At the Harrison municipal building beside the village”™s Metro-North Railroad station, “Developers are walking in the door in an endless stream,” Harrison Supervisor and Mayor Joan Walsh said last week.
The object of their interest is a 3.5-acre site on downtown Halstead Avenue directly across the rail tracks from Walsh”™s office. Now a commuter parking lot owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), the property could be turned over to the town of Harrison for a mixed-use redevelopment project that tentatively includes 25,000 square feet of retail space and 32 housing units in two buildings, a 596-space parking garage with garden roof, public esplanades connecting the avenue to the station and a new municipal building.
Those plans are subject to change, Walsh stressed last week. She, for one, thinks the municipal building might be better replaced by a third commercial building, occupied by a “destination” retail store, to make the project more financially viable and attractive for a private developer.
Several developers have offered to build the public parking garage at their cost in return for the right to develop the whole of the remaining site for commercial and residential use, Walsh said. “My goal is that the whole thing be done without any town money,” she said.
The proposal, called “It”™s Happening in Harrison” by its planners, is the second transit-oriented development project in the last year floated by MTA”™s Metro-North as a public-private partnership to revitalize the economy and central business district while promoting increased mass-transit use and environmentally sustainable growth. The public can review and comment on the conceptual  proposal with town and railroad officials and planning consultants at an open house from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Veterans Memorial Building, 216 Halstead Ave.
Metro-North”™s model for Harrison and future transit-oriented projects is its Beacon station in Dutchess County, where rail officials last fall invited developers to become partners in an 18-acre mixed-use development that would serve as a gateway to Beacon, reclaim the Hudson River waterfront and link it to the city”™s downtown. Five developers responded to a request for expressions of interest in the project, which also includes expanded train platforms and station improvements. Metro-North plans to issue a request for proposals from developers later this year.
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The Halstead Avenue development in Harrison “has been in the works for 11 years in more or less this configuration,” Walsh said. For 20 years or more, various proposals to develop the site, including one that called for an apartment building and another for a hotel, were scrapped or attracted no interested developers, she said.
With this project, “We want to keep the suburban character” of Harrison, she said. “The town is committed to no box stores, and to the park-like feeling of the finished product.”
“We have no preconceived ideas of what stores” would be tenants for the site. “Whole Foods has been mentioned very often, but they have a parking requirement of their own, so that”™s certainly a question.” Walsh said one tenant she favored is “a high-end take-out deli” such as ones that operate in Scarsdale and Wilton, Conn.
“We don”™t want to bring in a multistory shopping center,” she said. “That is not what Harrison is about. It will be a series of small and medium-sized shops.”
As for current downtown business owners, “They just want to be sure that we”™re not going to duplicate their stores,” the mayor said.
Ada Angarano, president and Chief Executive Officer of the approximately 70-member Harrison Chamber of Commerce, said she has heard opposition to the proposed “strip mall” from some members. “Some of my restaurants say, ”˜We don”˜t want that. We don”™t need any more competition.”™”
Angarano was skeptical that the long-stalled redevelopment project is now on track to completion. “It”™s been talked about so many years, my position is, I”™ll believe it when I see it.”
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