Two years after its last redevelopment proposal had a chilly reception in Port Chester, Starwood Capital Group is back in the village this spring with a new conceptual plan for a mixed-use neighborhood on the site of the former United Hospital on Boston Post Road.
The Greenwich-based company eight years ago paid $28 million in bidding to acquire the approximately 15-acre United Hospital complex after the bankrupt hospital closed in early 2005. Starwood representatives presented initial plans for an approximately 1-million-square-foot development on the deteriorating site at an April meeting of the Port Chester village board of trustees.
Ken Narva, co-founder and managing partner of Street-Works L.L.C., Starwood”™s development planner in Port Chester, said the project will be designed to attract senior residents and millennials and create a public place surrounded by small retail shops in an urban environment.
“We really believe that Port Chester is the place to be in the county over the next 15 to 20 years,” said Narva. His company in December relocated its office from White Plains to Port Chester.
Narva said the development will not include high-rise towers. Buildings will be no more than six stories, or about 70 feet above grade. “Great mixed use is created from the street up, not from the roof down,” he said.
Starwood has proposed five commercial and residential development blocks that make use of the hospital”™s existing structural layout. They would include 230 apartments for active seniors and 500 residential units that Narva said will be “geared exclusively” for millennials ”“ people born after 1982 ”“ and the under-35 age group. “The program is not designed for families,” he said.
The planned total of 730 apartments is 90 fewer than Starwood proposed two years ago.
The site also would include a wellness and medical office area with a minimum of 100,000 square feet of space and as much as 200,000 square feet, depending on demand from health care providers, Narva said.
Plans also include a 135-room, 97,000-square-foot hotel and 90,000 to 100,000 square feet of street retail space spread throughout the project”™s commercial and residential buildings.
“Butcher, baker and candlestick maker,” Narva said, describing a desired mix of retailers that don”™t do business in large shopping malls. “This will be an extension of Main Street. It will be the best of what Main Street is.”
“This is definitely a regional draw,” he said. “Nothing like this exists in Westchester County, Fairfield County.”
Some residents at the meeting said they worried about Starwood”™s plans for 999 High St., a 12-story, 134-unit building on the site built as a hospital staff residence and converted to affordable housing for Port Chester residents. Starwood”™s amended zoning petition includes that high-rise building, which has only a 30 percent occupancy rate, according to Starwood. However, “The building is not sustainable without being significantly altered,” Narva said.
“Shame on Starwood and the village if they proceed with a plan like this and ignore the people at 999 High St.,” said Port Chester resident Richard Hyman. Hyman said he favors a large-scale plan for the site “but not at the expense of the people living there now.”
“Nobody”™s trying to put anybody out in the cold,” Narva responded.
“I think this is night and day different from the previous proposal,” said Village Trustee Daniel Brakewood. “There”™s a lot of work to do between now and when we put a shovel in the ground, but this is a vision.”
Frank Ferrara, vice chairman of the Port Chester Industrial Development Agency, said Starwood has made an effort “to adapt a project that is more in keeping with something we can live with. … The kind of project that”™s been put up by Starwood is the kind of project that can endure for the next 90 years.”
With an estimated 18-month environmental review of the developer”™s proposal, Port Chester Mayor Neil Pagano said it could be the end of 2015 “before we might ever see a shovel in the ground.”
