Developments bode well for a downtown’s revival
Ossining Mayor William R. Hanauer likes to stop on his daily rounds at the Douro Caf̩, a Portuguese bakery and coffee shop on a Main Street block at the heart of the villageӪs business community of Portuguese immigrants. Opened in August 2012, the pastry-redolent shop has become one of the reasons to head downtown after decades of commercial and structural decline in a village that celebrated its bicentennial last year.
“My goal when I came in as mayor was to tie the waterfront to the downtown and make it a real downtown ”“ and it”™s happening,” Hanauer said over an afternoon cup of coffee.
Largely halted in the Great Recession, that revitalized Ossining is again a work in progress. Some pieces of the interconnected work are falling into place more rapidly than others this year.
Bill Hanauer at the Avalon at Ossining development.
At their Jan. 23 board meeting, Westchester County Industrial Development Agency directors elated Hanauer and developer Martin Ginsburg when they approved approximately $4.7 million in sales and mortgage tax exemptions for Harbor Square, the long-stalled, estimated $86.3 million mixed-use development of Ginsburg Development Cos. L.L.C. in Valhalla. The transit-oriented project, on a 3-acre site near the Ossining Metro-North Railroad station, will include 188 market-rate and affordable apartments in a six-story building and a 200-seat restaurant on the Hudson. Expected to break ground this year, it will create 300 construction jobs over a 34-month period and 36 permanent restaurant and apartment-complex jobs, according to the developer”™s IDA application.
One block up from the Douro Café at 145-155 Main St., a five-story, 31-unit apartment building with ground-floor retail and restaurant space is rising this winter behind a green plywood construction fence. The Stagg Group, a residential development company based in Mount Vernon that has specialized in affordable housing in New York City and Westchester, acquired the vacant parcel from the village last year.
“This is our third or fourth attempt” to redevelop the property, said Hanauer, after a ravaging fire there more than 15 years ago. Snow and frigid temperatures and structural engineering problems posed by an adjacent 19th-century building have caused construction delays, he said.
Still the brick building, designed to blend with s
urrounding architecture on a distinctive crescent-shaped stretch of Main Street, is expected to be ready for occupancy by May or June this year, said Ingrid Richards, the village”™s manager of downtown and economic development. Richards said tentative market rental rates in the Stagg building as of last spring ranged from $1,100 to $1,200 for one-bedroom units and from $1,400 to $1,500 for two-bedroom apartments.
Mark Stagg, founding president of The Stagg Group, could not be reached for comment.
“When the market dropped” in the recession, said Hanauer, “it set us back, as it set everyone back. Now things are moving much faster than they ever have.”
That progress is most evident this winter to the north of downtown on Route 9, the village”™s North Highland Avenue.
There construction crews from AvalonBay Communities Inc. are building Avalon at Ossining, a townhouse community of 168 luxury rental units ”“ including 76 one-bedroom, 74 two-bedroom and 18 three-bedroom apartments ”“ in four new buildings erected on the razed site of the former BASF Corp. office and laboratory complex.
Layered with a river town”™s history, the 21-acre property is crossed by the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail. An architectural survivor in stone of grand life on the Hudson, the Kane Mansion, is being restored by Avalon workers. Built in 1843, the historic house is being renovated as Avalon”™s permanent leasing office and for recreational use by tenants, said Todd Nicotra, development director at the AvalonBay Communities regional office in Fairfield, Conn.
“We”™re pleased with the progress” at the Ossining site, where foundations were poured last April, Nicotra said. The first completed building near the Route 9 entrance to the development will be open for occupancy in the first week of February.
“We”™re on budget” for the $37.4 million project, he said.
Hanauer said the village the previous day held a public lottery for the 17 affordable apartments that Avalon was required to include in the project. Priced for residents whose household income amounts to 80 percent of the average median income in Westchester, the apartments attracted 105 applicants.
“This is the first high-end residential that we have in Ossining,” said Hanauer. Standard monthly rental rates at Avalon at Ossining range from $1,785 and up for one-bedroom units, $2,275 and up for two-bedroom units and from $2,600 to $3,020 for three-bedroom apartments.
Nicotra said Avalon “has done a lot of pre-leasing,” with some tenants signed for March, April and May occupancies.
Though it”™s still early “to have an overall picture” of Avalon”™s tenant mix, Nicotra said many who signed leases to date already live or work in Westchester County. He said he does not think New York City commuters ”“ target tenants for Ginsburg”™s development at Harbor Square ”“ “will be a large part of the population” at the Avalon complex.
Hanauer said the Avalon development “will take some pressure off the current residents in town of tax payments. It will also bring people downtown to eat at the restaurants and shop” at its retail stores.
When both Avalon at Ossining and Harbor Square open, “What I see is a village that is a positive place for the people that are current residents to come downtown and enjoy being downtown as they did in the ”™40s”¦It will bring in new residents who will relieve the tax burden for everyone else,” he said.
“You have to have a critical mass of people living downtown in order to bring more businesses,” the mayor said. “That is one of the goals. Commerce follows population.”