Yonkers city officials recently broke ground on an $8.3 million project to uncover a section of the Saw Mill River off downtown Mill Street. The project will create a public courtyard on what is now a dead-end city block of largely vacant properties slated for private redevelopment.
The city project, funded in part by a $920,000 Green Innovation grant from the state Environmental Facilities Corp., is the second phase of the daylighting of the Saw Mill River in its course through the city”™s downtown to the Hudson River. The first, award-winning phase at the newly created Van Der Donck Park on Larkin Plaza was completed in 2011.
Construction crews will unearth a long-buried 100-foot section of the river and build a nearly 20,000- square-foot European-style piazza that attracts both residents and visitors, Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano said in a press release. The Mill Street courtyard will include a pedestrian and vehicular bridge, bike path, public artwork and a new pedestrian gateway at 24 Warburton Ave. to directly connect the site to Van Der Donck Park.
A private Yonkers-based developer, Rising Development Co. L.L.C., plans to redevelop several properties surrounding the Mill Street site for mixed uses. City officials said the project, estimated at $22 million in 2012, would include a 25-story, 230-unit live-work tower with 33,000 square feet of commercial office space and 13,600 square feet of retail space facing the uncovered river. The vacant Wheeler Block building on Mill Street would be redeveloped with three storefronts and 24 residential units on the top three floors.
Spano said the Rising Development project “is essential to the economic growth of downtown Yonkers, providing for renewed home and business space, becoming a centerpiece to downtown Yonkers.”
