A rezoning plan designed to guide and ease the way for mixed-use development and redevelopment in downtown Yonkers drew little opposition at a recent public hearing of the Yonkers City Council.
The light turnout of residents at City Hall for a hearing required by the state”™s environmental review process sharply contrasted with the outpouring of both critics and supporters a few years ago as the city”™s master developer, Struever Fidelco Cappelli L.L.C., sought city approvals for its downtown and waterfront redevelopment plans. None of SFC”™s approved River Park Center, Government Center and Palisades Point mixed-use and residential projects broke ground before the recession dried up financing for commercial developers and sent one of the partners in SFC, Struever Brothers, Eccles & Rouse, into financial collapse in Baltimore, Md., and a quiet exit from Yonkers.
Speakers at the recent hearing on the city administration”™s plan to rezone a 192-acre downtown area largely focused on the absence of a central park and open space for the public in the plan.
City planners in the plan”™s generic environmental impact statement proposed to replace 10 existing zoning districts with five zones, which they said will make it easier for downtown developers “to navigate through the city”™s regulatory process.” The plan calls for a large mixed-use district centered at Getty Square, three residential districts of low, medium and high population densities, and an industrial research and technology district that would replace a current industrial zone that extends from the downtown waterfront.
The proposed industrial research and technology district is contained within the property lines of the privately owned i.park Hudson, site of the former Otis Elevator Co. manufacturing complex and now home to Kawasaki Rail Car Inc. At one former factory building there, 28 Wells Ave., city officials are opening a business incubator and accelerator and looking to attract biotechnology firms to join Contrafect Corp. in the city”™s nascent biotech industry.
An attorney for i.park”™s owner in Greenwich, Conn., National RE/sources, at the hearing stressed the importance of keeping heavy industry there while adding biotech tenants and other users in new industries.
While other communities look to gentrify their industrial areas, i.park has stayed committed to developing heavy industrial uses that create job growth, said Daniel J. Pennessi, general counsel at National RE/sources. As industrial zones are eliminated in Westchester County, i.park will have “a competitive advantage for attracting new tenants,” he told city officials.
Limited to the i.park property, the new zoning designation “will unfairly burden i.park both now and in the future,” Pennessi said. He urged the city to combine the existing heavy-industry zone with the proposed additional uses and density.
