White Plains residents raised a hue and cry over a development proposal that would accelerate their city”™s commercial and visual transformation.
Rival developers clamored at City Hall for their fair shot at the action.
Common Council members, riding a rising tide of opposition, cast aground a plan launched by the mayor and his favored developer.
And Louis R. Cappelli, publicly thwarted last week in his bid to exclusively remake the city”™s downtown mass-transit gateway, went, as he said, “silently into the night” in White Plains, taking his $1 billion Station Square project with him.
The head of Valhalla-based Cappelli Enterprises Inc. spent more than $500,000 on the preliminary planning and design ”“ by the New York City architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill ”“ of his Station Square development. The proposed project included three glass-sheathed towers, ranging in height from 375 feet to 475 feet, with 1.5 million square feet of office space. They would flank and be connected to a new glass-sheathed Metro-North Railroad station with retail shops. A city parking garage beside the station would be razed to make way for a larger one. An adjacent city firehouse would be relocated by the developer, who also proposed to buy property across Bank Street from the station and build a fourth tower there possibly for a five-star hotel.
Those plans were dashed at a six-hour meeting last Monday, when the White Plains Common Council was about to unanimously vote down a resolution granting Cappelli exclusive development rights for the city property. Facing defeat, Cappelli asked that the resolution be withdrawn.
Cappelli might return to City Hall, but his Station Square project will not be resurrected there, said the developer”™s spokesman Geoffrey S. Thompson.
“I think everybody agreed it was a dramatic proposal,” Thompson said. Cappelli has sparked awareness among city officials and others that the White Plains train station area is one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in metropolitan New York, he said.
“Louis Cappelli once again demonstrated that he has a vision that is unique even among developers,” Thompson said. “He was just ahead of everybody on this. He called attention to a location that has been overlooked by virtually everybody ”“ by planners, by developers, by the community as a whole. He got everybody thinking about it.
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“Once you got to that level, I think it was how fast and how much can the city digest at once.”
Common Council President Rita Z. Malmud said Cappelli”™s Station Square proposal “was too much of a good thing. That”™s an extraordinary amount of development in a small geographic area.”
Malmud said council members and Mayor Joseph Delfino ”“ who first championed Cappelli”™s exclusive development rights but last week said he would vote against the resolution ”“ “received an extraordinary number of communications from the public saying, ”˜Please, please, don”™t go through with this.”™”
“It was thrust on us rather quickly and I don”™t think residents had a chance to fully absorb it. …Once they did know about it, it was not exactly their view of the city,” the council president said.
“White Plains residents view our city as a suburban city, with emphasis on suburban. This proposal was for a suburban city with emphasis on city. I think that was the heart of the problem,” she said.
Regarding Cappelli and his Station Square proposal, “I think that”™s it for him in terms of that particular project,” Malmud said. However, “As the city ascertains that it does want some kind of development there and it does have a firmer idea of what kind of development we might want there, I truly believe that they (Cappelli Enterprises) would be interested. The Cappelli organization has invested a great deal in this city.”
Malmud said city officials have heard from other developers interested in going where Cappelli first ventured with his Station Square project. One is Reckson/SL Green Realty Corp., whose Westchester-Connecticut division office is at 360 Hamilton Ave. in downtown White Plains.
In a letter to the mayor and Common Council dated three days before last week”™s meeting, John J. Barnes, senior vice president and director of the Reckson division, urged the council to reject the exclusivity agreement with Cappelli Enterprises. The agreement “would undercut the advantages to the city to be gained by a competitive process, and promote improper favoritism and fundamental unfairness,” he wrote.
Barnes suggested the city could issue a Request for Proposal without delaying progress on the train station project.
When introducing his project last month, Cappelli said its success hinged on the current Manhattan office market, where available space is tight and rental rates have risen to about $100 per square foot. He hoped to lure large corporate tenants from the city looking for cheaper office space.
“Competing proposals would provide alternative visions for the train station redevelopment project, open the process to more public input, and importantly, enhance the city”™s bargaining position” in future negotiations with developers, Barnes wrote.
He said Reckson/SL Green was ready to expend “significant resources” to prepare a master redevelopment plan that would “better reflect the city”™s vision and comprehensive plan for the Station Square area.”
Rick Matthews, a spokesman for SL Green/Reckson, last week said the company has not begun that plan. “There is a willingness to do that in the context of what the primary recommendation was, which was to basically initiate an open process” by the city, he said.
“They”™re not anxious to put the cart before the horse,” Matthews said. “The message there is, they”™re very interested. If the city is interested, they”™re interested.”
Cappelli”™s spokesman pointed to the clash that has surfaced in White Plains between  “the business model” and “the government model, the public model.”
The business model “reacts instantaneously to changes in the market sector,” Thompson said, while the government model moves more slowly and cautiously.
“In many ways I think he did the city a favor,” Thompson said of Cappelli. “It got people to focus on a very prominent location,” the city”™s gateway. “That needs work and it needs help.”
“Some of these issues are now going to be hashed out. And that”™s going to take some time.”
And Louis Cappelli in the wake of his silent exit last week?
“I think he is going to take a step back for a moment and evaluate what”™s happened and what”™s next,” his spokesman said.
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