Developer Frank Boccanfuso recalls his arrival in Port Chester in 1987 when he bought the first of his downtown properties at the future site of The Waterfront at Port Chester, the half-million-square-foot retail and entertainment big-box complex in which his company formerly had a stake.
“I remember having to chase drug dealers away,” he said. “You don”™t have that today.” Port Chester, he said, has changed “dramatically.”
Today that downtown area is frequented by shoppers and moviegoers, many of whom drive from the more affluent nearby communities of Greenwich, Conn., Rye and Westchester”™s Sound Shore. They dine at the ethnic and upscale restaurants that abound in the self-proclaimed “Restaurant Capital of Westchester,” many with names and menu fare that reflect Port Chester”™s large and growing Hispanic population. Parking has become a more pressing problem downtown than street dealers, and one more welcomed by village officials.
The village”™s transformation continues at a time “when the cranes are mothballed in Westchester County and all over the Northeast region,” Port Chester Mayor Dennis G. Pilla recently noted. Pilla made his remark at a village board meeting where Elmsford-based developer Robert Weinberg, a partner in G&S Port Chester L.L.C., presented the company”™s proposal to build 79 luxury apartments above 12,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space in a five-story building across from the mega-complex on Westchester Avenue.
Weinberg said the apartments will attract tenants with disposable incomes to spend in downtown shops and restaurants, especially young professionals commuting by train to New York City. Empty-nesters and divorced singles are expected there too. “We want the upscale,” the developer said.
”˜Bohemian vibrancy”™
“We”™re an urban village,” Pilla said on a walk along downtown North Main Street, where building facades have been or are being refurbished by owners and street landscaping improvements made by the village with the aid of state and federal grants. “We have this quaint character of a village.”
It”™s a village with “a bohemian vibrancy, an eclectic character,” said the mayor, and with a master plan being developed that could foster the growth of an urban night life. “We”™re aiming for an 18-hour downtown,” he said.
Pilla said Port Chester also benefits from its location on a rail-line and interstate highway corridor between two capitals of the financial industry, New York City and Stamford, Conn. “I think Port Chester should be vying for a slice of that young, upwardly mobile talent pool,” he said. “They can afford to live in Port Chester and get more bang for the buck.”
Village Trustee Bart Didden, a downtown landlord in Port Chester and owner of USA Central Station Alarm Corp., said he is “cautiously optimistic” that the downtown apartments proposed by G&S will be rented by empty-nesters, homeowners looking to downsize and professionals looking to move from New York City but live close to mass transit. Village officials have heard “the same sales pitch” from Boccanfuso and other developers, he said.
A few blocks from his first downtown acquisition in Port Chester, Boccanfuso”™s company, Phoenix Capital Partners L.L.C., is building The Mariner, a waterfront complex of 100 one- and two-bedroom rental lofts with an attached marina on the Byram River. The eight-year project, whose cost Boccanfuso put at “north of $50 million,” is scheduled for completion by June 2012. The developer is targeting as tenants “the young cohort between 24 and 32” who will be drawn to Port Chester”™s “dynamic” downtown restaurant scene.
A few blocks west of Main Street, Boccanfuso expects to begin construction next year on The Castle, a five-story, 150,000-square-foot apartment building. The developer is seeking village approval of his proposal to increase the project”™s residential density from 83 to 120 units.
Density problem
Like Weinberg at G&S, “I thought the downtown needs housing support for this retail,” he said. “This European concept of people living in a downtown and working and playing at the same time is nothing new.”
Didden said the developers”™ downtown projects could be a solution for Port Chester”™s “huge density problem” in its neighborhoods, where previous code enforcement officers overlooked illegal overcrowding in multifamily buildings. “We are the second densest community in Westchester County after Mount Vernon,” he said.
“What Port Chester doesn”™t need and doesn”™t want is more affordable housing, Section 8 (federally subsidized) housing,” Didden said. “We”™re looking to gentrify the downtown and we”™re actively looking at ways to lower the densities in our residential neighborhoods.”
To developers showing interest in the village, “The current board of trustees said no more housing components in Port Chester, which may have been a knee-jerk to its density problem,” Didden said. “Maybe what we need to do is look at this” and shift neighborhood density to downtown residential developments.
In an exercise of eminent domain that brought national attention to Port Chester, Didden was one of many downtown landlords whose properties were condemned by the village to make way for the G&S development. In a protracted legal battle, he and his partner last year were awarded nearly $3.1 million by a state Supreme Court judge for the village”™s taking of their property at 175 N. Main St. The village has appealed the court decision and Didden has recused himself from any discussion and votes on G&S projects by the village board.
G&S still holds preferred-developer rights in a large swath of the downtown business district that includes Didden”™s properties. “The fact that we still have urban renewal zones and other development zones like the waterfront” ”“ where the village could condemn properties ”“ “these are black clouds over property owners,” he said.
“Downtown is fixing up, but because of incentives” from government, he said. “I believe that a lot more would occur if everybody weren”™t living under the threat of condemnation.”
Pilla, who defeated Didden in a mayoral election race in March, agreed the eminent-domain proceeding “created a stigma over the rest of downtown.” But he said he has worked to lift that stigma by showing business owners and wary developers and investors that the village itself is investing in its downtown. In that approach he was advised by former White Plains Mayor Joseph Delfino, who led that city during its massive downtown redevelopment.
“Joe Delfino is my mentor,” said Pilla, standing outside Tarry Market, one of the new, upscale food shops doing a thriving business on North Main Street. “He said, ”˜Dennis, you”™ve got to put some skin in the game. Show them you”™re going to build it up, not knock it down.”™
“And he was right,” said the mayor.
