A Yonkers city agency”™s approval of a revised master plan to privately redevelop an industrial waterfront corridor as a high-density neighborhood was hailed last week by a prospective developer who could break ground next summer.
The Yonkers Community Development Agency, headed by Mayor Philip Amicone, recently approved its environmental findings for the Alexander Street master plan, prepared for the city by AKRF consultants in White Plains. The plan calls for the transformation of a 1.3-mile-long, 112-acre downtown industrial zone, largely lying between the Hudson River and the Metro-North Railroad tracks and bounded by Point Street on the north end and Wells Avenue to the south, into a mass-transit-oriented neighborhood of 3,752 residential units and up to 423,000 square feet of retail and commercial office space.
The revised plan calls for 12 residential buildings on the waterfront, reduced from 18 in the original proposal last winter in response to public concerns and criticism that the buildings would block views of the river and Palisades for upland Yonkers residents. The residences could include five high-rise towers of 16 to 30 stories and seven buildings of less than 12 stories. The tallest towers would be built on parcels nearest to the Yonkers and Glenwood Metro-North stations.
The master plan also calls for approximately 17.5 acres of new parkland and open space, including a public esplanade along the entire Alexander Street waterfront linking the existing esplanade to the south with JFK Marina Park to the north. An additional 17 acres of public  roadways, sidewalks and other accessible areas also would be built.
The project area includes several polluted brownfield sites, including a 17-acre former cable-manufacturing site at the north end of Alexander Street on which Homes for America Holdings Inc., the Yonkers-based developer, expects to complete an estimated $35 million cleanup by next spring.  Â
The planned redevelopment would force some successful businesses on Alexander Street to relocate ”“ among them, Altman Lighting Inc., a 50-year-old, family-owned business considering a move upstate to Newburgh as a result of the city”™s redevelopment plan; the 150-employee Excelsior Packaging Group Inc. and Greyston Bakery Inc. The Greyston bakery property, at the corner of Alexander Street and Ashburton Avenue, was added to the redevelopment plan last summer at the request of its owner, the nonprofit Greyston Foundation.
Officials at Greyston, Altman Lighting and Excelsior Packaging could not be reached last week for comment on the approved plan.
The master plan now goes to the city Planning Board and City Council for review and approval. City Council President Chuck Lesnick said the council could vote on the plan in January.
“It”™s important for the City Council to keep this momentum up” on the approvals process for the master plan, said Daniel D. Tartaglia, senior vice president at Homes for America and project manager of the company”™s proposed Point Street Landing mixed-use development on the Alexander Street waterfront. “If the City Council wants to see a resurgence of this area, they”™ve got to move quickly” in a difficult financial time for developers.
Tartaglia said the Point Street Landing project, as proposed by the developer last summer, would include two residential towers of 26 stories each, a 33-story tower and a 39-story tower totaling about 1,100 units. Estimated to cost between $700 million and $900 million, the project would be done in phases over a construction period of three to five years.
“In that time period, the real estate market could change half a dozen times,” he said. Still, the current economic situation, with credit markets tight for financing such a deal and property values and rents in decline, “is certainly daunting,” Tartaglia said. “It would be a lot easier if it was 2005, but it”™s not.”
Tartaglia said Homes for America would like to break ground by next summer. “We”™d like to begin construction as soon as possible.”     Â
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