Groups to protest Echo Bay project

Some New Rochelle residents and a local veterans group will picket on the steps of City Hall Tuesday in protest of a proposed redevelopment project on Echo Bay.

The protest was announced by United Citizens for a Better New Rochelle, a group that created “No Echo Bay” lawn signs that residents posted throughout the city, and United Veterans Memorial & Patriotic Association, which has opposed the project because of its impact on an unused armory building at the project site.

The rally is set for 6 p.m. prior to a scheduled meeting of the New Rochelle City Council where the project is to be discussed. The meeting comes one week after Mayor Noam Bramson lost a bid to become Westchester county executive.

County Legislator Jim Maisano, a Republican who lives in New Rochelle, told us in a recent interview the project was the latest example in the city of “developer-led development” paid through taxpayer subsidies. He said the proposal should be rejected and the project put out to bid to find new proposals and perhaps a new developer.

“There”™s no doubt you get something better,” he said.

Forest City Residential Inc., an affiliate of Cleveland-based Forest City Enterprises, is looking to build 285 luxury apartments, 25,000 square feet of retail space and a 5-acre waterfront park at an East Main Street site that includes a city Department of Public Works yard and a portion of an unused armory building.

Some residents have opposed the project because of $20 million in tax abatements set through 2035. In a flier announcing Tuesday”™s protest, the groups said, “Let”™s put an end to corporate welfare in New Rochelle.”

Many critics also take issue with the scope of the project, which was significantly scaled back during the economic recession. It was conceived in 2006 as a $450 million, 26-acre project that would include 710 residences, 150,000 square feet of retail and two 150-room hotels.

Robert Cox, who runs the New Rochelle blog Talk of the Sound, said the city was not getting enough in return for the tax abatements and the relocation of the public works yard from the project site to elsewhere in the city. “We”™re really not getting anything,” he said. “We”™re going significantly in debt in the community to get a small to midsize apartment building, not of any note.”

The original proposal would have knocked down the armory and replaced it with a community center, a move that met the ire of veterans groups who wanted the building preserved due to its history. The 26,575-square-foot armory building will be spared, though its ultimate fate remains unclear.

The announcing of the protest comes only four days after a scathing report on Forest City from Cause of Action, a Washington, D.C.-based accountability organization that said Forest City had spent more than $230,000 in lobbying for the project. The report noted that Bramson received $17,500 in campaign donations from Forest City consultants and $5,000 in donations from members of the Ratner family since the project was announced in 2006.

Bramson could not be reached for comment Monday, but in a recent interview said that the project would provide a spark to a long-term revitalization of the area even in its pared-down form.

“We learned over the last few years trying to establish one grand vision in a large bite doesn’t work,” he said. “It’s an important, impactful and significant development.”