Developer Joseph Simone of Simone Development Cos. and L”™Judie Matt-Simmons have joined under the banner of the entity Q West Towers LLC to propose building two 15-story apartment towers with a total of 229 residential units in Mount Vernon.
The project would be on land in the block bounded by Oak Street, Mount Vernon Avenue, North MacQuesten Parkway and North West Street. It would be aimed at helping fill a need for mixed-income housing in the city. Simmons told the Business Journal that 50 units in the project would be reserved for seniors.
Speaking to the Mount Vernon City Council, Simone pointed out that he developed millions of square feet throughout the New York Metropolitan tristate area.
“However, what”™s very important to me is the fact that I grew up my entire childhood in Mount Vernon. I went through all Mount Vernon public schools, I”™m on the board of directors of the Boys & Girls Club of Mount Vernon and I have a real affection and love for the city of Mount Vernon.”
Simone said that the proposal is very personal to him.
“It”™s very important that I see this through and make sure that it is a very beautiful project and a very successful project for both the city of Mount Vernon as well as our company,” Simone said.
Back on June 2, 2017, Simmons and Simone appeared together with former Mount Vernon Mayor Richard Thomas and other developers at an event designed in part to show that the city and its Industrial Development Agency were ready to work with developers on new projects. They presented a concept for a project to be called Q West Towers. Mayor Thomas said at the time that the $60 million project would be the first to use the city”™s 45-day expedited review process.
Business Journal reporter Bill Heltzel wrote at the time that Simone and Simmons wanted to construct two 70-unit, 18-story buildings near the Mount Vernon West train station that would be affordable for middle-income renters.
“If you are a fireman, policeman or city worker,” Simmons said, “these buildings are for you.”
Architect Brian Newman of the firm Newman Design told the City Council that his firm has been working with Simone Development since the 1980s. He said the current Q West Towers project is on a number of lots configured as two sites, A and B, divided by an existing parking lot.
Three city-owned parcels would be bought by the developer and be among the lots used for the project.
Newman said that the tower on site A would be 138 feet tall and the tower on site B would be 126 feet tall. He said both of the towers would take up less than the maximum allowable lot coverage of 85%, with the site A building covering 52% of the land and the B building covering 71%.
Newman said that the site A building would have 115 apartments while the site B building would have 114.
“We have a mix of one bedroom, two bedrooms and three bedrooms totaling 24 studios, 63 ones, 26 twos and 2 three bedrooms,” Newman said about the A building. He said typical studios would be about 400 square feet, one-bedroom apartments about 600 square feet and a typical two-bedroom unit would be approximately 820 square feet. He said the three-bedroom apartments would be just over 1,000 square feet in size.
“Essentially the architecture is going to be the same for the two towers,” Newman said. “We have a combination of aluminum panels, a window-wall facade.” He explained that perforated decorative metal panels would be used as a finish for the above-ground levels of the parking garages. He said there would be a total of 162 parking spaces.
The A building would have a ground-level retail space of 400 square feet while there would be 1,400 square feet of retail in the B building.
Attorney Michael Zarin of the White Plains-based law firm Zarin & Steinmetz explained that there previously had been a land disposition agreement (LDA) prepared to allow the developer to buy the three city-owned lots for development. Those lots are at 7-11, 25 and 29 N. MacQuesten Parkway.
Zarin said the agreement called for the applicant to make a $350,000 community benefit payment that would be used by the city. Zarin said that the agreement made it clear that the closing on the city-owned parcels would not occur until the applicant had gone through the full review process. He said the price for the three city-owned parcels had been set in a 2018 appraisal at $930,000. On May 12, the City Council approved an amended LDA for the project.
Mount Vernon just keeps giving their land away at dirt cheap prices to residential developers seeking tax breaks while the City does not have enough revenue to fix the sewers streets and aging infrastructure…the hamster wheel moves in one direction in Mount Vernon, and its not forward.