New Rochelle considers eminent domain to relocate city yard

The letter from City Hall came on a Saturday in September. It was the first Maria La Rocca said she had heard that the city of New Rochelle was considering eminent domain proceedings and that her family”™s contracting company was one of the businesses that could possibly be uprooted.

“We”™re not for sale,” La Rocca told the Business Journal in a phone interview this week. “We were never for sale. We never even made that an option that we were for sale.”

Flavio La Rocco and Sons Inc., which has been in business for nearly 17 years, is one of 11 properties on 4.2 acres near Flowers Park being studied by the city for its potential as the site of a new Department of Public Works yard. The current dilapidated site on Main Street is to be vacated and handed over to Twining Properties pending a deal to build a mixed-use development on Echo Bay.

The letter”™s arrival, La Rocca said, only gave her two days”™ notice of a meeting with city officials the following Monday. She said she had been told that if the site is decided to be appropriate, negotiations to buy the properties at market rate would commence with the goal of having the properties vacated by December 2015.

Flavio La Rocca, Maria”™s husband, said he didn”™t think the situation constituted a proper use of eminent domain. He said he was disappointed with the actions of the city after living in New Rochelle for 36 years, graduating from the high school and raising five children.

“Having built my business by myself, I think it is unfair to have your property that you worked so hard for be pulled from under your feet with this abuse of power,” he told City Council members Dec. 2 during a meeting at which they declared the council lead agency under state environmental quality review laws.

Ten businesses, a city skate park and one residential property are included in the potential site, which is now being surveyed and inspected to determine the environmental and economic feasibility of construction there.

Property owners and some homeowners from the residential neighborhood that abuts the area have teamed with some of the business owners to form a group in opposition to the proposal called New Rochelle United Against Eminent Domain. Homeowners expressed concern about how construction of the city yard, aside from potentially displacing businesses, might affect traffic or pose a safety risk to neighborhood children.

Mayor Noam Bramson, a Democrat, said it was early in the process and premature to assume that the site would be deemed usable for a new city yard.

“The only thing the council has voted on is that the site is potentially appropriate,” he said. A number of questions remain that may take the property out of consideration, not the least of which could be the estimated price tag.

Anticipating the Echo Bay development several years ago, the city planned to relocate the city yard to Beechwood Avenue on the West End. The council bonded $25 million for that relocation but saw construction estimates balloon to upward of $30 million. The majority of those bonds are still tagged and available for the construction. Since the Fifth Avenue site is only half the size of the current city yard, Bramson said even if it is chosen as the location of the new city yard the Beechwood Avenue location would still house some maintenance operations.

The Beechwood Avenue location remains on the table as an alternate to the Fifth Avenue site, the mayor said, but there are no other sites under consideration that are “operationally, fiscally realistic.” City Manager Chuck Strome said at a September meeting that if the Fifth Avenue site ended up being chosen for the new city yard, New Rochelle would make “every attempt to have a friendly acquisition” of the properties there.