New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson said it is just as important for the city to look forward as it is to preserve its past during an address given to the New Rochelle Chamber of Commerce.
Bramson said the city must continue to invest in its downtown and achieve a “critical mass” there. He lauded the restaurant and retail store owners who have come into New Rochelle over the past decade or so.
“We owe it to those who take such risks, and we owe it to ourselves, to ensure that the trend of positive change not end today, but rise to a higher level of success,” said the mayor.
Bramson discussed some of the large residential projects that have come to the city in recent years, such as Avalon on the Sound and Trump Plaza New Rochelle, as well as future projects such as LeCount Square.
Lecount Square, which would be built by Valhalla developer Louis Cappelli, would include 380,000 square feet of class A office space, a new hotel, and 200,000 square feet of retail.
Bramson said the plans also call for an acre of open space, and would bring almost two thousand new jobs and more than $4 million in new property tax revenue to the city.
“This single project has the capacity to bring our downtown across the tipping point and stimulate a virtuous cycle of new investment,” he said. “In my judgment, it will contribute immeasurably to our future.”
Bramson said the city should work for “a more balanced economy,” with a focus on more office and retail space.
Bramson also discussed making optimal use of the city”™s waterfront and the role the Echo Bay development project will play in that.
The $450-million mixed-use development would sit on approximately 24 acres of waterfront on the Long Island Sound.
The project would include 600 luxury apartments, 62 townhouses, 42 condominium units and 100,000 square feet of street-level retail space.
Further aspects of the project include five acres of public parkland and about a mile of a promenade walkway for public use would also be created. A new community center would be built to replace the old Armory, which Bramson said would be too expensive to rehabilitate.
“This is a compelling vision for the future of Echo Bay and the future of New Rochelle ”“ supported, I believe, by the vast majority of our neighbors,” he said. “But it won”™t be achieved by wishes alone. Like everything else I have discussed tonight, perhaps more than everything I have discussed tonight, it involves ”“ and requires ”“ hard work and hard choices.”
Bramson admitted parts of the project, including tearing down the Armory, would be a tough sell.
“A new armory and public center on Echo Avenue, with meeting space, programming and services that benefit our community, most especially veterans”™ organizations … would be a building that pays tribute to the past by preserving and incorporating the old armory”™s doors, murals, anchors, and other distinctive architectural features,” Bramson said. “We cannot turn back, and a vision aimed at the vibrant New Rochelle of 1950 is more likely (today) to produce the dying New Rochelle of 1990.”
