The Yonkers Industrial Development Agency recently gave its preliminary support of a proposed $181-million high-rise residential rental development on downtown Buena Vista Avenue.
Metro Partners L.L.C., the Yonkers-based developer of The Lofts at Metro 92 and 66 Main, is seeking city approval of Teutonia Buena Vista, a 25-story, 412-unit apartment complex at 66-72 Buena Vista Ave. The developer has proposed to lease 80 percent of the apartments at market rate and set aside 20 percent as affordable rental units.
The proposed glass tower would be the centerpiece of a project on two acres that would transform a city block of homes and vacant or underused industrial parcels while incorporating elements of the street”™s 19th-century architectural heritage.
Teutonia Hall, a long-vacant cultural center built in 1892, will be razed to make way for the development. The hallӪs distinctive fa̤ade will be restored and relocated to the front of an automated parking garage proposed on Buena Vista Avenue.
The high-rise apartment building will be connected to and share a lobby with the developer”™s landmarked 92 Main St. property, a former trolley barn converted to live-work lofts and retail space.
The project is expected to create 420 construction jobs and up to 25 permanent jobs.
The city IDA board will hold a public hearing on the project before final approval of an economic-development package. That could include project financing through tax-exempt industrial revenue bonds (IRB), sales and use tax exemptions for materials and equipment used in construction, a mortgage recording tax exemption and a structured property tax agreement.
Yonkers Mayor Philip Amicone, who also chairs the IDA board, called the project “an important component of our continuing downtown renaissance. It will infuse hundreds of new residents into the neighborhood who will eat at our restaurants, shop at the local merchants and use our public transportation ”“ contributing millions of dollars every year in added tax revenue.”
Ossining waterfront to remain Sing Sing”™s home
Ossining”™s prime riverfront acreage of notorious repute will remain barred to developers following Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo”™s recently announced list of statewide prison closings.
The seven prisons given the governor”™s death sentence ”“ which when executed will save the state an estimated $184 million over two years ”” do not include Sing Sing Correctional Facility, the 176-year-old maximum-security prison on the Hudson River. Cuomo noted that no maximum-security prisons will be closed.
The state will close four male minimum-security facilities upstate and in the Bronx and three male medium-security facilities, including one on Staten Island and the Mid-Orange Correctional Center in Warwick.
In April, state and local elected officials representing Ossining in a letter asked the governor to spare an upstate prison from closure and instead shut Sing Sing, which occupies “55 to 60 of the most valuable and viable waterfront acres in the lower Hudson Valley.” Officials argued the state would profit from the sale of all or part of the land and local municipalities would reap much-needed tax revenue from the property.
Home construction or mixed-use development on the site and a planned Historic Sing Sing Museum would provide hundreds of jobs and a tourist destination, they said.
A state Department of Corrections spokesman last spring indicated there was little or no chance that Sing Sing would be closed as proposed.
From 2001 to 2010, the number of state inmates at minimum-security prisons dropped by about 57 percent, while medium-security inmate numbers, the largest share of the state”™s prison population, decreased by about 20 percent, according to state officials. The maximum-security prison population declined by 2 percent.
Cuomo said communities affected by the closures can request economic development assistance from the state, some of which will come from a $50-million fund as well as additional tax credits to help end their reliance on prisons as an economic sustainer and major source of employment.
Tax revenue continues to rise
Westchester County sales tax revenue in May rose 5.91 percent over the same period last year, according to statistics provided to the county Board of Legislators by county budget officials.
The $34,050,260 collected in May was a $1,900,746 increase from a year ago. Over the past two years, May sales tax revenue has increased 7.2 percent.
In April, the county”™s sales tax revenue rose 8.67 percent from the same period in 2010.
