A panel of government and business leaders said Westchester County is headed in the right direction in adapting development to the needs of its 21st century population and economy despite lengthy delays in the municipal review process for developers and a shortage of affordable housing for the workforce of companies already established or considering a move here.
“Navigating Westchester: Threading the needle for economic growth” was the topic addressed by panelists at The Business Council of Westchester”™s recent Key Bank Speaker series breakfast in Tarrytown. One looming obstacle to that growth is the State Environmental Quality Review Act and the drawn-out review process for proposed development projects the 37-year-old state law has spawned in communities, panelists said.
“SEQRA is a problem,” said Harrison Mayor Ron Belmont, who has led the town”™s efforts to repurpose its Westchester Avenue office park corridor for mixed uses and redevelop its downtown with high-density, mass transit-oriented residential development.
“We measure projects in dog years,” said Westchester County Executive Robert P. Astorino, addressing the Business Council audience before the panel. A development project in the county on average takes seven years to complete, he said.
“There are endless delays, which add a lot of cost and frustration if you”™re trying to build something in this county and this state,” he said.
Astorino said SEQRA needs to be “reduced and reformed” so that communities are protected from adverse impacts of projects while development can move forward.
The county executive said he has asked county Planning Commissioner Edward Buroughs to prepare a guide on best practices for navigating the development process in Westchester.
In Yonkers, where city officials last year launched Generation Yonkers, a $350,000 marketing campaign to attract millennials to live and work in the post-industrial and increasingly high-tech city on the Hudson, SEQRA also is “a problem” in redevelopment, said Wilson Kimball, Yonkers commissioner of planning and development.
Downtown redevelopment came to halt in Yonkers in the credit crisis and Great Recession of 2007 and 2008, which upended the ambitious plans and finances of the city”™s former master developer, but has revived since Mayor Mike Spano took office in 2012. “Our biggest fear in the city is another downturn like 2008,” Kimball said. She said the city is trying to complete redevelopment projects “before that happens.”
Panelist Timothy M. Jones, managing member of Robert Martin Co. LLC, said “political will” is the biggest obstacle to development in the county. With SEQRA and other regulatory hurdles facing developers, “What you really need is the will by political leaders to get it done,” he said.
Developer Robert P. Weisz, chairman and CEO of RPW Group Inc., cited a lack of housing for young employees and “the lack of excitement for young people” as the greatest obstacles to job creation in the county by expanding and relocating companies.
Both Weisz and Marsha Gordon, Business Council president and CEO, said companies cannot find “the right people” to fill jobs. Keeping young people in the county and having a properly trained workforce are key to economic growth, Gordon said.
Weisz said more and smaller apartment units in taller buildings and allowing residential construction in areas that have been zoned to exclude housing, such as the Interstate 287 office park corridor, are needed.
“We need very busy downtowns” with attractive night life and cultural offerings for millennials, he said. “We need lots of activity. We need density.”
That necessary change “is happening right now,” Weisz said. “We”™re probably at a crucial point where we are transforming Westchester. We might not recognize that because we are in the middle of the process.” He predicted the county in the next 20 years would undergo “a major transformation” with a larger medical community and facilities.
Bronxville Mayor Mary C. Marvin said she has focused on filling retail space in the village to further economic growth with a Think Local, Shop Local campaign. Referring to villagers shopping at Bronxville stores and the sales tax revenue they generate, she said, “If they bought everything on Amazon.com last year, I would have had to raise their (property) taxes 12 percent.”
In Westchester, “I just think we”™re so going in the right direction,” Marvin said. Other panelists agreed with her assessment.
As political leaders, “We have to be out there selling our communities,” she said. “We have to become the greatest salesmen for this county that we can possibly be.”
