The supermarket chain Wegmans is seeking to add a new building to the 20.35-acre site of its existing 121,000-square-feet store at 106 Corporate Park Drive in Harrison. Wegmans also is seeking to create a new connection of its property with Manhattanville Road, which would allow another way to access the Wegmans site in addition to the current connection via Westchester Avenue.
The new building would be 20,000 square feet in size and would replace an existing 11,000-square-feet structure that had been used as a child day care center. The existing day care building would be demolished. The parking area near the proposed building would be redesigned and increased from 44 spaces to 71 spaces. This would result in a net increase of 27 spaces in the immediate area of the new building and increase the total number of parking spaces provided at the Wegmans site from 776 to 803. Also proposed is a loading area for the new building.
Attorney Anthony B. Gioffre III of the White Plains-based law firm Cuddy & Feder told the Harrison Planning Board that the new building would be for retail and could be the location of a wine store. Gioffre pointed out that a traffic study found that the Wegmans store is generating less traffic than was projected during the review that was conducted before the original approval was given to build the store. He said that even with the new retail building traffic still would be 11% lower during the afternoon peak hour and 15% lower during the Saturday peak hour compared with projections made for the initial site plan that was approved.
Gioffre said that there is ample parking on the site to accommodate the needs of the proposed additional retail building.
“The proposed driveway reconfiguration and opening (with Manhattanville Road) will also benefit the surrounding roadway network by providing improved access to and from I-684 and the Hutchinson River Parkway,” Gioffre said. “The reconfigured access will provide a faster, more direct connection for the local emergency responders.”
Wegmans proposes repaving the portion of Manhattanville Road between its site and the I-684 right-of-way, constructing new roadway improvements within the Manhattanville Road right-of-way such as replacement curbs, plantings and safety measures, and repairing two non-functioning streetlights along Manhattanville Road.
“Overall, the proposed site improvements are expected to result in a net benefit to the site and the community by improving access to the site and offering complementary commercial space supporting the successful Wegmans facility,” Gioffre said.
Zach Bell, store manager of Wegmans in Harrison said, “For the past five years we’ve been open a constant request I get from our customers is ‘will we ever have an entrance on Manhattanville Road and will there ever be another retail space taking over that day care?’ This is something we’ve been working on, something we’re really excited for. If it’s a wine store it obviously complements our business perfectly. People come in the store asking if we sell wine and I tell them, ‘not in New York but in other states we are able to do that; it is a big part of our company.’”
Kim Goergen, project manager with Wegmans said, “Now that the day care is closed … this is the right time to pursue this application.”
