Developers to pay $1M to end legal challenge

Developers Douglas Smolev, left, and Corey Rabin on their Rivertowns Square property in Dobbs Ferry.

After a year in legal limbo and an agreement to pay out $1 million to a municipal neighbor, developers of Rivertowns Square expect to break ground before the end of this year on their approximately $150 million mixed-use development in Dobbs Ferry.

The Dobbs Ferry village board of trustees last June approved site plans for the commercial and residential development on a nearly 18-acre site adjoining Chauncey Square Shopping Center near the intersection of Saw Mill River Parkway and Lawrence Street. Dobbs Ferry Capital Partners L.L.C., the managing member of Saber Dobbs Ferry L.L.C., the Armonk-based joint venture developing the project”™s commercial space, in 2010 paid $5.125 million for the vacant hillside site, the former office and laboratory campus of Akzo Nobel Chemical Co.

Though divided on the project”™s impact on traffic and safety, Dobbs Ferry trustees in January 2013 narrowly adopted an environmental findings report following a two-year environmental review of the project. The approximately 440,000-square-foot development will include an 18,000-square-foot Mrs. Green”™s Natural Market, a 1,350-seat, eight-screen movie theater to be opened by Los Angeles-based Sundance Cinemas as its first East Coast location, about 61,300 square feet of retail and restaurant space, a 123-room hotel and a 202-unit, approximately 277,000-square-foot luxury residential building to be developed by Lincoln Dobbs Ferry L.L.C.

But a long history of neighborly feuding between Dobbs Ferry and the village of Ardsley ”“ one local official laughingly described it as “like the Hatfields and McCoys” ”“ surfaced again last May when the Ardsley village board of trustees filed a legal challenge to Dobbs Ferry”™s decision on Rivertowns Square in state Supreme Court in Westchester County. Ardsley Mayor Peter Porcino said his goal and the aim of the lawsuit against Dobbs Ferry and the developers was to reduce the scope of the project and its impact on traffic in Ardsley.

“There aren”™t any great solutions to the traffic issues in Ardsley,” Porcino said. “But we”™ve always felt this project is a related problem.”

Ardsley trustees at an April meeting unanimously approved a settlement of the lawsuit that preserves the original scope of the project. The developers, though, agreed to pay Ardsley $1 million in installments pegged to the issuance of building permits and certificates of occupancy for the project.

Though the settlement does not specify a use for the payment, Porcino said he hoped to use the money to increase parking and improve traffic patterns in the village.

Porcino noted that as part of the settlement, a shuttle service the Rivertowns Square developers agreed to operate in Dobbs Ferry will be extended to downtown Ardsley except during peak weekday commuter hours.

Porcino said construction vehicles will be routed outside the village of Ardsley as part of the legal agreement. The developers in the settlement reaffirmed their previous agreement with Dobbs Ferry to enforce a construction traffic management plan with contractors on the project.

Corey B. Rabin, a partner in Saber Dobbs Ferry, said the developers agreed to make $5 million in off-site improvements to roads and infrastructure before construction begins at Rivertowns Square. He said planned improvements to Ogden Avenue, which crosses the project site, will ease traffic congestion and provide an alternative local route when construction begins in 2015 on the county”™s crumbling Ashford Avenue bridge in Ardsley.

“The amount of money we”™re spending on off-site improvements is unusual for a project this size,” Rabin said.

Rabin said he signed the settlement agreement on May 6. The Dobbs Ferry village board approved the agreement in April.

Residents of two homes near the Rivertowns Square site also filed a legal challenge last year to the project as approved by Dobbs Ferry officials. The settlement ending the Ardsley lawsuit is contingent on the discontinuance of that lawsuit.

Though the case is still pending in court, Rabin said the neighbors, David and Maryellen Laino and Alfred Constantine, have agreed to drop their challenge.

Mark A. Chertok, the attorney representing Ardsley and the Dobbs Ferry residents in the lawsuits, did not return calls for comment.

“Fortunately for us, there”™s been no major impact with this delay,” Rabin said. “Of course we”™re not in the business of delaying, we”™re in the business of building. But we”™ll be OK.”

“If the litigation continued on for an extended period of time, it might have had some effect on the eventual tenants. To the best of our knowledge that hasn”™t happened,” Rabin said.

Rabin said the partners have secured an operator for the 123-room hotel on the site. The hotel company has requested an announcement be delayed until this summer, he said.