New Main Street demolition starts in Yonkers

The demolition of a retail block in downtown Yonkers began this month as the city launches the third phase of its project to uncover segments of the Saw Mill River and create a riverwalk and outdoor venues for tourists, residents and workers.

Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano dropped the wrecking ball Nov. 18 to mark the start of the project on New Main Street, where several commercial properties between Nepperhan Avenue and Ann Street were acquired by the city in 2013 to make way for the estimated $16.4 million Saw Mill daylighting project. The Hudson River tributary has been buried in a concrete flume for more than a century for much of its course through the downtown area.

The city will create a 1.25-acre park at the corner of New Main Street and Nepperhan Avenue. The park site had been planned as a gateway to River Park Center, an ambitious mixed-use redevelopment project at Chicken Island, now an expanse of asphalt parking lots one block from the demolition site off Getty Square.

The city is seeking a new developer and development plan for Chicken Island after ending its agreement last December with the city”™s former downtown master developer, Struever Fidelco Cappelli LLC. City officials in June issued a new request for proposals for the site.

Spano”™s City Hall office last month announced the city had been awarded $2 million by the state Department of Environmental Conservation for water quality improvement initiatives associated with the daylighting project that include improvements to river banks, plantings, installing a large debris chamber, separating combined sewer lines and replacing water lines.

Yonkers officials said the project is one of 134 projects statewide that received a combined $39.5 million in competitive state funding as part of the DEC”™s water quality improvement program. Yonkers was awarded the third largest amount statewide and the largest in the mid-Hudson valley region.

Spano in a press release said the daylighting project “has provided a tremendous boost to Yonkers”™ economy, helping to spur economic development, create jobs and bring new businesses to our downtown. ”¦ With an improving economy, new businesses moving into the city and a growth rate that ranks Yonkers as the second fastest growing city in the state, we are truly a city on the move.”

The approximately $25 million first phase of the Saw Mill daylighting project created Van der Donck Park on the site of Larkin plaza across from the downtown Metro-North Railroad station. Yonkers officials said that project received the National Recognition Award by the American Council of Engineering Companies, Outstanding Engineering Achievement Award by the New York State Society of Professional Engineers, Project of the Year by the Westchester/Putnam Chapter of the New York State Society of Professional Engineers and by the Construction Management Association of America, the William White Award by the American Planning Association and the New York Honor Award by the American Society of Landscape Architecture.

The second, $8.3 million phase of the project broke ground in March and will create a 20,000-square-foot park, called Mill Street Courtyard, around an uncovered 100-foot segment of the river in a dead-end alleyway behind downtown Main Street. City officials said the park will also include a pedestrian and vehicular bridge, bike path, public artwork from local artists and a new pedestrian gateway that will provide access to and from Van der Donck Park to the west.