Developers of an $85 million luxury apartment project in Mount Vernon”™s Fleetwood neighborhood hosted an indoor ceremonial groundbreaking and community holiday feast on Dec. 29 that was as well a last official public appearance by the project”™s leading supporter at City Hall, outgoing Mayor Ernest Davis.
Hard-hat-donning dignitaries plunged gleaming steel spades into a boxed sand pit at the rear of the former Metro Fresh Supermarket at 42 W. Broad St., the site on which two New York City companies, Alexander Development Group and The Bluestone Organization, expect to open a 16-story, 249-unit apartment tower in 2017. The market-rate housing development, within short walking distance of the Metro-North Fleetwood train station, also will include 14,500 square feet of retail space on the building”™s ground floor and on the street level of an adjacent municipal parking garage, said Mark Alexander, president of Alexander Development Group in Manhattan.
The developer last fall acquired the poorly lit and deteriorated four-story garage from the city and will invest about $4 million in garage improvements, according to the project website. Alexander said Propark America in December assumed management of the developer”™s parking facility, which will remain open for around-the-clock public use as well as private parking for residents of 42 Broad St. West.
The groundbreaking was scheduled ahead of demolition of the vacated grocery store, which allowed its key supporter, Davis, to address an audience of about 200 people before leaving office at the end of 2015.
His successor in office, Richard Thomas, the 33-year-old city councilman who defeated Davis in a Democratic primary last fall and went on to win election in November in a three-way race, was said to be traveling with his family and did not attend the ceremony. Thomas, as Alexander noted in his remarks at the ceremony, opposed the proposed development on the divided City Council after initially supporting a zoning text amendment in 2014 to allow high-rise, transit-oriented development in the city”™s downtown business zone.
At his first meeting with the luxury apartment developers to hear their proposal, Davis recalled, “I said, ”˜Hell yes, just bring it on.”™”
Davis said supporters warned him that he would lose the mayoral election if the Fleetwood development was supported by the city. “It”™s not about today; it”™s about tomorrow,” he said, suggesting his support for the development had cost him re-election in 2015. “I”™ll go knowing I”™ve left the city better than I found it,” he said.
Davis served three terms in office from 1996 through 2007 and was returned by voters to the mayor”™s office in 2012. Leading an administration dogged by corruption charges and a lengthy federal investigation, Davis in 2014 pleaded guilty to misdemeanor federal tax charges, admitting he failed to report proceeds from the 2003 sale of a property he owned in Mount Vernon and did not file income tax returns for 2011.
Sentenced in February 2015 to one year of supervised probation, Davis refused to leave office before his term ended despite pressure by some Mount Vernon residents for his resignation.
Responding to questions from the mayor at the ceremony, Alexander said the developers will pay about $1 million annually to the city in taxes and fees. The Broad Street high-rise will add nearly 500 residents to Fleetwood with collective annual income of about $35 million.
Alexander presented city officials an outsized check for $556,635, the developer”™s building permit fee.
“This check isn”™t the real deal,” he said. “The real deal went into the bank last Wednesday.”
