocated last spring to make way for demolition of the complex”™s 17 brick buildings. McClutchy said the approximately six-month demolition project will cost about $8 million and begin late this year or early next year.

On the site of the nearly 70-year-old Mulford Gardens complex, the development team will build 110 townhouses and 130 garden-style apartments. The two-year, $80 million construction project is expected to begin in July 2008, McClutchy said.

In September 2008, the Hope VI developers expect to start construction of a $24.5 million senior-citizen apartment project on the south side of Ashburton Avenue at its junction with Park Avenue. McClutchy said approximately 60 one-bedroom and two-bedroom units will be available for senior citizens with incomes of up to 60 percent of the county”™s median income.

The 18-month project will require the demolition of an adjacent municipal parking lot used by an Ashburton Avenue neighbor, St. John”™s Riverside Hospital. That could be replaced by a new parking garage built on the hospital”™s existing parking lot at the rear of its Park Care Pavilion.

“Parking was a major issue for us,” said St. John”™s Riverside Hospital CEO Jim Foy. “We”™ve been working with the city on it because we think it”™s great for the development of the area. We found the city has been very, very open about working out things.”

Some small-business owners on Ashburton, however, said city officials have not adequately answered their questions and concerns about the eventual loss of their business properties through eminent domain for the street-expansion project.

“The plan every year is different,” said Hyungman Kim, owner of Damian Cleaners at 156 Ashburton Ave. He said the street-widening project was being planned when he started in business on the avenue 10 years ago.

Kim said he worried about his family, who live in an apartment above his dry-cleaning shop, if they are forced to relocate. “Now everything OK,” he said. “When I move, that”™s a lot of problems. We make a new life.”

Ramon D. Abreu has hung a “For Sale” sign in the window of his Dariselle Deli and Grocery at 172 Ashburton Ave., one of six small grocery stores on Ashburton between Nepperhan and Warburton avenues. The 46-year-old merchant also hopes to sell his adjoining laundramat, one of three on that stretch of the avenue.

“Nobody gives an answer ”“ nobody,” said Abreu, who regularly attends monthly information meetings on the project at another Ashburton Avenue institution, St. Joseph”™s Roman Catholic Church. “In the meantime, they”™ve been giving things to the developers,” he said.

Abreu suggested the city wants to give the Ashburton Avenue neighborhood to outside developers and “the people that can afford” the higher costs that follow redevelopment.

With already high property taxes for businesses in the blighted area and unaffordable rents of $1,200 in the rising Croton Heights building, “Actually, what the city”™s doing, they”™re just pushing everybody out,” Abreu said, “same thing they”™re doing in White Plains. It”™s sad, what”™s going on, very sad.

“There”™s a lot of businesses around here that are going to go out,” Abreu said. “The businesses you”™re going to see around are megabusinesses, nothing small.”

Yonkers City Hall spokesman David Simpson, however, said in the city”™s project planning, “We made the small-business owner the priority here. It”™s a very close-knit community.” The mayor, he said, “is keenly aware that the small-business owners are the lifeblood of the city.”

With the street-widening project, “Any business that”™s going to be displaced, it will be a priority for the administration to relocate that business,” Simpson said. “We”™re not doing it to force anybody to close up shop. We”™re doing it to make things better for the people who are there.”

Joseph Shuldiner, executive director of the Yonkers municipal housing authority, said that for the project developers, “There are no true market-rate rents because of the cost of construction,” which is $300,000 per unit. Market rents would be $3,000 to $4,000 per unit, he said.

“Because of the high cost of construction, the owner has had to go to a whole bunch of funding sources” to raise the remaining $115 million after the Hope VI grant, he said.

“It”™s very complex,” Shuldiner said of the public and private financing, “but it”™s also very time-consuming. I give the developers credit for hanging in there and cobbling together all these funds.”