A village official in Sleepy Hollow said construction of a major mixed-use development on the long-vacant former automotive assembly plant site of General Motors Co. could start in 2015, and possibly by the end of this year, after GM”™s recent selection of a developer for the Hudson waterfront project.
The long-stalled development, Lighthouse Landing, includes 1,177 residential units, 35,000 square feet of office space, 135,000 square feet of retail, cinema and restaurant space and a 140-room hotel. Though no updated figure was available, the project cost was previously estimated at $800 million.
Sleepy Hollow Mayor Kenneth G. Wray recently announced the Detroit automaker has chosen a partnership of Diversified Realty Advisors L.L.C., based in Summit, N.J., and SunCal, the nation”™s largest privately held developer of master-planned communities. Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., SunCal also has an office in Manhattan.
The nearly 100-acre GM property off Beekman Avenue was vacated by the automaker in 1996. The redevelopment project, first proposed by GM in 2003, has been delayed for several years by lawsuits brought against Sleepy Hollow by GM challenging village officials”™ decision to reduce the scale of the project and by Sleepy Hollow”™s neighboring municipality, the village of Tarrytown, where officials are concerned about the development”™s impact on traffic and parking on busy Route 9. Tarrytown”™s legal challenge was rejected by a state judge in 2012, who cited a “lengthy and contentious” planning approval process in his ruling, and Tarrytown”™s subsequent appeal of the court decision was denied.
GM in 2013 completed an environmental cleanup of the brownfield site with the dredging of contaminated sediment in the Hudson River. With the state Department of Environmental Conservation signing off on the required cleanup and the legal hurdles cleared, GM was ready to move forward with its choice of a developer, Sleepy Hollow Village Administrator Anthony Giaccio said.
GM”™s former development partner, New Jersey-based Roseland Properties L.L.C., pulled out of the Lighthouse Landing project in late 2007, calling it an opportunity that had passed. The project was revived after GM emerged from its bankruptcy reorganization in 2009.
“It was kind of a five-year review process,” Giaccio said.
A former partner at Roseland Properties, Jonathan D. Stein, is a founding co-managing partner of Diversified Realty Advisors. The New Jersey company on its website inaccurately includes the development of the former GM plant site in Sleepy Hollow among his “flagship developments” at Roseland.
Stein and his co-managing partner at Diversified, Nicholas W. Minoia, did not respond to requests for comment on their development plans with SunCal in Sleepy Hollow.
Regarding the new development team, “It”™s our assumption that they”™ll stick to that plan” for which General Motors was granted a special permit by the village in 2011, Giaccio said. He said the developer is buying both the property and the special permit from GM.
Giaccio said the developer might present plans to the village planning board by March or April. With the special permit already approved for the residential, commercial office, retail, entertainment and hospitality complex, planning officials “will really be focusing more on the details of the project,” he said.
When the land purchase is completed, the property, an unsightly fenced-off riverfront expanse of weed-strewn, cracked asphalt and concrete, will go back on the tax rolls, Giaccio noted.
GM currently pays about $140,000 a year as payment in lieu of property taxes under a 30-year PILOT agreement with the village that dates to 1985. Giaccio said village officials agreed to the unusually long tax abatement plan to keep one of the county”™s largest employers in Sleepy Hollow.
“Best-case scenario, we would hope by the end of the year they will start” construction of Lighthouse Landing, he said. “We”™re optimistic it will be in 2015.”
